When Eilidh Milne visited her father and brother on Tuesday, she initially protested their insistence on watching the World Darts Championship on TV.
But Milne soon found himself restless, facing 16-year-old Luke Littler as he defeated 2018 world champion Rob Cross in the semi-finals. The TV yelled and jumped into the air. finals.
Milne said: “I had no idea the sport could be so gripping and it definitely made me more interested in darts in the future.” He added: “I learned about darts very quickly and by the time it was all over, the whole game The game can change drastically in a matter of minutes.”
Milne, a 26-year-old London engineer, is part of a new generation of young people taking an increasing interest in darts. Darts has long been considered a sport for professional enthusiasts rather than the wider public, but it is undergoing dramatic changes and attracting new audiences. The Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) semi-finals reportedly averaged a record-breaking 1.5 million viewers, with Sky’s Cross v Littler semi-final attracting a peak of 2.3 million viewers, a 165% increase on last year’s semi-final. Sky Sports data.
Milne said she was disappointed with her defeat to 28-year-old Luke Humphries in Wednesday’s world championship final at Alexandra Palace. “I’ve always loved rooting for the underdog,” Milne said. But for a sport that’s skewed toward older men and skewed toward men — and which she said isn’t always geared toward women — having 16-year-olds competing for titles “makes the younger generation feel more inclusive.”
When Omar Soliman went to a cheese and wine event with his girlfriend on December 30, a darts match was on TV after a football match, with the football game in the background. Soliman, a 40-year-old writer from Stoke-on-Trent, is no stranger to darts, but he found himself and others in the room caught up in the 16-year-old’s drama. They watched Littler defeat former champion Raymond van Barneveld, who was more than three times his age, four to one.
Soliman first became interested in darts about 10 years ago, he said, when his roommates put the darts on the shared TV: “We really liked it. [after Christmas] Entering the new year, we were all off work and nothing happened. ” This was the era of ‘Power’ Phil Taylor, also from Stoke-on-Trent, and Soliman relished the energy of the enthusiastic crowds at games.
The best games, Soliman said, are like psychological dramas. He began to enjoy the mental aspect of the game, “hitting triples, hitting doubles, basically applying pressure.” He also finds it exciting how quickly the game can turn if one of the players gets too much pressure.
That’s Littler’s appeal, Soliman said. Throughout the game, he showed “he doesn’t have that fear and he can just play his game and not worry about other people.”
Soliman found the match so compelling that he and his friends “planned to dress up and go see Ellie Parly next Christmas.”
John Johansson, 42, from Örebro, Sweden, started after reading a recent Swedish newspaper article about Littler and watching him play against Van Barneveld Contact darts. To decipher the rules of this ancient sport, he turned to a modern tool: ChatGPT. “I use it not only to understand counting [down from 501 to zero]but why would you target a specific number at a specific time,” he said.
Before attending his first game, Johnson thought darts would be boring and monotonous, but he was captivated by the tactical skills of the players, the cheers and boos of the crowd, and the great personalities of the dart throwers. “I like its personality,” he said.
Johnson has started watching highlights from old matches online, creating reminders for Littler’s next match and plans to check out other Swedish or female darts professionals. “The error in this sport can be as little as 1 millimeter,” he said. “It’s very, very exciting.”
Lizzie Prince, 59, who lives in Brinklow, Warwickshire, first became interested in darts in the 1980s through black and white television and was impressed by the skills of the greats of the day. Shocked by, for example, Eric Bristow. “He’s just amazing,” she said. “When I play darts, I’m absolute rubbish – if I hit the damn board, I’m lucky!”
She said that when she watches now, “it’s great to see the next generation in the audience at venues like Alexandra Palace”. “I like the crowds at the games because they tend to be quite young, which is surprising because we think of darts as an older people’s sport, [but] It was all young people drinking and singing and wearing funny costumes,” she said. “This is great.”
Prince said that unlike other athletes, darts professionals exude authenticity and personality. “It makes them come alive, it makes them human, it makes them interesting,” she said. Additionally, darts does not require the same athleticism as other sports. The elitist vein guarantees that, with enough practice, you can throw a decent dart. “That’s what I love about darts, it’s more of an equalizer, you don’t have to be Usain Bolt or Wayne Rooney,” she said.
Prince, who backed Littler, said Humphries’ win was still good news for the sport and hoped it would help attract more new fans. “You can’t help but smile or laugh, you just want to be a part of it,” she said.
