David Kent: Do you aim to get on board with the darts revival?

Luke Littler may have lost the final but he hit the bullseye for the world of darts, ensuring record viewing figures for broadcasters Sky. Can his 'everyman' appeal inject new life into the sport?

Luke Littler with his runners-up trophy after losing the World Darts Championship final at Alexandra Palace.

January 6 is traditionally the day that Christmas ends but for a lot of people, the festive season concluded abruptly on Wednesday night when Luke Humphries defeated Luke Littler in the PDC World Darts Championship final.

With an audience of 4.8 million on Sky Sports, the highest-ever non-football peak audience for the channel, this was an event that filled the post-Christmas lull with drama, emotion, and plenty of hype.

People love when there’s a penalty shootout in soccer or modern-day Gaelic games — but they’re few and far between. In darts, you get one every two or three minutes.

The top professionals make it look so easy, but if you’re stuck in the office thinking ‘I could do that’, grab three pencils and throw them at a paper clip.

That’s roughly the size of the treble 20 segment and the weight of the darts they will use (some go as low as 12g, others as high as 32g). Now imagine having to throw while cameras are pointed at you, you’re sweating under stage lights, and there are thousands of fans watching, a lot of whom are calling for Yaya and Kolo Toure while dressed as the Sugar Puff Monster or Mario and Luigi.

Ok, it’s not quite the most athletic of sports, but there is severe pressure nonetheless.

The game has exploded in popularity in the last decade or so — though viewership remains far behind the peak of 8m that watched the late Eric Bristow lose to Keith Deller in 1983 on Grandstand.

Darts viewership remains far behind the peak of 8m that watched the late Eric Bristow lose to Keith Deller in 1983 on 'Grandstand'. Picture: Denis Minihane

However, the dominance of Phil Taylor, the emergence of his successor in dominance Michael van Gerwen and the glass-ceiling-smashers Fallon Sherrock and Lisa Ashton have brought new eyes to the sport.

That’s before we even get to Luke Littler, the 16-year-old who fell just short of winning the World title on Wednesday, only to succumb to Luke Humphries in a classic battle that will be remembered in sports quizzes forever more.

Even in Ireland, we’ve graduated from the days of having just the one representative at the Worlds to regularly having four or more.

Meath, Carlow, Limerick, Tipperary, Fermanagh and Antrim all had natives take to the oche competitively this year — and Poland’s Radek Szaganski is a Bus Éireann driver who has lived in Cobh for the last 18 years, so we’ll claim him too. Of course, having the Hearn family — first Barry before he retired and handed off to his son Eddie— running the operation contributed massively, as did the backing of Sky Sports to move away from the ‘traditional’ home of darts, the BBC.

With a winners’ purse of £500,000 (€580,823), the World Championship is still the biggie that draws the best players and the most fans — with more than 3,500 squeezing into London’s iconic Alexandra Palace each night.

Such is the popularity these days, events sell out months in advance, both in Britain and Ireland, and on the continent.

The introduction of the World Series tour has seen crowds flock to watch two fellas chucking metal at a board in the likes of Auckland, Tokyo, Bahrain, and Madison Square Garden.

The Premier League nights in Dublin’s 3Arena and Belfast’s SSE in March have had the sold-out signs up for months.

Not that all of them are there to see the darts.

The Hearns, Sky, and the PDC have managed to turn a game which was mainly played in pubs and gentleman’s clubs into a marketing monster — all while keeping the attraction of an easy night on the lash.

The spectre of players enjoying a tipple during matches was a familiar sight in times gone by, though they are all now strictly limited to water while on stage. The same restrictions are not imposed on the audience flashing up their 180 signs throughout the game.

Luke Littler may be the new golden goose for the darts PR machine. Zac Goodwin/PA

However, the industry may have found a new golden goose for its PR machine in the form of Littler.

He lost the final but he certainly hit the bullseye for the world of darts. Such was the interest in him that even his grandmother made the news when her employer, Halton Borough Council, gave her time off to watch her grandson play. 

Depressingly, if all too predictably, his girlfriend has been the target of online trolls.

His £200k runner-up prize will give Littler something of a buffer from the hullabaloo but it is his “everyman” appeal that could inject new life into the world of darts.

He would have started the same way every hopeful tungsten Titan has and one of the fun parts of darts is how easy it is to play the game yourself.

If you want to go for a five-a-side kickabout, you’ll need to book pitches, get a decent pair of boots, a football, and some shin-guards.

A round of golf? You’re dropping a couple of hundred quid for a proper set of clubs.

You can get a half-decent set of darts for around €25 in most shops and a board for about €25-30. That’s all you need.

Who knows, maybe you can be the next Luke Littler?

I’ll be cheering you on all the way — just try and ignore that I’m dressed as Batman. Game on!