Fans packing darts’ theatre of dreams relish expansion

Arguably the championship distorts the wider sport but the hordes in fancy dress cannot get enough of it

- Jonathan Liew

A team of assistant referees walks into the Twelve Pins pub in Finsbury Park carrying linesmen’s flags and whistles.

It’s 3pm ona Thursday, you think, they’ve probably just been reffing alocal game. Then, you think, there isn’t a football pitch around here. And why haven’t they changed and showered? Then more referees walk in, more linesmen, one of them ina comedy wig. And eventually the penny drops.

Yes, the darts is back: an indispensable festive trimming that - much like Christmas itself - always seems to roll around alittle sooner every year. Fire up all the old cliches: “the beauty of set play”, “bent the wire”, “pressure the shot”. Wheel John Part out of the attic. Fingers poised on the 180 zoom. You knowit’s serious, because it’s two hours before his match and Luke Littler is already on the practice board.

And there has always been a kind of paradox at the heart of the World Darts Championship: an event that manages to keep getting bigger while somehow also managing to stay exactly the same.

This is the enduring genius of Barry Hearn’s circus: the ability to sell us the same substance, the same drama, the same tones and shades year after year, but for wildly increasing stakes.