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BDO World Darts Championship
The BDO World Darts Championship was a professional darts tournament organised by the British Darts Organisation (BDO) and held annually from 1978 to 2020.
The championship was first held at the Heart of the Midlands Nightclub in the English city of Nottingham. The following year it moved to the Jollees Cabaret Club, Stoke, where it stayed until 1985. From 1986 to 2019, it was held at the Lakeside Country Club in Frimley Green, Surrey. In 2020, the tournament was held at Indigo, part of the O2 entertainment district in London.
It was the only World Darts Championship until the 1993 split in darts, when 16 players, among them seven former champions, left the BDO and set up a rival darts circuit under the auspices of the World Darts Council (later the Professional Darts Corporation). The WDC/PDC staged its own annual World Championship from 1994 onwards.
From its inception, the tournament was sponsored by Embassy cigarettes, a branch of Imperial Tobacco, and was thus often colloquially known as the Embassy. After the ban on tobacco advertising in the UK from the end of 2003, the event was sponsored by its venue, the Lakeside Country Club, from 2004 onwards. The final edition, in 2020, was unable to find a sponsor.
After the collapse of the British Darts Organisation in September 2020, the World Darts Federation announced plans to launch the WDF World Darts Championship, which took place for the first time in 2022.
The World Darts Championship was the brainchild of Mike Watterson, a sports promoter who had created the UK Snooker Championship and moved the World Snooker Championship to the Crucible Theatre in 1977. Watterson came up with the idea whilst sitting in a barber's chair waiting for a haircut. John Lowe, a friend of Watterson, convinced him that such an event would be easy to stage and suggested contacting Olly Croft, head of the British Darts Organisation, to run it.
The inaugural event was staged at the Heart of the Midlands club in Nottingham. Embassy cigarettes, which also sponsored the World Snooker Championship, put up the £10,500 prize fund and it would be broadcast on BBC2. Ten top players (Eric Bristow, John Lowe, Leighton Rees, Rab Smith, Alan Evans, Stefan Lord, Tim Brown, Bobby Semple, Nicky Virachkul and Barry Atkinson) were invited, with the remaining places going to qualifiers. The first tournament used the legs format for its matches, but from 1979 onwards Watterson introduced the sets and legs format, which has been used in darts ever since. It was won by Rees, who beat Lowe in the final.
In 1983, Keith Deller, a 23-year-old qualifier from Ipswich, beat the world's top three players back-to-back: John Lowe (world no. 3) in the quarter-final; reigning champion and World No. 2 Jocky Wilson in the semi-final, before an epic deciding set win against World no. 1 Eric Bristow in the final, to produce one of the greatest upsets in the sport's history.
BDO World Darts Championship
The BDO World Darts Championship was a professional darts tournament organised by the British Darts Organisation (BDO) and held annually from 1978 to 2020.
The championship was first held at the Heart of the Midlands Nightclub in the English city of Nottingham. The following year it moved to the Jollees Cabaret Club, Stoke, where it stayed until 1985. From 1986 to 2019, it was held at the Lakeside Country Club in Frimley Green, Surrey. In 2020, the tournament was held at Indigo, part of the O2 entertainment district in London.
It was the only World Darts Championship until the 1993 split in darts, when 16 players, among them seven former champions, left the BDO and set up a rival darts circuit under the auspices of the World Darts Council (later the Professional Darts Corporation). The WDC/PDC staged its own annual World Championship from 1994 onwards.
From its inception, the tournament was sponsored by Embassy cigarettes, a branch of Imperial Tobacco, and was thus often colloquially known as the Embassy. After the ban on tobacco advertising in the UK from the end of 2003, the event was sponsored by its venue, the Lakeside Country Club, from 2004 onwards. The final edition, in 2020, was unable to find a sponsor.
After the collapse of the British Darts Organisation in September 2020, the World Darts Federation announced plans to launch the WDF World Darts Championship, which took place for the first time in 2022.
The World Darts Championship was the brainchild of Mike Watterson, a sports promoter who had created the UK Snooker Championship and moved the World Snooker Championship to the Crucible Theatre in 1977. Watterson came up with the idea whilst sitting in a barber's chair waiting for a haircut. John Lowe, a friend of Watterson, convinced him that such an event would be easy to stage and suggested contacting Olly Croft, head of the British Darts Organisation, to run it.
The inaugural event was staged at the Heart of the Midlands club in Nottingham. Embassy cigarettes, which also sponsored the World Snooker Championship, put up the £10,500 prize fund and it would be broadcast on BBC2. Ten top players (Eric Bristow, John Lowe, Leighton Rees, Rab Smith, Alan Evans, Stefan Lord, Tim Brown, Bobby Semple, Nicky Virachkul and Barry Atkinson) were invited, with the remaining places going to qualifiers. The first tournament used the legs format for its matches, but from 1979 onwards Watterson introduced the sets and legs format, which has been used in darts ever since. It was won by Rees, who beat Lowe in the final.
In 1983, Keith Deller, a 23-year-old qualifier from Ipswich, beat the world's top three players back-to-back: John Lowe (world no. 3) in the quarter-final; reigning champion and World No. 2 Jocky Wilson in the semi-final, before an epic deciding set win against World no. 1 Eric Bristow in the final, to produce one of the greatest upsets in the sport's history.