Professional Darts Corporation chief executive Matt Porter hoping to complete 2020 calendar
"We are not ruling anything out, we are looking at all options"
Friday 3 April 2020 09:23, UK
Professional Darts Corporation chief executive Matt Porter says it would be "pointless to play the Premier League behind closed doors."
Darts is one of many sports that have been ground to a halt by the coronavirus pandemic, with all events in March and April wiped out.
May's tournaments look likely to be postponed too, which was when the culmination of the Premier League would have come to its climax at London's O2.
Despite some of the Premier League rounds having been rearranged, the prospect of playing behind closed doors has been mooted and Porter has ruled out the idea.
"It has been discussed. There are certain events that could work behind closed doors, some tour events, but it would be pointless to play the Premier League behind closed doors, it just wouldn't serve anybody's purpose," he told talkSPORT 2.
"It could be that there could be some other content we could create to fill the void left by live sport but at the moment that is not something that is going to happen in the immediate term.
"It would be wrong for us not to have those conversations and have plans in place. At some point things are going to have to restart and it will probably be a slow and gradual thing rather than an immediate return to normality.
"We are not ruling anything out, we are looking at all options."
Porter is hopeful of getting as much of the 2020 calendar fulfilled, even if it means playing through the night.
"Most of our events can be played at different times of the year, so we will try, whatever means we can to get our 2020 calendar out of the way, even if it means back-to-back and flying through the night to get somewhere," Porter added.
"At some point we will run out of weekends to rearrange things into and then unfortunately some events will bite the dust for 2020.
"We are not quite there yet and that is one of the reasons we are holding on to the May events, because we need the time in the calendar.
"We were fortunate in that we had back up dates for all of our Premier League dates, we have announced for March and April, the May stuff is on hold, just because you never know.
"It is extremely unlikely and don't get me wrong, we are expecting to have to postpone everything we have got in May, but we are not quite going to push the button just yet, give it a few more days and see how things pan out."
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