The PDC at Abbey Road

DARTS STARS VISIT ABBEY ROAD TO PROMOTE PREMIER LEAGUE IN LIVERPOOL

Think of Liverpool and you think of The Beatles, but in April 2008 thoughts in that city turned to darts.

SKY Sports and the PDC thought long and hard about how promote the Whyte & Mackay Premier League darts stars appearance at the Liverpool Echo Arena and, as the players prepared for ‘ A Hard Day's Night', the company came up with the idea of recreating The Beatles' famous ‘Abbey Road’ album cover.  

The Abbey Road zebra crossing in London was famously used on the cover of The Beatles' 1969 album, and Phil Taylor, Raymond van Barneveld, Wayne Mardle and James Wade - the Premier League's current Fab Four – perhaps unfairly called the ‘Flab Four’ by one national newspaper - followed in the footsteps of the musical icons by crossing the famous London landmark. 

The four darters were in action in The Beatles' home city of Liverpool on 11^th April; the event attracting a massive crowd of almost 8,000 fans. That is certainly a record crowd for a major darts tournament in the modern era and the PDC and Premier League sponsors, Whyte & Mackay, are to be congratulated in drawing such a large crowd to this already massively popular event.

The record size of audience at a single darts tournament remains the 16,000-17,000 darts fanatics who attended the Jim Pike versus Marmaduke Brecon News of the World London and the South Divisional Final at the Royal Agricultural Hall, London in May 1939.

However, I do not expect that it will be long before that record falls to the PDC!

© 2008 Patrick Chaplin

Photo credit: SKY Sports/PDC