Time to get dart smart

Darts is enjoying a revival and here are some facts to prove it. In the UK, there are around three-quarters of a million registered players, with another three million playing on a regular basis.

Darts is second only to Premiership football matches in terms of Sky Sports viewers. More than 600,000 tuned in when Dutch master Raymond van Barneveld took on Phil "The Power" Taylor for the first time recently. The final of the Holsten-sponsored Premier League Darts - shown live on 29 May - will also be a huge draw.

Darts and pubs have been inexorably linked for countless decades, but few licensees have capitalised on the game's business-building potential.

Tommy Cox, tournament director for World of Darts - the company that organises in-house darts competitions for several pubcos and which will also organise the Holsten/MA competition, says: "Any licensee can put in a dartboard and not worry about the demographics. Apart from city-centre pubs, darts is still thriving and appeals to all ages."

Cox says the Holsten competition is: "Good for everyone. Any pub can enter - it doesn't have to be in a darts league and you might be surprised how much customers enjoy playing."

Eddie Cant and Gwyneth Moore, who run Colliers in the West Glamorgan village of Skewen, already know darts makes good business sense. On a Monday evening when the men's teams are in action, takings can be double - or higher - of the normal amount.

Cant explains: "A few Mondays ago, there were no matches and the place was dead and we only took around £150. We can comfortably double our figures when a match is on and around £400 is an average figure."

Colliers runs two men's, one ladies' and one mixed team. Cant would like to add two more teams. He comments: "It's hard work organising things, but it's worth it."

Most of the away matches are within a four-mile radius of the pub and Cant uses an eight-seater people carrier to take players to them.

He adds: "We go out to play for fun and sometimes I think we would do better throwing the board at the darts. People tell us our food is the best and it does cost us more than other pubs, but you have to speculate to accumulate."

Colliers has prepared for the smoking ban by installing a dartboard outdoors, complete with protective canopy and heater. Cant doesn't think the ban will unduly affect the darts side of the business.

To create an atmosphere for local leagues' semi-finals and finals matches, he erects a dartboard on the stage of the Colliers and uses a video camera to show all the action on the pub's large screen.

Cant advises other licensees thinking about forming darts teams to "go for it, it's a good earner".

A short history of darts

Arthur Taylor, author of The Guinness Book of Traditional Pub Games, charts the rise of darts in pubs

The history of darts as we know it - using the standard, London, or trebles board - is comparatively short. It began with a letter written in 1924 to the Morning Advertiser, by Ted Leggatt.

Leggat was a dartboard manufacturer who, together with other manufacturers, trade organisations and existing darts leagues, eventually set up The National Darts Association. They were after uniformity (everyone using the same style of board) and respectability - they spent an awful lot of time and effort trying to show that darts was a game of skill. Gambling was to be strictly discouraged.

In those long-gone between-the-wars days, several towns and cities in the UK, including Liverpool, Glasgow and Huddersfield, had actually banned darts since it encouraged, the authorities thought, "ne'er do-well-ism". I remember a late disreputable uncle of mine growing apoplectic as he recalled the assistant librarians of his home town cutting out all references to horse and dog-racing in the newspapers on display in the public reading rooms, for exactly the same reason.

The NDA struck gold in 1927, when they obtained sponsorship from the News of the World for an Individual Championship. The first of these events, in the London area only, was won by Sammy Stone, "a Boer War veteran" from the New South West Ham Club. By 1935, the competition had spread throughout the Home Counties and in 1939, encompassed the South of England. It became truly national after the war, when play was resumed in 1947.

This was the era when darts began to muscle other pub games out of the way. I recall talking many years ago to an elderly landlady in Kent, who remembered "a little fellow from the East End of London came round the area in an Austin 7 with a boot full of dartboards in 1947 or 1948 and that was that - all the skittles tables disappeared". There were similar stories of the game of Rings - quoits thrown to land on numbered hooks on a board - which was played all over England up to the 1940s. Rings simply vanished and today can be found only in Ventnor, on the Isle of Wight.

There was a hiccup in the 1990s, when the News of the World abruptly stopped their sponsorship and both BBC and ITV suddenly dropped darts from their repertoire of programmes. This coincided with the popularity of a newish game in the pub - pool had been introduced in the 1970s. "You only have to go into a pub these days to see the dartboard empty in the corner," said a spokesman from the magazine Darts World, in early 1991. "The youngsters are all playing pool instead". He was worrying a tad too much.

Now we have darts back on Sky and the BBC, in all its bizarre and over-the-top glory - dry ice, rock and roll, daft nicknames, and a great deal of money. For those who may wonder why there are two separate and distinct World Championships either side of Christmas - the Ladbrokes.com World Championships (Sky) features members of the Professional Darts Corporation, a breakaway group of the games' hotshots, while the British Darts Organisation's World Championship (BBC) features everybody else. Attitudes to gambling on darts have changed with a vengeance - over £2,000,000 was bet on the Ladbroke's event. What would Ted Leggat have thought?

How to set up a team

Try to establish at least two teams. Running one team can be counter productive, because every other match your regulars are playing away and taking their custom to another pub.

Most teams comprise six players and two reserves. Depending on the reliability and availability of the players, the number required for each team could be around a dozen or maybe more in some circumstances.

Ensure the dartboard and all ancillary equipment are in tip-top condition - poor facilities will not attract customers.

Don't skimp on the quality of the free food offered to players - an extra few quid will be rewarded by extra custom and people staying longer.

Don't site the dartboard close to toilets or other attractions such as pool tables and gaming machines.

Darts is a great way of making new friends - so why not appeal to unattached males and females by setting up mixed teams?

Remember your players are ambassadors for your pub, so don't select anyone who could damage the reputation of the business.

Regional differences

The London, treble, or standard board is a perfect example of Darwinian evolution - the survival of the fittest. Let's not forget, however, that a few of the idiosyncratic regional boards, of which there were many, have survived.

The Yorkshire board is a direct predecessor of the London board: it has the same numbering system, but lacks trebles and an outer bull. The Kent, Lincoln and Irish boards are roughly the same size and pattern but are usually all black. In a few pubs in the East End of London, they still play with the fives board - the numbers are all multiples of five up to twenty. A similar board, with wider doubles and trebles, is played on in Ipswich.

Up in the north west, the Manchester, Salford, Lancashire or log-end board still has an enthusiastic following. This is an extraordinary throw-back. As the name suggests, it is still cut from a log end and therefore needs to be kept soaked in water un