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Paul Nicholson looks at one of the biggest 'what if' moments in darts

'Darts is in a great place but the BDO's stubbornness denied us reaching this streamlined version of the sport much quicker'

By Paul Nicholson

Darts

Sun March 30, 2025 · 3d ago

Paul Nicholson uses his latest Sporting Life column to reflect on one of the biggest 'what if' moments in darts history back in 2009.

Back in October 2009, Barry Hearn's Matchroom Sport asked the BDO if they would consider selling to the PDC for £1million.

The offer - which was the first official attempt to end the 17-year split - included a further £1million for grassroots darts.

At this time there were a lot of highly talented players including the likes of Gary Anderson, Mark Webster, Martin Adams, Simon Whitlock, Stephen Bunting, Daryl Gurney, Scott Waites and Dave Chisnall - to name just a few.

The BDO product - specifically the World Championship at Lakeside - was still well viewed due to the BBC TV deal at the time and the overall gulf in class between the two major organisations wasn't massive.

Top players still had very viable reasons for staying in the BDO while the prize money in the more lucrative PDC hadn't yet gone through the roof to the levels we have seen in later years.

At that time, the PDC were hoping to take full control of the professional game, inherit all of the BDO's intellectual property and then work closely with the WDF as the governing body of the sport and look after the globalisation of the sport.

They wanted to take darts to the world because back in 2009 it was still a very European-centric sport. The fringe tours like the Asian Tour and the CDC didn't exist yet while the DPA in Australia was only a few years old.

This was the PDC's Plan A to get the globalisation fully under way and ending the split in the process..

If the BDO said 'no' then the PDC would put Plan B into place which was to start creating its own levels of the sport and the secondary tours which would ultimately take a few years to get off the ground.

The PDC had no intention of keeping their organisation as an elite singular tour that would recruit players from the BDO. It wanted its own feeder system and to grow the grassroots and global game.

Why was the offer rejected?

As we all know the BDO made a huge mistake by rejecting the offer. They should have taken the money.

But it was only BDO stubbornness that stopped it going ahead. The people at the helm, such as Ollie Croft, just didn't want to give way.

They didn’t swallow their pride and consider what was for the benefit of the big picture. They treated the PDC like they were the big bad wolf coming to blow their house down.

They weren't blowing anything down! They had a proposal which they thought was the best for the sport at the time and to take it to new places.

That amount of money back then would have revolutionised the sport when it came to affiliate federations around the world and the grassroots game in the UK.

Even if they'd offered £10million I still think the BDO would’ve said 'no', which tells you all you need to know.

While the PDC would go from strength to strength and develop its own secondary tours in years to come, the BDO crumbled over the next decade until its eventual demise and the WDF were subsequently left with a mess that they haven't managed to clean up.

There's no potential 'big signing' for the PDC to make anymore. Anyone capable of winning major PDC titles are already in it. If you want to take the game seriously, the PDC is the way to go.

There's secondary tours around the world, there's the Challenge Tour, Development Tour, the Women's Series. Pretty much all bases are covered.

What if the offer was taken?

The first waves of impact would have been to sort out the domestic game in the UK, specifically the county system.

For starters, I think they would have taken it away from counties and franchised the system into cities. So, instead of Suffolk, for example, there would have been an Ipswich and instead of Northumberland you'd have Newcastle.

The whole county set up would have been overhauled to replace the old fashioned way of doing things that had been in place for around 50 years.

Sadly - and I say this with regret - the standard of county darts is woefully bad compared to what it was around 2000. If you speak to any aspiring player, the only reason they might still play county is because it’s good banter with the people they are close with.

There's a few of the better counties who take it seriously to try and be Premier League champions and some players are still passionate about representing their country in events like the British Internationals but generally speaking, it's just a hobbie.

The PDC wanted to make it competitive and compelling in equal measure. Ask most darts fans about the county scene and they really don't care. Even if you do want to follow it, it's really hard to find results anywhere. It's a second-class production.

I'm not blaming those at the base of county level because they haven't had any backing.

The old saying of 'too many cooks' rings true here because if you think about how many organisations there are involved around the world with the WDF - and formerly the BDO - then you'd lose count.

What this entire system would have yielded from this buyout 16-years ago would be everything being centralised under one flag which would make everything easier.

It's always been a contest of who can speak loudest and speak clearest and quite frankly, if you look at it from the outside inwards, who would want to sort this chaos out now?

I'm sure each organisation around the world think they're doing a good job but as a collective thing, it doesn’t come across well.

Everybody should be playing under the same flag with the same goals. There should be people running areas of the world under someone as a boss.

Now, there are people at the WDF who try and do a great job, and there are people that I really like. But many of them are volunteers who aren't qualified to do this.

And this is what the PDC recognised with the BDO 16 years ago and said "Look, give it to us. We'll pay you a great sum of money to leave gracefully. Leave the the custody of the sport to us, because we're going to take care of it."

So what now?

Obviously the PDC have their own secondary tours now and have done a fantastic job, but when it comes to the amateur scene outside of their remit, we do have the growing ADC who are effectively trying to do what the PDC wanted back in 2009.

They want to centralise amateur darts and give everyone a better chance of progression if they so choose.

There's more interest in playing darts in leagues and competitions than ever before thanks to the top stars such as Luke Littler. It’s essential that we have more forward-thinking avenues to getting involved for all ages.

It's therefore no surprise people are opting to get involved with the ADC rather than the county scene, which used to be taken so seriously back in the day.

Steve Brown, who was also behind the thriving Junior Darts Corporation, is doing brilliantly with the ADC but I don't think they're anywhere close to where they want to go in the next few years and it's still in its infancy.

There's actually a lot of parallels with what the PDC were like in their early days in terms of the effort, experimentation and imagination going into how it's run, and the growing uptake for their events is proving that.

By contrast, if things continue as they are, I can envisage the WDF ceasing to exist in 10 years. It's a miracle that the Lakeside is still going.

If you're wondering if the PDC would buy the ADC in years to come then the answer is almost certainly no because they aren't competitors. It's in the PDC's best interests to allow the ADC to keep doing what they're doing really well.

The difference back in 2009 was that the BDO wanted to keep hold of a World Championship and run a professional version of the sport.

Would darts be in a better state if the BDO said yes?

Darts is in a brilliant place, make no mistake about that.

I love where it's at. I love the progression, how lucrative its become and how media coverage has grown.

However, I can honestly say hand on heart that if the PDC had been able to buy the BDO back in 2009 then we'd have got to this more streamlined version of the sport much quicker.

The PDC won't have any regrets however. They responded by moving on and creating it's other tours and expanded the game around the world.

History will just remind us that the BDO categorically made a big mistake.