Darts

Once a recreational activity that was played in English pubs, beer in one hand and dart in the other, this has fast become one of the biggest ‘sporting’ disciplines worldwide. It was when the founder of Matchroom Sports, Barry Hearn, re-organised darts into a more professional format that competitive darts became a real thing.

Darts explained

Basically, small missiles (darts) are thrown at a circular target (dart board) fixed to a wall. The game generally involves two players, who take turns throwing darts, with the most common objective to reduce a fixed score, commonly 301 or 501, to zero. The final dart must land in either the bullseye or a double segment in order to win.

Darts World Rankings is a system which determines the best darts’ players in the world based on their tournament performances. However, in 1993, a group of former world champions and high-profile players separated from the British Darts Organisation (BDO) to create the World Darts Council (WDC) – now the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) - so there are now two major governing bodies.

Darts’ contests

There are now many tournaments allowing for endless darts’ betting opportunities. Some of the bigger darts’ tournaments to look out for are:

• World Darts Championship (Dec/Jan)
• The Masters (Jan)
• UK Open (March)
• Premier League of Darts (Feb/May)
• World Matchplay (July)
• Champions League of Darts (Sep)
• World Grand Prix (Oct)
• World Series of Darts (Nov)
• Grand Slam of Darts (Nov)
• Players Championship Finals (Nov)

Darts’ betting

There are a number of ways to bet on darts, including:

• Most 180s – the player who will get the most 180s in a game or tournament
• Outright win – the player likely to win a game or tournament
• Handicap bets – bet on a player to win over a certain amount of sets
• Nine darter – bet on whether you think either of the players will score a nine darter in the game (win a leg having only thrown nine darts)

Sportingbet SA has all the darts’ action from around the globe, so get betting today!