World Championship Smashes TV Records!

THE William Hill World Darts Championship enjoyed record television viewing figures on Sky Sports Darts, RTL7 in the Netherlands and Sport1 in Germany.

The sport's greatest tournament was bigger than ever, with 50,000 fans attending live at London's Alexandra Palace and millions watching worldwide as 72 players competed for the Sid Waddell Trophy, which was eventually won by Gary Anderson.

The whole tournament was shown live on the Sky Sports Darts channel across the UK & Ireland, with the live coverage through RTL7 in the Netherlands and Sport1 in Germany joining Sky in enjoying record viewing figures.

The tournament was also broadcast live on Fox Sports in Australia, on Sky New Zealand, Fox Sports Italy, OSN across the Middle East & North Africa, Viasat across Scandinavia, Bulgaria and the Baltic States and on Sport TV in the Czech Republic, Slovakia & Hungary.

The live coverage on Sky Sports Darts reached over four million viewers across the 14 days of the William Hill World Darts Championship, including a record audience of more than 1.7 million for the thrilling final between Anderson and Phil Taylor.

Whilst continuing the year-on-year growth of Sky Sports' World Darts Championship coverage, the figures also represented a 25 percent increase on the 2014 event's viewing figures.

In addition to the TV coverage on the Sky Sports Darts channel, over two million fans visited Sky Sports' digital media outlets to watch content related to the tournament.

"The World Darts Championship just gets bigger and bigger," said Sky Sports presenter Dave Clark.

"This year we paid the sport the ultimate compliment by giving it its own channel and the viewing figures show that it’s worked.

"This year's championship had everything: Stephen Fry tweeting about the channel on the first day it went to air, closely fought matches, royalty amongst the fans in the crowd, and a new champion."


With both RTL7 and Sport1 reporting live from Alexandra Palace with features and interviews to accompany their live coverage, fans in the Netherlands and Germany also flocked to watch darts' biggest event.

Both nights of quarter-finals action on January 1 & 2 saw RTL7 enjoy over a million viewers with their average audience, before an amazing 1.65 million viewers - 23 percent of the Dutch market - watched Saturday's semi-finals, which featured Michael van Gerwen and Raymond van Barneveld.

Viewing figures on Sport1 in Germany also topped a million as the tournament moved towards its conclusion before peaking with an amazing 1.36 million average audience and 1.86 million peak during the final - a record for darts in Germany.