Darts To Have Four World Championships
With the demise of the BDO, Darts was left with one solitary World Championship but, as of 2022, three new amateur events will be added to the calendar meaning there will actually be four separate championships.
The main one, the PDC Darts World Championship, which was won last year by Gerwyn ‘The Iceman’ Price, will take place as usual from mid-December to early January.
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On top of this, the World Darts Federation have announced their plans to launch their own World Championship in early January, holding it at Lakeside where and when the BDO used to hold their now-defunct world championships.
Given that it overlaps with the PDC version, its hard to see this event faring any better than the BDO’s event, which suffered from being the poor relation to the PDC event and set off just after the main event wrapped.
One suggestion the BDO had to save its tourney before folding was to move their championships to the Easter holidays to avoid clashing with the Alexandra Palace event.
Unifying World Amateur Champions
The WDF World Championships will not be darts-only new world tourney.
There will also be World Senior Championship, which will be held at the Circus Tavern in February where 16 times PDC World Champion Phil Taylor, Martin Adams, John Lowe, Ted Hankey and John Part will all be in competition.
To cap it all, the Modern Amateur Darts (MAD) organisation, which only launched last year, will be hosting their inaugural World Championship in December, before the Ally Pally event gets underway.
A bit like boxing, amateur darts could be over represented with different organisations with players able to compete in multiple events and win multiple awards to become the undisputed amateur champion.
Welshman Wayne Warren won the final ever BDO World Championships and also holds the MAD world belt. Were he to also lay claim to WDF Championship, he could claim to be the undisputed king of amateur darts.
At 59, he is also eligible for the World Seniors event.
Price Returns For Players Championship 16
Of course, another Welshman is the reigning champion of Darts’ only other World Championship, the PDC version.
By far the biggest event in Darts, world number one Gerwyn Price was the 2021 winner, but has barely played since then and missed out on the Darts Premier League, won by yet another Welshman in Jonny Clayton, entirely after he returned a positive test for the virus.
He makes a return to the oche this week for the PDC Super Series 4 following three months watching on from home. It will be his first competitive PDC action since March when he came runner up in another Players Championship event.
Price has been priced up at 13/2 with online bookmaker bet365 to win the Players Championship 16 event outright. That makes him the second favourite for the event, which is not on TV, behind 5/1 favourite Michael van Gerwen.
Jose De Sousa is also priced at 13/2, with Jonny Clayton available at 11/1. Peter ‘Snakebite’ Wright is 14s as is Dimitri Van Den Bergh, while Gary ‘The Flying Scotsman’ Anderson is 18/1, all with bet365.PDC Super Series 4 will see four Players Championship events played at the Marshall Arena in the extremely familiar Milton Keynes this week, with 128 players competing for the titles across each day of action.
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