PDC World Darts Championship: Sky Sports on the oche for the Nuke's' return By Adrian Pennington
Tuesday, December 17, 2024 - 10:01
Print This Story
Luke the Nuke' Littler lit a rocket under darts when the 16-year-old astonished and delighted fans in his storming run to the PDC World Darts Championship final last year.
He may have narrowly lost to Luke Humphries but in turn that sealed a sporting rivalry that seems set to run for years. At the same time Littler's remarkable story turned a mainstream media spotlight onto the sport and solidified the Worlds as a fixture in the seasonal calendar.
For Sky, the Worlds have always been huge along with football over that festive period, and over the past couple years darts has been on a rise, says Joe Clark Smith, lead producer Sky Sports Darts. We've seen our audience figures increasing since 2022 and then this time last year Luke Littler entered the scene and interest just kind of exploded.
There's always a niggle that it's a flash in the pan and maybe people's interest peaks during the Christmas period then fades away, but that's not been the case whatsoever. The PDC put Luke Littler into the Premier League, which is an extremely prestigious invitational event, generating record viewing figures for our coverage of that event.
The 2025 PDC World Darts Championship is taking place at Alexandra Palace in London from 13 December 2024 to 3 January 2025. Finalists will be whittled down from the 96 entrants competing for the Sid Waddell Trophy and £2.5 million in prize money.
The Littler halo' has seen all Sky darts events grow their audience during 2024 and Clark Smith says the same has been true for non-Sky darts broadcasts, including on ITV.
What Littler has done is he's brought eyes onto darts that are then sticking around to watch it. All of that has meant that this year the excitement and hype as we build towards the Worlds has been like no other year, he says.
Clark Smith explains how Sky reacted to Littler's meteoric rise to the top of the nation's consciousness. As soon as we saw those viewing numbers rising last year - and it grew every match that he played - we sought insights from the team at Sky. They broke down the demographics of the viewers so we knew there were a lot of under 21s and under 16s that were tuning in. We immediately changed our plans for the final which would have been a slightly longer build up and actual play starting later. We recognised that there were these younger audiences and since the final was on a Wednesday night we wanted them to be able to enjoy it and get to bed before school. We wanted the kids to be talking about it in the playground the next day.
We rescheduled it a little earlier and we also asked our on-screen team to be a bit more accessible in their language. A lot of people new to the sport weren't going to know what a big fish is or a champagne-finish, a nine darter or Shanghai. We've tried to continue that inclusivity throughout the year.
The beauty of darts is even though you might be slightly baffled by the scoring system, it's a very simple game to understand because of the graphics that we put on screen, how the commentators tell the story and the way the crowd reacts in the venue as well. As the excitement builds it's a very easy sport to watch.
Sky Sports is always refining its darts production, recently using split screens to show two angles at once and adding on-screen graphics displaying at-a-glance averages and even the time it takes each player on the oche.
If a player is playing a lot slower than another player that again just adds to the story, he says.
Returning is the FanCam, a handheld camera with shallow depth of field whose operator is permitted to join the players on stage for the last few practice darts and at the end of each match.
That's all about bringing player reactions right into the living room, says Clark Smith.
New for this year is a Sky Sports backstage area for flash interviews with players before matches and a challenge area for celebs and VIPs to throw some arrows.
We've lounge seating too for celebs, VIPs and players to relax and do some interviews in a slightly different way, he continues. That's mainly social-first content led by reporters Joe Thomlinson and 12-year-old darts prodigy Kyle Walker (labelled the next Luke Littler') who brings in a younger audience.
The production is also looking at utilising the decibel levels of applause in the arena this year which might be thrown on screen as a fun piece of information to compare the walk-ons of the players. This is being tested pre-Christmas with the hopes of using it live post-Christmas.
A crucial aspect of darts play is speed. It is a surprisingly fast sport but one that modern players seem intent on accelerating.
It was a tricky sport to cover even in the 90s and 2000s but players have just got faster and faster. Michael Smith (current world number 2) can hit a three dart 180 in about one and a half seconds, he adds.
This new generation of players don't go the traditional routes either. They go wacky routes maybe hitting the bull twice, they'll do double tops twice and it can really throw even those who are used to the game.
This year's spotters, calling the next dart on talkback to the camera ops and director based on their expert knowledge of the game and of a particular player, are led by Keith Deller and Richard Ashdown.
Clark Smith continues: Nobody's perfect, and the players themselves will sometimes miscount. That's the trickiness of covering darts because you've got the spotter saying treble 19, double 10. Then that goes to the cameras who need to get in position. Then the director needs to cut those cameras live. All of that had to happen
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
28/08/2025
IBC stand 5.F81
Wowza to Reveal Next-Gen Video Streaming Innovations at IBC 2025
Amsterdam, August 28, 2025 Wowza, a leader in video streaming infrastructur...
PDC World Darts Championship: Sky Sports on the oche for the Nuke's' return By Adrian Pennington 
