Darts wasn't invented in a lab — it was shaped in trenches, pubs, and courtrooms. The story includes a court case settled by a darts match, a supposed inventor who provably never existed, a years-long civil war between two governing bodies, and a teenager who turned the entire sport upside down in 2024. Seven chapters, one sport, an absolute riot.
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Chapter 1 – From the trenches to the wine cask
The earliest documented form of darts emerged in 14th-century England: soldiers threw broken arrow tips or bolts for fun — and target practice — at upturned wine casks. When casks ran short, tree stumps stepped in. The tree's natural growth rings turned out to be a surprisingly good way to divide up scoring zones, and the radial cracks that formed as the wood dried became the template for the spokes that still divide every dartboard into segments today.
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Chapter 2 – The man who never existed
Darts history's most famous legend: in 1896, a carpenter named Brian Gamlin from Bury, Lancashire, supposedly invented today's seemingly chaotic number layout — deliberately designed so that luck counts for as little as possible and a stray throw is punished as harshly as it can be. The story gets repeated in countless articles to this day. There's just one problem: the official darts historian, Dr Patrick Chaplin, spent years combing English and Welsh census records and newspaper archives — and found no evidence a Brian Gamlin ever existed. The more charming, if unproven, alternative: a certain Thomas William Buckle of Dewsbury, Yorkshire, who's documented as having made dartboards and dominoes commercially, and is linked to an early "Yorkshire board".
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Chapter 3 – The trial that saved darts
In 1908, darts ended up in court in Leeds. Pub landlord Jim Garside of the Adelphi Inn was charged with allowing gambling on his premises — banned in pubs at the time. His defence: darts wasn't a game of chance, but pure skill. To prove it, Garside had a dartboard set up right there in the courtroom and called on local top player William "Bigfoot" Annakin to demonstrate. In front of the magistrates, Annakin hit number after called number without hesitation. The court was convinced: darts is skill, not luck, and therefore legal. The ruling paved the way for the first brewery leagues just before the First World War, and for the founding of the National Darts Association in 1925.
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Chapter 4 – From the pub to the TV screen
After 1918, popularity grew fast enough that organised competition became necessary. The News of the World Individual Championship, launched in 1927, became the first big, nationwide tournament and cemented darts as a fixture of British pub culture — long before anyone thought about television.
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Chapter 5 – The golden age
The early 1980s are still regarded as darts' golden age. Names like Eric Bristow, John Lowe, Jocky Wilson, and Bobby George became national celebrities, TV broadcasts drew over 10 million viewers, and the game show "Bullseye" turned darts into a living-room phenomenon. The high point: the 1983 World final, when 23-year-old underdog Keith Deller beat heavily favoured Bristow live in front of ten million viewers. The era had its own voice, too: commentator Sid Waddell, whose entirely unscripted one-liners are still quoted today — like his line about Bristow's focus: "When Alexander of Macedonia was 33, he cried salt tears because there were no more worlds to conquer... Bristow's only 27!"
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Chapter 6 – Darts' civil war
By the late 1980s, TV coverage had collapsed. Frustrated with how the British Darts Organisation (BDO) was running the sport, sixteen top players broke away in 1993 to form their own World Darts Council (WDC) and run their own tournaments. The BDO responded with a worldwide ban on every rebel player — the dispute went to court and dragged on for four years. Only in 1997 was a settlement reached: the BDO lifted the ban, the WDC dropped its claim to being a world governing body, and renamed itself the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC). From then on, there were two rival world championships running side by side — an unusual situation in professional sport that persists to this day.
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Chapter 7 – The modern era
The PDC went on to build its tournament into a global TV spectacle with walk-on songs, pyrotechnics, and millions of viewers — now staged at Alexandra Palace in London. In 2019, Fallon Sherrock made history as the first woman to win a match against a man at a PDC World Championship. And in January 2025, 17-year-old Luke Littler completed perhaps the sport's most unlikely story yet: after a sensational run to the final as a 16-year-old the year before, he became the youngest world champion in PDC history — and the new face of a sport now broadcast worldwide.
The prize-money boom: a success story in numbers
Nothing tells the story of modern darts' commercial explosion quite like the total prize pool of the PDC World Championship. From a modest start to the record sum of 2026 – real numbers, not an illustration.
Total prize pool of the PDC World Darts Championship, selected years. Sources: ESPN, dartsnews.com, PDC.
Quote of the era
“It's like trying to pin down a kangaroo on a trampoline.”
Sid Waddell, commentator, "the Voice of Darts"
Book recommendations
For going deeper: four books that bring the sport's history and characters to life.