I suppose I should not laugh, but I did laugh rather a lot when I saw the video of the darts player Michael van Gerwen being soaked with beer as he made his way to the stage last night at the PDC World Stag Night Piss Up Darts competition. A drunken fan thought it would be amusing to drench the bullet-headed Dutchman before his game against (insert name of early round no hoper opponent). And amusing it was.
Quite why van Gerwen or anyone else should be surprised by this turn of events, is arguably the question of the age, apart from why we are leaving the EU, perhaps. Because the great showman and entrepreneur Barry Hearn has created something astonishing out of what remains a pub game. Now, if the massively hyped tungsten titans play in a tournament at any arena in the land, it will sell out. Everyone loves a darts match, right? Of course not.
Darts carried on for years in pubs and clubs across the land, largely without spectators. What Hearn has done is to turn it into an almighty gladiatorial piss up. The players play their part, of course, with the walk-on music and nicknames kindly provided by broadcaster Sky and Hearn’s PDC organisation, but the main part of a night at the darts is the atmosphere and an opportunity to get shit-faced with thousands of other people who normally have as little interest in darts than anyone else.
Darts today is a phenomenon. As we say, a pub game that had been in decline for decades, but now promoted, brilliantly, you have to say, to draw in vast numbers of punters, few of whom if any would call darts their favourite sport.
And if one of the ‘stars’ finds himself getting showered by shit lager at a tournament, as van Gerwen was last night, it’s part of the game, part of the entertainment. And if the aim of Barry Hearn and Sky is to make shedloads of money on the backs of thousands of pissed up blokes, there will be more stray lager flying through the air at future tournaments.
