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What's going on in professional darts?

What's going on in professional darts?

In early 1994, Gustav Rossner (gustav@flipper.hacktic.nl) said:

"I watched the Embassy World Championship on BBC 2 at Sunday 2 Jan 1994, but I read on CEEFAX, I saw an another World Championship: WDC World Championship at Purfleet. What is the difference?"

Randy T. Sheik (af982@freenet.carleton.ca) posted the following reply:

"What you see here is the sad state of international darts. The international dart scene is controlled by the WDF (World Dart Federation) and under it all the national dart associations including the 'BDO' (British Dart Organization). A group of professional dart players, their managers, and some dart equipment manufacturers decided that the BDO was not promoting the professional game as much as they should. Prize money had dropped, televised tournaments had decreased, etc. As a result they started up an organization called the 'World Dart Council' (WDC) and, to get their message across that they were serious, they sent a letter to the BDO stating their intent to boycott the British Masters tournament run by the BDO. Well, to make a long story short, the e BDO reacted by banning the players who signed the letter from playing for England. This dispute has not been settled, and now the BDO is trying to influence the whole world in banning these players for life. That indeed would be sad, as some of the players are John Lowe, Eric Bristow, Jocky Wilson, Dennis Priestley, Rod Harrington, etc. (16 in all originally). Two players have since switched back to the loving arms of the BDO (Chris Johns of Wales and Mike Gregory of England). So which World Championship is the real one? I'm afraid only time will tell. If the winners of both were to play-off, my money would be on the WDC. For further information on this, there are a few articles in Bull's-eye magazine. I don't get Darts World magazine but I would hope that there has been some coverage.

PS--Neither Chris Johns nor Mike Gregory qualified for the Embassy after they switched back."  

To which Bob Lanctot adds:

"What Randy says is absolutely correct. It's unfortunate that the BDO is so intent on maintaining their little empire and are willing to forsake the future of our sport rather than sitting down with the WDC (which they steadfastly refuse to do) and try to come to a usable compromise. The World Cup held in Las Vegas in October was definitely a 'watered down' version. Roland Scholten of the Netherlands won the men's singles and I'm sure he's a darn fine darter, however, I don't believe he would have won if the field of competition had included the likes of Dennis Priestly, Peter Evison, Bob Anderson, etc., etc.

By the way, several US players are now blacklisted by the BDO (let's face it the World Dart Federation is simply a puppet organization of the BDO's, anyway)."