Unique skillset: Bringing new directors to the world of darts at The Worlds with Sky Sports By Heather McLean
Tuesday, December 2, 2025 - 10:31
Print This Story
At this year's Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) World Darts Championship, Sky Sports is attempting to increase the number of darts directors in the country. The host broadcaster for The Worlds, which takes place at Alexandra Palace in London from 11 December 2025 to 3 January 2026, is providing a specific training seat for directors looking to gain experience in the sport in an OB truck on site.
Every other sport that you cover, when push comes to shove, on camera one, you're safe, people can watch it, they can see what's going on. You cannot do that on darts. You've got to be in the right place at the right time
Working with technical services provider for The Worlds, Gravity Media, Sky Sports is trying to give itself more directors for this very unique sport, which will help it in its year-round coverage of the classic pub game.
Unique skillset
Sky Sports is using Gravity Media's expanding Nova 112A truck for its main production coverage, and the Nova 112B truck for onsite edits for some extra audio. In the latter there is also a director training area.
Speaking to SVG Europe, Joe Clark Smith, lead producer for Sky Sports' darts, explains why this training area is important: We have a director training area in [the Nova 112B] because directing darts is one of the most niche things in TV.
I remember saying when I first took over that it feels like there's more brain surgeons than people that can direct darts on the planet, which is very weird. So at Sky we've really looked to try and increase other directors' skillsets by setting up this training desk where they can come and have a go.
Read more Hitting a bullseye: Sky Sports readies itself for the biggest PDC World Darts Championship to hit Ally Pally yet
Darts is a challenging sport to direct, due to incredibly fast speed of the sport, the tiny darts, and the small field of play.
Darts is an extremely unique sport, says Clark Smith. It's an extremely unique sport to cover and I struggle to think of anything that's similar because of how small the field of play is, if you will. It's a dartboard, but if you show the whole dartboard, you are not going to see those darts missing by a wire or clicking off of another dart and missing the target. You have to really zoom in. And I think that is what separates it from other sports.
Every other sport that you cover, when push comes to shove, on camera one, you're safe, people can watch it, they can see what's going on. You cannot do that on darts. You've got to be in the right place at the right time or it will be noticed and people will comment on it and say, you missed that dart .
In darts, the director cuts the show without a vision mixer, using information shared by the spotter' - a person in the truck who calculates where the next dart is going to go in the board - which is unlike any other sport.
Notes Clark Smith on how hard it is to direct as a sport: You've got to be really quick. You've got to be listening to the spotter, you're cutting the cameras yourself there's no vision mixer so it's an incredibly high level skill. We've been utilising a training desk to really try and get a few more people up to speed.
There is no mixer on darts productions because of the speed at which the game is played. Clark Smith says: By the time the spotter has called the number, the camera's got in position, you don't have time to then relay that info again to the vision mixer so the directors cut the cameras themselves.
Sky Sports and the PDC extended their partnership earlier this year to bring darts fans what they want until 2030
Training directors
This is the first year that Sky Sports has provided the director training seat at Ally Pally for the whole event. Throughout the year there have been other director training seats available at other locations, says Clark Smith.
It's the first time we've had one in situ at Ally Pally for the entirety, says Clark Smith. We've been training up a couple of directors at Sky, but we've been doing that all year round. So we've had a training desk at the Premier League, [and in darts] in Blackpool at the World Matchplay, Wolverhampton at the Grand Slam, and Leicester at the World Grand Prix. Now this is just more of a chance for other directors to come and have a look and have a try to see if it's something that they might want to pursue.
Sky Sports provides two options for director training on site. People are able to sit and watch the director to see what they do, or go to the training desk where they can get talkback without hearing the director, listening to the spotter themselves, and working out how to cut the show.
All the training desks are aimed at any director that is interested in making a step into the world of darts. Clark Smith says: Whether it's from the team who direct sports news coverage, or those who are already directing other live sport content, the set up is there for anyone who is looking to expand their skillset.
Watch all 20 days of unmissable World Darts Championship action exclusively live on Sky Sports and NOW from 11 December
North America Stories
22/12/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Presidio's Neerav Shah on the Role of Its Captiva...
22/12/2025
Hitting the bullseye: Sky Sports readies itself for the biggest PDC World Darts ...
22/12/2025
Unique skillset: Bringing new directors to the world of darts at The Worlds with...
