Barry Hearn announces major change for World Darts Championship and reveals iconic Ally Pally could be ditched
BARRY HEARN says the main draw of the PDC World Darts Championship will increase to 128 players for the 2025/26 edition.
And the veteran sports promoter is exploring an option to move darts’ flagship event away from Alexandra Palace in North London, its home since December 2007.
The Matchroom President wants to “grow” the sport in the year that 17-year-old Luke Littler has emerged as a world leading figure – because he fears the impact of “complacency” in a business.
A field of 96 players will be involved in the 2024/2025 tournament, which starts at Ally Pally on Sunday December 15.
Yet the Professional Darts Corporation has been boosted by the speed in which tickets were hoovered up by the public for the 16-day event.
Increasing the number of players by 32 for the Worlds in 13 months’ time – when a new Sky Sports TV deal should kick-in – will mean an extra 32 matches across eight sessions and over FOUR additional days before Christmas.
This would create a flat 128-player draw which, like the Wimbledon singles competitions, would mean one player would have to win SEVEN matches to become the overall champion.
Speaking to Jeff Stelling on talkSPORT breakfast show, Hearn, 76, said: “For the world championship this year, 90,000 tickets sold out in 15 minutes.
“I asked my people in head office, ‘tell me, how many could I have sold?
“They said, somewhere over 300,000. Now that puts a different emphasis on it.
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“Same as when we moved from the Circus Tavern all those years ago, now I’m looking at Alexandra Palace.
“And I’m saying, well, it only holds 3,500. I have to grow all the time. If you ever get complacent you go backwards.
“So, next year we will go from 96 to 128 players. We will add four more days, which is eight sessions, which is another 25,000 tickets.
“Sooner or later, I should be looking and saying: ‘Do you know, like with snooker, I need a bigger venue.’
“I mean I can sell out any arena in the world. But can I do it for 30 or 40 sessions?
“That’s the key issue because the atmosphere makes it a great night. We sold 1,500 tickets for the Premier League final this year.
“And we advertised it that you cannot see the stage from these seats. People bought the tickets. They wanted to be a part of the show.”
In December 2018, the event saw one of its biggest changes when the number of participants increased from 72 to 96.
Only 24 people took part in the first ever PDC Worlds, which were staged at the Circus Tavern in Essex across 1993/94.