Wednesday 7 January 2015 11:37, UK
More viewers than ever before watched Sky Sports coverage of the 2015 William Hill World Darts Championship, including more than 1.7million viewers tuning in to the final which was won by Scotland’s Gary Anderson who beat Phil Taylor 7-6 in an epic encounter on Sunday evening.
The record audience for the final also contributed to a figure for overall reach of over four million viewers who watched the World Championship and related programming on Sky Sports Darts, a dedicated channel for darts which ran from 18 December to 6 January.
The figures correspond with a year on year increase in viewing of world darts’ showpiece occasion and were up 25% on last year’s figures for the World Championship.
In addition to TV coverage over two million fans visited Sky Sports’ digital media outlets to watch content related to the Championship including more than 1.4million viewers who watched video content on skysports.com including the 6-Dart Challenge where presenters and guests competed to get the highest score.
Speaking about the good news Dave Clark, Main Presenter of Darts on Sky Sports said: “The World Darts Championship just gets bigger and bigger.
"This year we paid the sport the ultimate compliment by giving it its own channel and the viewing figures show that it’s worked. More people than ever have tuned in to see the Darts at Ally Pally at Christmas, and they’ve loved it.
"This year’s championship had everything: Stephen Fry tweeting about the channel on the first day it went to air, closely fought matches, royalty amongst the fans in the crowd, and a new champion.”
Live coverage of the 2015 William Hill World Darts Championship was presented by Dave Clark who was joined in the studio by 5 x World Champion Eric Bristow, 3 x World Champion John Part, 4 x semi-finalist Wayne Mardle and World Championship finalist Rod Harrington.
