Darts Betting

Perhaps because televised darts events were once so few, the possibility of darts betting used to seem remote to all but the most ardent fans of the sport. But thanks to increased coverage by the BBC, Sky Sports, and ITV, more and more tournaments are being aired and seen, and punters are discovering that this indoor activity allows the opportunity to wager and win all year round.

The international governing body for competitive darts is the World Darts Federation (WDF). Established in 1976 by representatives of 15 different countries, it was created to promote the sport and gain international recognition for darts as a major sporting activity. Membership is limited to official national darts organisations.

One of the WDF’s founding members is the British Darts Organisation, or BDO. It has been encouraging the spread of the sort in the U.K. since 1973, not only by sanctioning professional-level darts tournaments for men and women, but also by catering to amateur, youth, and super league groups. The BDO works at the grassroots level and counts 66 British counties among its members.

The BDO is the only national organisation responsible for setting the rules which govern games, including the official size of the throwing oche (7 feet, 9¼ inches), the dimensions of the board and its height from the floor. Most sanctioned games are played in the classic 501 format, with opponents attempting to bring their scores to zero with the fewest possible throws of their three-dart sets.

One of the BDO’s greatest accomplishments was the introduction of the very first World Professional Darts Championship in 1978. It was originally sponsored by Imperial Tobacco and called “The Embassy,” but in more recent year the event has been held at the Lakeside Complex in Frimley, Hampshire, resulting in a name change to the Lakeside World Professional Darts Championship. The tournament begins on New Year’s Day and runs a full nine days. In 2010, the Lakeside’s prize pool reached £325,000, an indication of just how big the sport has become.

Another major force in the area of competitive darts is the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC). The PDC was formed in 1992 as a splinter group of sixteen top professional players who left the BDO, unhappy with its lack of efforts to improve the image of darts as well as low levels of sponsorship. They began organising their own championships, including the U.K. Open, the World Grand Prix, the Las Vegas Desert Classic, and World Matchplay, in addition to the annual PDC World Darts Championship held over Christmas and now worth £735,000. The PDC also has its own Premier League, too, and maintains a list of world rankings based upon players’ performances.

Because so many professionals are now associated with the PDC, it has actually come to overshadow the BDO to large degree, the latter being seen as “semi-profession” by many. Ante post betting is quite heavy for both of the holiday period championships once the draws have been made. The BDO event tends to have somewhat longer odds than the PDC’s, owing to the dominance of one brilliant player—Phil Taylor—in the latter.

Once the tournaments begin, bookmakers feature match betting on every televised game, including team events as well as individual head-on-head contests. One popular wager is an accumulator bet, selecting two or more players to win their matches as a single bet, rather like a perfecta or trifecta wager in horse racing. Especially in the early rounds of a tournament, such bets provide an attractive alternative to picking individual winners at short odds.

Other types of popular darts markets include handicap betting and in-running or live betting. The latter allows wagers on occurrences as the game progresses, from whether the next throw will score a triple or double to how many darts it will take to reach zero.