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Michael Smith


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On 06/01/2023 at 11:25, gingerjon said:

Yes. Premier League Darts has a mostly regular slot. They have had to jiggle the evening and season format - whilst also noting that a huge chunk of the PDC tournament calendar is now not as high profile on Sky/ITV as it was a few years back.

Reckon most people in the country know who won the Darts Premier League last year?

(I should say, by the way, that I think it's a very good link up by St Helens/RFL/SL/Sky/whoever to harness Michael Smith's obvious enthusiasm and passion for RL - just that there's not much more RL can 'learn' from darts at all.)

I get the reticence to the "learn from darts" point, but there is certainly an element there for how to bring a Working Mens Club environment successfully into the 21st century that RL can take pointers from. They are good at targeting their audience and providing for them. There is also definitely a social media strategy there that works too.

I don't see the decline in Sky Sports' approach to the darts tbh. 

I don't think a lot of it, barring social media, is necessarily new to RL either, but we became lazy and these things didn't have as much effort put into them.

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34 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

I get the reticence to the "learn from darts" point, but there is certainly an element there for how to bring a Working Mens Club environment successfully into the 21st century that RL can take pointers from. They are good at targeting their audience and providing for them. There is also definitely a social media strategy there that works too.

I don't see the decline in Sky Sports' approach to the darts tbh. 

I don't think a lot of it, barring social media, is necessarily new to RL either, but we became lazy and these things didn't have as much effort put into them.

There are fewer tournaments on Sky throughout the year. That’s one way of noting a decline in coverage.

The PDC don’t sell out the majority of the Premier League evenings or World Championship sessions. Their prices aren’t especially high.

I honestly don’t think there is one single thing we need to learn from darts.

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Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life. (Terry Pratchett)

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3 minutes ago, gingerjon said:

There are fewer tournaments on Sky throughout the year. That’s one way of noting a decline in coverage.

The PDC don’t sell out the majority of the Premier League evenings or World Championship sessions. Their prices aren’t especially high.

I honestly don’t think there is one single thing we need to learn from darts.

I think that is either incredibly naïve or incredibly arrogant. Learning is an opportunity everywhere, even if learning what not to do.

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4 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

I think that is either incredibly naïve or incredibly arrogant. Learning is an opportunity everywhere, even if learning what not to do.

Just this comes round every year or so and it gets very boring. Darts is a minor sport, smaller than RL, with less income and reach, that appeals in its not hard to get tickets for events to one specific subset of one specific audience, and that once a year tops might have a break out moment.

What’s there to learn? We already learnt to save ourselves by getting in bed with Sky thirty years ago.

Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life. (Terry Pratchett)

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I wonder how we can adapt RL so it forms the basis of a Sunday afternoon game show where you can win a speedboat but be disappointed because it's not a car and you happen to live in Accrington.

In 1 ....Warrington. Look at what you could have won. Sorry,couldn't help myself.

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how about if the winners of the SL get to gamble the trophy at the end of the game (their sl winners rings are safe) for whatever's hiding behind bully by throwing 101 or more with 6 darts? if they decide against it the runners up can choose to gamble their medals instead- I would urge them to take their time though and most importantly listen to Tony 

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see you later undertaker - in a while necrophile 

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39 minutes ago, graveyard johnny said:

how about if the winners of the SL get to gamble the trophy at the end of the game (their sl winners rings are safe) for whatever's hiding behind bully by throwing 101 or more with 6 darts? if they decide against it the runners up can choose to gamble their medals instead- I would urge them to take their time though and most importantly listen to Tony 

"You’ve got the time it takes Ralph Rimmer to revolve to decide."

Edited by Dunbar
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47 minutes ago, Dunbar said:

"You’ve got the time it takes Ralph Rimmer to revolve to decide."

got images of the old trafford crowd shouting "gamble" or "keep the trophy"

see you later undertaker - in a while necrophile 

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Darts vs rugby league is bit tiresome. 

Darts positives are World championship sells out (but only 2.5k seats or so a session) and PL nights although not all selling out anymore, they get 7-10k plus. 

The big two things to learn from Darts is how most people are aware of it, and it has a good social media game. 

Outside of world championship (which records 500k to over 1m- well above super league for the last week of it) the tv audiences are similar. 

Downsides- pdc only has 32-40 full time players. Earnings outside of that aren't great once expenses come into play. 

Longer tournemounts (grand prix and grand slam) typically get 1k on midweek nights- showing a lack of a dedicated base, unlike RL 

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