Pitch Experiences CEO Neil Bailey says darts has entered a new era which maintains its unique traditions while modernising with changing consumer needs.
The festive season for many means time with the family and a break from the office. A time littered with festive traditions like the Boxing Day morning walk followed by festive football. As a result, December presents a unique challenge for the sports hospitality industry with fewer people looking to entertain their teams or clients than usual.
It is a problem that has been softened with the huge surge in popularity of the juggernaut that is the PDC World Darts Championship at Alexandra Palace, which this month confirmed it would be staying put in north London until the 2030s.
With Sky Sports and Paddy Power having extended their associations and the Luke Littler Effect (when did you last see a darts player picked out in the crowd at Monday Night Football?), the World Darts Championship is now a huge three week-long exclamation mark of an event stamped across the British sports calendar.
Celebs, sports stars, politicians and an array of businesses want to be part of it – demanding an experience which is fun, festive and informal.
A changing darts
The casual viewer may think it’s all pints and fancy dress – with sessions achieving average viewing figures of 400,000 and the final being watched by millions – but those are in fact few and far between.
The darts at Ally Pally is now a bucket list ticket, and that’s reflected in the scope of hospitality bookings and the diversity of the attendees – as well as the rate in which both general admission tickets and hospitality offerings sell.
It’s an odd image to picture but as is the demand for different experiences at Ally Pally now, you’re just as likely to see a fan dressed as a Teletubby down eight pints of beer as you are to see a member of Europe’s Ryder Cup-winning team, who is instead choosing between the charcoaled monkfish and the masala meatballs while holding a 180 sign.
Before the World Darts Championship moved to the iconic north London venue and became a cultural phenomenon, a line-up of young sporting A-listers in the crowd was unimaginable, but it’s not just celebs showing up again this year.
The corporate hospitality demographic is also getting younger, with banks and financial services companies now being joined by tech, travel and leisure, marketing and even streaming giants. Everyone wants a slice of the darts.
Oche opulence
The big driving force behind this is the experience people see on the TV: thousands of noisy and knowledgeable fans embracing the occasion and making it the most fun sporting event, while the on-stage sport is reaching ever higher levels. No visitor to Alexandra Palace will ever bemoan a lack of atmosphere or a dull match.
Working alongside this is the changing face of the Christmas party season. Formal, formulaic office parties can often lack the festive fun-factor and we’re increasingly seeing clients hosting their holiday events in our hospitality area.
Top chefs and mixologists serve fantastic, unfussy food alongside classic cocktails with a twist in dedicated hospitality areas where you can focus on the sport or embrace the party atmosphere around you – and, in most cases, do both.
The World Darts Championship is now the perfect night out for sports fans. Or just those who are fans of a night out. Hospitality darts is far from stuffy, it’s changed with the times.