It should take around 12 hours to drive from Frankfurt to London, unless you set off early and travel non-stop. Which is what David and Lucas did. They left at two in the morning, caught the ferry at dawn and arrived at Alexandra Palace, utterly exhausted, 10 hours later. “It was a horrible mistake,” Lucas says. “We were too stingy to pay the €150 for the flights – but it was absolutely worth it.” David cuts in. “An hour ago we were so, so tired but then we picked up our tickets and now we’re just absolutely pumped.” At this point a passing but hardly passable priest, half-cut, leans in close and screams: “C’mon!” in David’s face. “Yes!” David says, grinning from ear to ear. “This is why we are here! For the party!”
The Professional Darts Corporation put the tickets for its annual world championship on sale at the end of July. There were 68,000 available and most went within the first two days of the release. Back then no one had any idea who was playing when, or exactly what they were paying to watch, because the draw had not taken place. The night Lucas and David were there was supposed to be one of the least exciting sessions of the tournament. Simon “the Wizard” Whitlock, the 10th seed, was top of the bill. Old hands among the darts fans warned it would likely be a dull sort of night. David and Lucas didn’t care. Nor did any of the other 2,000 or so people there.
The world championship has become a Christmas ritual, the adult equivalent of a trip to the panto or ice rink. Which means it’s another good excuse to get decked up in fancy dress and drink and sing and shout. It has only been 10 years since the tournament was moved to Ally Pally from the Circus Tavern in Purfleet but the PDC’s chief executive, Matt Porter, says it is already an “iconic” event. “It’s become synonymous with Christmas, in the same way that everybody knows it’s Wimbledon in early July and everybody knows it’s the FA Cup final at the end of May,” Porter says. “And Alexandra Palace is like a pilgrimage. It’s become the spiritual home of darts.”
Porter says the PDC has a simple formula. “Modern darts is a combination of sporting excellence and a superb atmosphere.” And those who know agree that the standard of play has never been so high. However, they also say that if you really want to appreciate it you are better off watching on television because that “superb atmosphere” Porter mentioned is essentially a euphemism to describe how pissed everyone is. It’s hard to overstate this. Outside of the family stand, the crowd are smashed, sloshed, plastered, stewed and soused.
They will cheer a 180, in the same way people celebrate the sixes at the T20, but a couple of hours into the evening it almost doesn’t much matter what is happening on the stage at the front of the arena. It may as well be a lecture on ancient painted vases or a PowerPoint presentation on trends in the insurance industry for all the attention some of the fans at the back are paying to it. They are too busy downing pints, singing songs and chanting abuse at the people who paid extra for tabled seats. It’s a hell of a party if you are into that sort of thing.
You wouldn’t necessarily guess it but there are rules. The signs by the door warn: “Drunken behaviour will not be tolerated and perpetrators may be asked to leave.” I hear two stewards talking. “You won’t believe what just happened, someone puked over the back of the stand, all over my coat,” one says. “Nothing surprises me any more,” his mate replies. They are quick to toss out anyone who tries to start a fight, as drunk people invariably will, and as the night wears on the stands thin out. There are empty patches where especially boisterous groups have been asked to leave.
The irony is that darts is a game of subtle skill, intricate precision and intense focus. “A decade ago the older players would have told you: ‘We can’t deal with this, we want respect and order’ but that doesn’t exist any more,” Porter says. “Now it’s up to them to manage it because ultimately there’s a reason why the prize money is at the level it is, why we sell the number of tickets we do, why we have the number of broadcasters that we have and why we have queue of sponsors. And that reason is the atmosphere that’s created to go along with the show the players put on up on the oche.”
That atmosphere sells well. This year fans in Europe bought a third of the tickets. Germany is the sport’s second-largest market and David and Lucas aren’t the only two who have made the journey over. Marvin and Florian have come, too, by plane. Of course they are wearing lederhosen. “We’re staying for four days and we’ll see London, the big city and bright lights, and all the boring stuff while we’re here,” Marvin says. “But that’s not why we’ve come: this is.” Odd thing is, the Germans do not even have a top-10 player. They just love the culture.
“It’s the same template wherever we go in the world, Auckland, Las Vegas, Shanghai, Dubai, it’s exactly the same show,” Porter says. “It’s up the players to go up there and perform, and the crowd to turn up and create an atmosphere.” In 2015 the PDC held its first event in Tokyo. No one was sure what to expect. “But the effort that they went to with fancy dress, the atmosphere they created, it was all phenomenal,” Porter recalls. “That was from a standing start but they’d seen it on TV and they wanted to emulate what they’d seen.”
The PDC has affiliated tours in Russia, Scandinavia, Australia, New Zealand and China. It is launching an Asia-wide tour next year. This night, there’s a 19-year-old kid from Dandong playing, Xiao Chen Zong. It was his debut at Ally Pally but he seemed completely unfazed by it all. He had seen it all before on YouTube. Zong used to play snooker but switched sports two years ago. He has decided to defer his place at university to play here. Porter says there “are a lot more kids just like him”.
Porter’s main achievement has been to develop an infrastructure beneath the PDC’s elite events. “It’s a full pathway from the moment you first pick up a dart to becoming world champion. Until a few years ago there were probably only a dozen to 20 players making a full-time living from darts, you know; now there’s probably a hundred.” The PDC has brought in an academy system, a junior tour, a challenge tour and a qualifying school for the professional circuit. “You don’t need to play in a pub any more, you don’t need to be part of a pub team even. It’s all different now.”
Not all. The crowd are still out for a good time. “Too many sports dictate to their audience,” Porter says. “We know what our audience want and we deliver it. Nobody leaves here thinking it wasn’t a good night’s entertainment. Nobody.” By 11pm the road down to the station is littered with discarded Santa hats. A group of lads, all dressed as mimes, are yakking about how they were thrown out by the bouncers. One is complaining about the way he was unceremoniously yanked from the stands and shoved through the door. “Yeah, yeah,” agrees his mate, “it’s not right.” He pauses for a minute. “Great night, though, wasn’t it?”