Finland is treated to top-level darts when two different professional evenings are organized in November and December in Helsinki.
On November 20, Helsinki’s Culture House will see the meeting of four top throwers. They are on stage then Fallon Sherrock, Joe Cullen, Nathan Aspinall and Adrian Lewis.
Cullen and Aspinall are the world’s absolute darts elite. From time to time, the duo also breaks into the finals of major tournaments. In the PDC (Professional Darts Corporation) earnings ranking, Aspinall is eighth and Cullen is 18th.
Lewis is a two-time world champion who is coming to the end of his competitive break. Sherrock, on the other hand, is known as a breaker of glass ceilings. In 2019, she became the first woman to win a male darts World Championship.
On December 1, four top professionals will meet four Finnish throwers in a mini-tournament at the Helsinki Ice Hall.
Three world champions will then rise to the bright lights: Luke Humphries, Michael van Gerwen and Gerwyn Price. The foursome is completed by an Australian color splash Simon Whitlock.
In the last year, Humphries has won almost everything possible. At the beginning of this year, he became the number one player in the world with the world championship.
Michael van Gerwen is one of the most successful throwers in the world, having already won three World Cup titles. Price, who has a reputation as a tough guy, is also a former world champion.
The last stardom was 32 years ago
Executive Director of the Finnish Darts Association Veijo Viinikka I don’t remember seeing such coverage in Finland.
– Let’s probably go to the beginning of the 1990s, when the European Cup was organized in Finland. In October 1992, they were in Finland Phil Taylor and partners. It’s been quiet since then, and of course we’ve never had three world champions at the same time.
Taylor is a sports legend with 16 world championships and a total of 214 professional tournament wins. In the final match of the European Cup at that time, he beat his countryman John Lowe.
See how darts were played in Finland in the 1990s at this link from the Living Archive.
The competition calendar for professional throwers is extremely tight and the big competitions at the end of the year, such as the World Championships at the turn of the year in London, are already looming. What makes the top names go into the darkness of Finland’s early winter?
– Yes, the money motivates them to go around and of course these Managers also sense that there may be a market niche here, Viinikka says.
The growth in popularity of the sport is staggering
The visibility of darts in the world and also in Finland has been on the rise in recent years. Viinikka calculates that there are currently 1,827 competition licenses in Finland. There will be an increase of approximately 800 licenses from 2022.
According to Viinika, the most gratifying thing is that 440 new first-time licenses were redeemed for the competition season that started in July this year. So these players have never before been in the darts association’s membership register, which has been kept since the beginning of the 2000s.
In addition, according to Viinika’s “wild guess”, about 20,000 people play darts in Finland.
According to the old assumption, increasing supply increases consumption. Darts can now be seen through different channels more than ever.
– PDC as a professional organization spreads darts around the world. There is an Asian series, Baltic and Nordic championships, as well as southern European qualifiers. Then there are all streaming services, for example PDC-tv. Viaplay shows big tournaments, also with commentary in Finnish, Viinikka lists.
– What I have done sampling new license players over the course of two or three years, almost always the reason for redeeming a license is the PDC World Championships, i.e. these Christmas Games. People then have holidays and time to be in front of the TV.