PDC World Darts Championship: Sky Sports on the Oche for the Nuke's' Return

PDC World Darts Championship: Sky Sports on the oche for the Nuke's' return By Adrian Pennington

Tuesday, December 17, 2024 - 10:01

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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

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