Games - Professional Darts Corporation

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	Games - Professional Darts Corporation

The Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) is a professional darts organisation, established in the United Kingdom during 1992 which split from the officially-recognised British Darts Organisation. Barry Hearn, a long-time established sports promoter is its current chairman.

Its events are televised by the Sky Sports satellite television channel primarily to viewers in Great Britain and Ireland, with countries including Australia, Hungary, Japan, Netherlands, Singapore, South Africa and United States also broadcasting coverage.

The Corporation developed and holds several championship competitions including its own annual World Professional Darts Championship.

History

Professionally, darts in Britain had haemorrhaged sponsors and declined from the television screens leaving the yearly British Darts Organisation (BDO) World Championship (commonly referred to as The Embassy or more recently as the Lakeside) as the only televised event.

Some of the players felt that not enough was being done to encourage new sponsors into their sport and television coverage should be greater than just one event a year. As a result, 16 professional players, among them Bob Anderson (darts player), Eric Bristow, John Lowe, Phil Taylor, and Jocky Wilson, left to form their own darts organisation originally named the World Darts Council (WDC) in January 1992.

This caused a great spilt in the game of darts and initially any member of the new organisation was excluded from all British Darts Organisation events. A protracted legal process between the two bodies ensued before an out-of-court settlement was reached some years later in the form of the Tomlin Order.

The World Darts Council had to drop the World description from its name, thus creating the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) in 1997.

Standing

Some players deem the British Darts Organisation World Championship title as the bigger and more prestigious of the two. The BDO title has the larger entry field and is better known to the UK public due to its coverage on the BBC. Nevertheless, some professionals such as Ronnie Baxter, Roland Scholten, Richie Burnett, Wayne Mardle, Chris Mason, Kevin Painter and more recently Raymond van Barneveld have switched to the Professional Darts Corporation. The PDC event has been dominated by Phil "The Power" Taylor, although some believe he is possibly the best player of all time and he would also win the BDO event if he were allowed to play there.

Television coverage

Following its first televised event in 1992 (the Lada UK Masters on Anglia Television), satellite broadcaster Sky Sports signed a deal to exclusively cover three PDC tournaments each year. To capitalise on its investment, the channel introduced a number of new techniques to make the coverage more interesting for armchair fans.

Unlike the British Darts Organisation, whose events are covered via the general entertainment BBC Two channel, Sky's dedicated sports channel allowed the PDC matches to be covered in their entirety. Over ten hours per day of live darting action on Sky Sports is not uncommon. The British Darts Organisation's events were more limited to selected matches and highlights, although in recent years the BBC has increased its interactive TV coverage allowing viewers to see many more events live.

Cameras

Sky Sports introduced more cameras to cover the sport, and many of these innovations have been copied by other broadcasters.

Unique flight cams show the trajectory of the dart through the air in slow motion to sometimes surprising results. A tiny camera would also be inserted into the dartboard itself beside the number 16 - one of the most common doubles - that would show the darts being thrown towards the board. Sky Sports would even go as far as having a player cam; a tiny camera was fitted to Dennis Priestley's shirt to capture his view of the action while playing!

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