Patrick Chaplin - Darts Historian

A Brief History of Darts (Berkshire Enclcopaedia)

The following article written by Patrick Chaplin is published in the Berkshire Encyclopaedia of World Sport.

Darts

Darts is one of the oldest established English pub games which, since the late 1970s, has become one of the most popular sports in the world. Darts has been considered as a derivative of the, crossbow bolts and. The most likely scenario is that the game has its roots in archery. The earliest type of dartboard was a concentric target, a miniature form of the archery target. Moreover, darts is most commonly known as ‘arrows’ – a possible, if tenuous link to its origins as a target sport.

Darts can be played alone, in pairs, or by teams. It has no restrictions in terms of gender, ability or disability, size, height, or ethnic origin. The standard game is 501. In this each player must reduce the score of 501 to zero and finish on a double (if a player has 16 points left, the player should hit a “double” 8 to win, for example). All that any player requires is a set of darts and a dartboard. Darts can be played anywhere – in the home, in the garage, on board ship, indoors or outside.

The History of Darts

Up until the early part of the twentieth century, darts existed in disparate forms across parts of England, the only matches taking place being either ‘in-house’ or friendly matches between teams from taverns that were close to each other. (The cost of transport was prohibitive at that time.) However, after the Great War, the first brewery leagues appeared and grew to such an extent that, by 1924, the National Darts Association (NDA) was founded in London. The NDA standardized the sport and introduced rules and regulations.

The Original News of the World Logo

Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother playing darts Slough, Berkshire Such was the popularity of the “new” sport that in 1927 the News of the World - an extremely popular British Sunday newspaper – sponsored what was to become the News of the World Individual Darts Championship. The newspaper provided “a silver cup and many other prizes” while the organization of the event was the responsibility of the NDA. For the first year the championship was held only in the London area, but by the end of the 1930s, it had expanded to cover most of England. Such was the enthusiasm of the brewers and the dart-playing public for the game that by the 1930s it had become a popular national recreation in England and parts of Wales. An indication of the popularity of the sport in England and Wales alone is that the number of entrance for the 1938-39 News of the World competition was in excess of 280,000. Participants came from all classes, and interest in the game by women increased substantially when Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, played a game of darts in a worker’s social centre in Slough, Buckinghamshire, England, in 1937.Regrettably, one of the downsides of the increasing popularaility of the sport was that darts often ousted existing pub games such as skittle and rings (indoor quoits), some of them disappeared forever. In addition, the development of darts by “southerners” in the form of the NDA based in London, found some resistance in places in the north of England, such as Manchester, where the smaller Manchester “log-end” dartboard was played on and where it still holds sway to this day.

Darts in World War II

Darts playing boosted morale in the armed forces during World War II. It was played in the officer’s mess and even more in some prisoner of war camps, where playing darts reminded of what they might be doing if they were at home – that is “down the pub, playing darts,” The rules tended to be those of the News of the World competition. By the middle of the war, darts was standard issue in the Navy, Amy and Air Force (NAAFI) sports packs issued to troops. American soldiers visiting England too darts home with them and generated substantial interest in this ‘olde Englishe’ pastime up until that time was little played in the United States.

Post-war Growth

The News of the World Individual Darts Championship was revived in 1947/48, this time on a national basis, and continued to be described as ‘the championship every dart player wants to win’ until its demise in the 1990s. The end of the war also saw the return of The People National Team Championships (first played for in 1938/39). However, the original National Darts Association did not survive the war and although a number of attempts were made to introduce another national, controlling agency, nothing firm was realised until 1954 when The People - another national U.K Sunday newspaper - supported the setting up of the National Darts Association of Great Britain (NDAGB).

The 1950s and 1960s were decades when darts maintained a fairly low profile even though levels of participant were still extremely high, 3 and 4 million in England alone. The NDAGB did outstanding work both in establishing county leagues and organising top competitions such as the NODOR Fours for its sponsor NODOR Dartboard Company.

In the 1960s darts appeared on TV in Britain for the first time, but not until the establishment of the British Darts Organisation (BDO) in 1973 and the introduction of split-screen technology did darts really take hold of Britain. The rest of the world followed. The Embassy World Professional Darts Championship – the most sought after trophy in the sport – was established in 1978. The Embassy – now renamed the Lakeside World Championship following the government’s ban on tobacco advertising in 2003 – remains the key darting event seen on non-satellite TV in the U.K..

Who Rules the Game?

With the television companies and multitude of sponsors on board, the late 1970s and 1980s saw the creation of the first household names - the first darts ‘stars’ - including Eric Bristow, John Lowe, Alan Evans, Jocky Wilson, and Leighton Rees.

In 1993 sixteen so-called rebel professionals, who wanted more say in the future of the sport, broke away from the BDO and were from then on represented by the World Darts Corporation (WDC). This action by players eventually led to the two organisations going to court in 1997 and arguments primarily related to alleged restriction of trade being made settled in the Tomlin Order.

The establishment of the World Darts Corporation (now the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC)) following the ‘great split’ of 1993 took darts in a new direction. This has resulted in the introduction of key, high profile competitions including the World Matchplay, Grand Prix and the World Championship. Meanwhile, the BDO continues to provide support to the grassroots of the sport, to the youth and women’s game, and at the same time it has managed to introduce a number of new major competitions.

However, despite the Tomlin Order, the BDO and the PDC – although between them controlling the future of our sport - maintain a distance between each other that appears unlikely to be breached in the near future.

Governing Body

The primary governing bodies are the British Darts Organisation (www.bdodarts.com) and the Professional Darts Corporation (www.planetdarts.tv)

Ref:

The Berkshire Encyclopaedia of World Sport
(Great Barrington, Massachusetts: Berkshire Publishing Group, 2005)