WDT 2018 - the post mortem

[devosteve]

watched quite a bit of this event (to be honest if I still have sky then I would have watched the world cup and dipped into this, mainly to catch some of the ladies games). point being: how many darts fans if having both viewing options would have chosen the WDT?

Standard was okay. ladies final; very good (surely no-one can reasonably argue ladies darts at the latter end should not be televised).

TV production was 2nd rate.

walk on, crowd, atmosphere was 9th rate.

So re the title: post mortem:

1st question. What good did this do the BDO? What were the benefits to the org? I can't honestly think of any.

2nd question. What good did this do the players? Well a degree of exposure. More TV experience on stage and interviews. A bit of money. And for the ladies (final) a great advert and a great silencer to the most 'hostile' of critics. Oh it gave little Richard a paid job as well as the callers and comms so they benefited.

3rd Question. Did this do any 'harm' to the BDO? I think so. The benefits were not worth the financial cost. A further knock to the morale of the system in that it looked chronic and folks were not willing to pay (imo) reasonable priced tickets. Come on: £10 is okay, I pay £8 to watch step 4 of non league football (8th tier of the pyramid system).

4th Question. Did it bring in new fans? I know I can't prove this but imo this would not have attracted a new legion of fans to watch BDO darts. How many folks there were watching live darts for the 1st time? or BDO darts for the 1st time. How many of the viewers (on whatever medium) were not already establish fans? Not many I reckon.


Overall: not worth the supposed £80-100k.

[Paddy McGinty]

Great little comp, enjoyable to watch. I think a lot of people wished they hadn't listened to the trolls on forums and social media and made the effort to go now after watching it.

Nothing to do with trolls


Venue was too far away or tickets were too expensive going by the comments on fanatics.

How many sessions did you attend?

Of course it was, weeks of negativity, shouts for it to be cancelled contributed to the low ticket sales, the tickets were actually very reasonable. We were going to go but people got scared of losing their cash in case the event got called off. The low attendance had a lot to do with trolls.....

Even for your Paddy persona this is desperate. Everyone knows you are laughing as you type this nonsense! I would shift to your Robson persona permanently if I was you.

Robson is nothing to do with me, I can understand your confusion as he is another who does not completely follow the party line on here for risk of being made fun of. A tenner to watch high quality darts.........place would have been rammed without the negative atmosphere created by trolls, not just here, but across many platforms.

[chrismason]

Commercial disaster in every sense, if the BDO brand hadnt already been devalued enough then this was commercial suicide. There isnt a person in the industry worth their salt that would have pushed forward with this event. The value of any business within the industry is based on 2 things, bums on seats and viewing figures.
The demographic the BDO crave was evident throughout! Interesting that I have read about playing conditions, isnt that what the BDO want? Silence!

[daveboygreen]

Commercial disaster in every sense, if the BDO brand hadnt already been devalued enough then this was commercial suicide. There isnt a person in the industry worth their salt that would have pushed forward with this event. The value of any business within the industry is based on 2 things, bums on seats and viewing figures.
The demographic the BDO crave was evident throughout! Interesting that I have read about playing conditions, isnt that what the BDO want? Silence!

I honestly can't see how they can push this event for next year given what a disaster it has been last year and this year, better off scrapping it and going back to the drawing board.

[Ginge]

Meanwhile I saw pictures of the Lincolnshire Open (yesterday) and it was absolutely heaving.

[chrismason]

Meanwhile I saw pictures of the Lincolnshire Open (yesterday) and it was absolutely heaving.

With darts players, not paying fans!

[Ginge]

Meanwhile I saw pictures of the Lincolnshire Open (yesterday) and it was absolutely heaving.

With darts players, not paying fans!

Quite, but that is clearly where the strength of that side of darts lies, which I was poorly trying to show.

[chrismason]

Commercial disaster in every sense, if the BDO brand hadnt already been devalued enough then this was commercial suicide. There isnt a person in the industry worth their salt that would have pushed forward with this event. The value of any business within the industry is based on 2 things, bums on seats and viewing figures.
The demographic the BDO crave was evident throughout! Interesting that I have read about playing conditions, isnt that what the BDO want? Silence!

I honestly can't see how they can push this event for next year given what a disaster it has been last year and this year, better off scrapping it and going back to the drawing board.

Before they do anything further they need a broadcaster, a proper one.

[Ginge]

About the Lincs Open actually, I could swear blind they moved it forward to the 27th May to accommodate the WDT, did I imagine this?

[nikkiboy]

Commercial disaster in every sense, if the BDO brand hadnt already been devalued enough then this was commercial suicide. There isnt a person in the industry worth their salt that would have pushed forward with this event. The value of any business within the industry is based on 2 things, bums on seats and viewing figures.
The demographic the BDO crave was evident throughout! Interesting that I have read about playing conditions, isnt that what the BDO want? Silence!

