From medieval archery practice in muddy fields to a billion-pound modern sport. The short version of a long story.
Darts started as a winter problem.
The most widely accepted story puts the origin somewhere in medieval England, when archers needed a way to keep their eye in during the cold months. Full-sized longbows were cut down, arrow shafts shortened, and a slice of tree trunk hung on the wall of a barn or pub became the target. The rings on the cut trunk gave natural scoring zones, and the shape of the modern board still echoes that origin.
By the 1500s the game had spread across England, Scotland and Wales, played in inns and ale-houses with rough wooden boards and home-made wooden “arrows”. There's a (probably apocryphal) story that the Mayflower pilgrims took a darts set with them in 1620, which would make it one of the first sports played on what became American soil.
The numbering on a modern dartboard, with 20 at the top and its neighbours 1 and 5 deliberately placed either side, is credited to Brian Gamlin, a carpenter from Bury in Lancashire, around 1896. He died the following year and never patented the layout, which is probably why everyone copied it.
The genius of the layout is that it punishes mistakes. Miss the 20 either side and you score 1 or 5, not 18 or 19. Aim for the 19 and you might land on 3 or 7. Across the whole board the high-and-low numbers are interleaved so that wayward darts collect single-digit punishments. It rewards accuracy, not just power, and that's why no serious modern alternative has ever stuck.
The standard board has been the “clock” or “London” pattern since the 1920s. Other regional boards (the Yorkshire board with no trebles, the Manchester log-end board, the Irish black board) still exist but are niche curiosities, you'll only find them in specific pubs in specific corners of the country.
For most of its history, darts was a pub game. That changed in the 1970s when the British Darts Organisation (BDO) was founded and the BBC started televising tournaments. The 1978 BDO World Championship was the first major TV event and the audience for the final was, by modern standards, huge.
The 1980s gave the game its first household names. Eric Bristow(“the Crafty Cockney”) won five world titles. Jocky Wilson, the Scottish docker, became a folk hero. Pints, fag breaks and sequined waistcoats were as much a part of the broadcast as the throwing.
In 1993the sport split. Sixteen of the world's top players, led by Phil Taylor, broke from the BDO and formed what became the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC). The split was bitter at the time but transformative for the sport, the PDC professionalised everything: lighting, walk-on music, prize money, sponsorship. By the 2000s the PDC World Championship at Alexandra Palace was a fixture in the British Christmas TV calendar.
Phil “The Power” Tayloris the single biggest figure in the game's modern history. Sixteen world titles between 1990 and 2018, the most dominant run any individual has ever had in any major sport. He hit the first televised nine-darter on Sky in 2002 and then hit another, in the same match, two years later. He retired in 2018 to a standing ovation that felt national, not just sporting.
After Taylor came an era of multiple champions. Michael van Gerwen, the Dutch prodigy, took over the World Number 1 spot in his early twenties. Gary Anderson, Peter Wright, Rob Cross, Gerwyn Price, Michael Smith and Luke Humphries have all won majors since. And then in 2024, Luke Littler, sixteen years old at the time, made the World Championship final and changed who picks up a dart again, the same way Bristow did in the 80s.
The Boardroom opened in Colchester to give the game a proper home in Essex. Eight regulation oches, pro boards, the lighting and atmosphere of a televised match, but a price tag that means it's open to everyone. Kids, casuals, league players, anyone curious enough to pick up a dart.
Centuries of history, and the throw is still the same: stand at the line, breathe, release. The bit that changed is who's allowed to be good at it. These days, that's anyone who shows up.