YOU CAN’T BEAT A BIT OF BULLION
THEY will not be able to phone a friend or ask the audience for help, but Barry Hearn says darts stars will soon be playing Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
Ringmaster Hearn believes it is only a matter of time, probably within the next five years, before a world champion picks up a winner’s cheque for £1million.
The top prize 25 years ago was £16,000.
When Chris Tarrant was quizmaster, the only way a darts player could make £1m at the drop of a hat was to answer a dozen multiple-choice questions on the TV game show.
But Professional Darts Corporation chairman Hearn has the biggest brain-teaser of all.
Who is going to be the first darts world champion to bank £1m from a single tournament?
A) Michael van Gerwen, B) Gary Anderson, C) Peter Wright, D) Rob Cross (above).
This year’s winner at the William Hill PDC world championship will take away £500,000, and Hearn (inset) said: “I don’t think we’ve even started. This game has come on in the last 10 years to reach a level most people didn’t anticipate, including myself.
“The business could double in size again quite quickly. And, yes, I’m talking about £1m prize money for the PDC world champion. We are talking about ordinary people with extraordinary ability, and they deserve every penny they get.
“Only in my dreams did I envisage it getting this big. And in my dreams we were playing darts on Fantasy Island, not at Alexandra Palace.
“Look at the crowds. I’ve sold 85,000 tickets for this year’s championship and it will make £3.5m in gate money – the first year we were at the
Circus Tavern, we took £60,000 for the entire event.
“I keep aiming for the stars, overshoot the runway and land on the moon. I’m above and beyond where I want to be.
“The next stage in prize money is to look after the lower-ranked players. The second phase would be upping the second-tier events to bigger prize money so there isn’t such a big gap.
“And then the aim is to create a monster – £1m. I’d say five years.” Hearn has not thrown the baby out with the bathwater after a fan tossed a pint of beer over two-times world champion Van Gerwen at Ally Pally on the third night of the current tournament.
But he admitted the incident was a wake-up call, adding: “In a year, we’ve sold something like 800,000 tickets to our events, and you can count on the fingers of one hand the incidents of trouble.
“We have a very good security team and crowds generally know how to have a good time while behaving themselves. You can’t base a policy around one nutter who decides to throw a pint of lager.
“All you can do is sling him out, ban him for life and tell the world he is a knob. So I don’t think we should over-react, but on the other hand it’s a reminder we can’t afford to be complacent about things like security.
“I was impressed with the way Michael handled it. First of all, I was impressed he had brought a spare shirt – a lot of players wouldn’t have done that and we’d have had topless darts, which has been done before but not with a male player.
“He’s a very strong character, very focused on winning this tournament, and I’m very pleased he didn’t let it upset him.”