22/12/2025
Gravity Media prepares for a flight of fancy with the PDC World Darts Championsh...
22/12/2025
One hundred and eighty: Gravity Media on hitting the production bullseye at the ...
22/12/2025
The Famous Group's Jon Slusser on Fascinating Fans Through Immersive Content...
22/12/2025
ESPN's Meg Aronowitz on Continuing High-Quality Broadcasts of Collegiate Spo...
22/12/2025
ESPN Takes Data-Driven Storytelling to New Heights with MNF Playbook with Next ...
22/12/2025
Paramount Scores Largest Share Increase Among Distributors as Paramount and CBS...
22/12/2025
New multi-year deal integrates Roku's data to fuel Nielsen's measurement suite
Roku gains access to Nielsen's streaming ratings, showing The Roku C...
22/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
22/12/2025
Berklee Wrapped 2025: Our Top News and Stories A look back at a year highlighted by faculty milestones, major film and television projects, Bob Dylan's ho...
22/12/2025
Workflows allow you to create a sequence of planned events which may be added to your template(s) or inserted directly into your sequential or background playli...
22/12/2025
Back to All News
Global Anime Hits and New Releases Take Center Stage at Jump Festa 2026
Entertainment
22 December 2025
GlobalJapan
Link copied to clipboar...
21/12/2025
Back to All News
Legoshi and Haru's Story Reaches Its Finale: BEASTARS Fin...
20/12/2025
Atomos announced the immediate availability of a new firmware update for its Ninja TX GO and Ninja TX monitor-recorders, unlocking ProRes RAW recording from the...
20/12/2025
CJP Broadcast has completed the digitisation of the European Gymnastics tape archive, converting 328 tapes containing more than forty years of recorded material...
20/12/2025
Bitmovin, the leading provider of video streaming solutions, today announced the launch of the Stream Lab MCP Server, to give AI agents and large language model...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Barack Obama Includes Laufey on His 2025 Favorite Music List The former presidents roundup of books, music, and movies includes a song from the Berklee alums ...
20/12/2025
Study reveals a key hormonal circuit in the kidneys Scripps Research scientists identify the protein that helps kidney cells regulate renin, providing foundatio...
19/12/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Diversified's Jared Timmins on AI for Broadcast Sports and Cre...
19/12/2025
2025 SVG Summit Audio Recap: Say What?The Audio Production and Distribution Workshop at the SVG Summit 20 took on issues including speech intelligibility, Next-...
19/12/2025
Gamified fun: Channel 5 on its NFL Big Game Night ambitions with Hungry Bear Med...
19/12/2025
College Football Playoff Preview: For ESPN, Round 1 is a Fantastic Yet Familia...
19/12/2025
AWS's Jason Dvorkin on Developing Partnerships With the NBA and PGA Tour, Em...
19/12/2025
Netflix Kicks Off Packed Sports Week with Paul-Joshua Fight Before Shifting to N...
19/12/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Presidio's Nareev Shah on the Role of Its Captiva...
19/12/2025
Mounted to the pylon of an AH-1Z Viper helicopter, a Red Wolf vehicle successful...
19/12/2025
L3Harris technology for the SDA Tranche 3 Tracking Layer program will provide in...
19/12/2025
Partnership brings Nielsen ONE measurement activation directly into XR's adv...
19/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
19/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
19/12/2025
Berklee Announces Spring 2026 Signature Series This season's highlights include the Gospel Extravaganza, the 40th International Folk Festival, special gue...
19/12/2025
Performing arts centres across the globe have doubled down on live production infrastructure in recent years. For venues like the Queensland Performing Arts Cen...
19/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
19/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
19/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
19/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
19/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
19/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
19/12/2025
Ricardo Coke-Thomas Named Chair of Theater for Boston Conservatory at Berklee The distinguished theater educator, director, and performer will join the Conser...
19/12/2025
Back to All News
Salvador Arrives to Netflix on February 6
Entertainment
19 December 2025
GlobalSpain
Link copied to clipboard
WHEN THERE IS NOTHING LEFT ...
19/12/2025
As the year comes to a close, it's the perfect time to give your WO Automation for Radio system a quick tune up. At the top of your year end checklist is on...
Unique skillset: Bringing new directors to the world of darts at The Worlds with Sky Sports By Heather McLean 