But maybe Chris this opened a door into Premier Sports for if and when CH4 and BT drop Lakeside, who knows it might even start a bidding war! (Although how much the BDO can afford to pay them to show it is anyone's guess ).
I suppose the board were forced to hold it and forced to get it on TV to try and salvage a little credibility (save their arses) but if the view in the industry is that it has actually damaged their brand then maybe they should have just either dropped it or dropped the TV.

[daveboygreen]

Commercial disaster in every sense, if the BDO brand hadnt already been devalued enough then this was commercial suicide. There isnt a person in the industry worth their salt that would have pushed forward with this event. The value of any business within the industry is based on 2 things, bums on seats and viewing figures.
The demographic the BDO crave was evident throughout! Interesting that I have read about playing conditions, isnt that what the BDO want? Silence!

I honestly can't see how they can push this event for next year given what a disaster it has been last year and this year, better off scrapping it and going back to the drawing board.

Before they do anything further they need a broadcaster, a proper one.

Someone on the board that can try and push the BDO product and market it would be a start I would say!!

[Zeyes]

BDO TV events are now good practice runs for the players for future PDC Pro Tour participation, what with the silent playing conditions and all.

[Ginge]

About the Lincs Open actually, I could swear blind they moved it forward to the 27th May to accommodate the WDT, did I imagine this?

Ah, I went a week the wrong way

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=15403&p=652491&hili ... en#p652491

So why did they move it back to clash with the WDT? Odd.

[DavidB]

About the Lincs Open actually, I could swear blind they moved it forward to the 27th May to accommodate the WDT, did I imagine this?

Ah, I went a week the wrong way

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=15403&p=652491&hili ... en#p652491

So why did they move it back to clash with the WDT? Odd.

Who out of the 8 x men and 4 x ladies in the finals day would have played the Lincs Open anyway?? Roz Bulmer said in an interview she thought she would be going there after Preston but played brilliantly and made the last day in Preston instead!

[Black Velvet]

To be fair, give it a few years and it'll be offering less prize money than some of the opens, if the trend continues. Didn't realise how shocking it was.

[The Jolly Man]

Paddy, you have used these lines before, new material needed. Maybe give the Robson account a try.

As a test case can we try and derail a PDC major with calls for it to be axed? See if the mighty forum can leave empty stands at PDC major and ill then believe Paddy that it's down to this forum no one turned up.

[Buzz Fledderjohn]

Given there seems to be a consensus that this tournament has cost the BDO a shed-load of money to put on and have broadcast, any post-mortem needs only to look at whether there is any hope for a potential sponsor to have looked at this and thought they wanted to be involved with the BDO going forward.

Will anyone be prepared to pay for this next year (and maybe sponsor other BDO events too)? Will they pay enough that it isn't going to cost the BDO anything to run this event again, whilst thinking the amount they pay out will be more than recouped in added value to their own company?

We all know the answer to that.

[Ginge]

About the Lincs Open actually, I could swear blind they moved it forward to the 27th May to accommodate the WDT, did I imagine this?

Ah, I went a week the wrong way

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=15403&p=652491&hili ... en#p652491

So why did they move it back to clash with the WDT? Odd.

Who out of the 8 x men and 4 x ladies in the finals day would have played the Lincs Open anyway?? Roz Bulmer said in an interview she thought she would be going there after Preston but played brilliantly and made the last day in Preston instead!

Depends when it was moved to clash I guess, now if it was after a certain someone made the board it would certainly make it look odd...

[Ferrari]

Commercial disaster in every sense, if the BDO brand hadnt already been devalued enough then this was commercial suicide. There isnt a person in the industry worth their salt that would have pushed forward with this event. The value of any business within the industry is based on 2 things, bums on seats and viewing figures.
The demographic the BDO crave was evident throughout! Interesting that I have read about playing conditions, isnt that what the BDO want? Silence!

I honestly can't see how they can push this event for next year given what a disaster it has been last year and this year, better off scrapping it and going back to the drawing board.

Before they do anything further they need a broadcaster, a proper one.

What would you do to get the BDO into shape Chris?

[The Jolly Man]

Given there seems to be a consensus that this tournament has cost the BDO a shed-load of money to put on and have broadcast, any post-mortem needs only to look at whether there is any hope for a potential sponsor to have looked at this and thought they wanted to be involved with the BDO going forward.

Will anyone be prepared to pay for this next year (and maybe sponsor other BDO events too)? Will they pay enough that it isn't going to cost the BDO anything to run this event again, whilst thinking the amount they pay out will be more than recouped in added value to their own company?

We all know the answer to that.

Why would anyone want to sponsor the event. Sponsorship is surely all based on the number of people who attend, watch and interact with an event. We know the event was poorly attended. We know the viewing figures will be low even if it's good for the channel. We also know the the BDO are not good at promoting events and have zero impact on the mainstream media with the exception of Lakeside for now.

It's not looking good for the BDO but it hasn't been for a few years yet they are still able to plod on.