One hundred and eighty: Gravity Media on hitting the production bullseye at the World Darts Championship 2025-26 By Heather McLean Monday, December 22, 2025 - 12:05
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Sky Sports and the PDC announced a five-year partnership extension, keeping Sky Sports as the home of darts until 2030, marking nearly 40 years of collaboration
The 2025-26 PDC World Darts Championship, which takes place from 11 December 2025 to 3 January 2026, sees reigning champion Luke Littler returning to defend the title he captured last year.
In February this year, shortly after Littler lifted the trophy at the Alexandra Palace in London (affectionally known as Ally Pally' to locals and darts fans alike), Sky Sports and the PDC announced a five-year partnership extension keeping Sky Sports as the home of darts until 2030, marking nearly 40 years of collaboration.
Long history
Gravity Media has worked with Sky Sports on its darts coverage for many years, as Gravity Media now, and in its previous guises as EMG and before that, CTV.
Jon Giles, Gravity Media staff unit manager and client manager for Sky Sports, tells SVG Europe that the relationship between Gravity Media and the broadcaster is an important one. We have supported Sky over many years to hone their coverage, partnering with them to help bring this sport which has quite a particular subculture to a wider audience, says Giles.
We want to present Sky Sports with a really solid, reliable, technical platform for them to work on, from the OB truck to all the equipment that goes with it, and [Sky Sports] expects us to provide similar core crew regularly so they've got people who are really, really attuned to their requirements. I think making sure that we're consistently delivering in a repeatable way so that crew can walk into the truck, or they can walk into the production gallery and sit down and do what is quite a specific way of operating, particularly from the directing point of view, is important.
Giles adds: Darts obviously has a massive, massive appeal, particularly in the last couple of years. Sky Sports are very happy and the PDC are very happy because the viewing of it has mushroomed over the last few years.
The Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) World Darts Championship 2025-26 is now underway at Ally Pally, with host broadcaster Sky Sports and the team from its technical services provider, Gravity Media
Speed of the essence
Speed is the major challenge of capturing the PDC World Darts competition for Sky Sports, says Giles. He explains: It's a sport that is very, very fast paced, and from what I can tell, that's increased over recent years with particular players who are on the circuit now who physically throw the darts fast; some of them can throw three darts in three or four seconds. It's not like snooker where you're waiting for someone to take a shot!
The speed of the game means a strong team needs to be assembled for every darts competition, with The World's as the flagship event, to ensure everything goes smoothly. Giles says: That means you need a very experienced and competent team who are not only technically good at operating their equipment, but who really understand the sport. What we've developed with Sky over our tenure of working on these [events] has been a good core of both staff and freelance operators, and that's across all areas; across cameras, which you think is the obvious point as that needs a lot of fast movement and quick reaction times, but also the EVS operators, as the turnaround is the true definition of what an instant replay is.
The venues can also be a challenge, as many are landmark buildings without many of the accoutrements of modern, purpose-built venues. Technically some of the venues are harder to work in than others, and that's by the nature of choosing to be in venues for their particular character, notes Giles. I mean, the Winter Gardens at Blackpool is not dissimilar to Ally Pally because it's a big, old venue that has got particular infrastructure [that was developed for] a certain way of working in a certain age, which isn't as easy to work in as a big modern arena like the O2, or similar.
Prior to the start of The Worlds, Gravity Media needed to pre-rig the venue with reference to its age and sometimes awkward layout, all while carefully avoiding another event that was running in the same space that the darts would takeover a few days later.
Speaking the week before the event, Giles explains how it is all working: Normally we would go in and do a complete cable pre-rig when no one else is there, because working in Alexandra Palace [the challenge] is just the scale of it, getting cables into ducts and over roofs etc. It's easier when no other contractors are there, but The Mosconi Cup [Tuesday 2 December to Friday 5 December] is in there at the moment, which is a pool competition. We're having to work around their set up; we've got a team in there today rigging when there's no play happening, and then they'll finish and they'll come back.
Our main buildup starts on Sunday [7 December] with more cable rigging and parking the trucks. This is followed by three really full rig days. The third day will be on Wednesday, when we will be finished, to complete the rig and check all facilities. Then we'll hand over the facilities to the production team in the early afternoon, they'll do some of their own checks, and then we're into it for 20 days of transmission from Thursday 11 December.
Getting into the rhythm
This is a big production over many days, and it takes some time for the crew to settle into the rhythm of the event, Giles says. We'll be doing 144 hours of live television. Once things are bedded in, we've got a large team of crew across it. We're
