“The whole nation is watching 16 year old Luke Littler as he challenges for the world darts championship in London tonight,” says the media, all of the media; everywhere. Literally everyone. The Liberal Democrats, you know those Liberal Democrats who took jobs in David Cameron’s horrible Tory government of 2010, have even demanded that because EVERYONE is watching, the PDC tournament should be on terrestrial television, just like the football world cup because both sports are so closely linked, right. I’d like it to be on free-to-air television, too, because then a lot more people would watch it than “everyone” who will be watching tonight.
I’ll be watching because I pay Dick Turpin impersonators Virgin an arm and a leg to watch Sky, because I like darts and I like to watch sporting greatness because in Littler, who already has a darts player’s traditionally expanding waistband, a combover haircut and a better beard than I can grow, oozes greatness, a kind of Lionel Messi pub player and trust me that’s a compliment.
I watched Littler’s demolition of world number eight Rob Cross last night and he was the real deal. A tungsten titan with nerves of steel, keeping it all together before his late night kebab and cocoa. Like Sky’s commentators I was drowning in superlatives long before the end of the game. I wasn’t there at the Ally Pally, but I will be able to tell my grandchildren that I saw Luke Littler march to glory. All 67 million Brits watched, except the 65 million who didn’t.
The actual peak viewing figure was 2.3 million, which beat the record of 1.65 million who tuned into 2015’s final between Phil Taylor and Gary Anderson. It’s a huge number for Sky. Most sport, including football, rarely attracts a million viewers on Sky, except when the big guns are playing and a run-of-the mill cricket game attracts in the hundreds of thousands. Getting 2.3 million people to watch a darts match in itself is a remarkable achievement but the idea that it has gripped the nation is delusional.
Our friends, both real and those on social media, are likely to be of the same broad worldview which may well include being interested in the darts. Just because people are interested in the same things we are doesn’t mean that everyone is. So, when I see media comment about how the whole nation is gripped by Luke Littler, it’s simply not true.
BBC’s god awful – well, I think so – Call The Midwife attracted nearly twice the number of viewers as Littler v Cross, Strictly three million more. No one was saying the nation was gripped by either of these allegedly festive shows because the vast, the overwhelming majority of us weren’t gripped.
But this is how hype works and no one is any better at TV hype than Sky in general and its darts coverage in particular. Uniquely, I suspect, it is the only sport where the genuine darts fans watch from home and those who attend are there for a good time and the darts is a mere afterthought, if it is any kind of thought at all. It makes for genuinely great entertainment and great telly and I wouldn’t miss tonight’s final between Luke Littler and someone else called Luke for all the tea in China.
Everyone isn’t watching anything on telly. Even Queen Elizabeth’s funeral was watched by significantly less than half of us, but you’d have never have guessed from following the media.
I reckon something like three million of us will tune in tonight, which will certainly break Sky’s record viewing figures. I’m looking forward to it because Littler appears to be a very special talent. It’s really not a big deal for most people, though, even if you’ll be bombarded with media coverage tomorrow pretending it is.
