The question was raised to me about a week ago: "Why does it seem that golf and bowling are growing, but darts is dying?"

I tend to disagree with bowling growing, but I can't back that up either way. It got me to thinking, though. Trails participation is down (it seems to be the same 15-20 people playing each week), league participation seems to be level from year to year (some teams leave, some new ones join), and I'm not sure what to make of tournaments (the Turkey Shoot was clearly down from previous years, for example, but the Lake Erie Classic seemed to have decent numbers).

I was looking for opinions as to why. Before anyone else puts there two cents in, I'll put in mine (hopefully I can get my change back).

First, I think bowling is the easiest game to learn. Pretty much every alley has electronic scoring, and you don't have to have a good hook to bowl a decent game (trust me, my bowling ball travels straighter than my dart). Also, it gets decent television coverage (ESPN has it every Sunday, and ABC use to broadcast it every Saturday in the 80's. Yes, I do remember the 80's).

Golf I think is mostly credited to TV. We can watch golf any day of the week. They even have a channel dedicated to the sport, with constant tips to help improve your game. I also believe that there's the realistic sense that none of us will ever be as good as the pros, but just to hit one great shot is a wonderful feeling. It also gets you outdoors, which seems to be the only time some people actually to go outside.

Most importantly, I think these to games are Americanized. Bowling features pretty much nothing but Americans, and the No. 1 golfer in the world is American. Also, one of the most popular ones is an American who likes to drink, smoke, and gamble (obviously doesn't live in Ohio). Plus, just about every Bowling event is here in the states, and most PGA events take place here.

Darts on the other hand, is mostly British. When you do find it on TV, it features SkySports' commentary team (including Sid Waddell, the guy you can't understand). They play the British game (501. For some reason cricket is our game of choice). Unlike the WSOP, they don't explain the scoring system so possible fringe fans are turned off because they have no idea what is actually going on (my brothers and I have been playing for 8 years now, and my mother still thinks that all you do is hit the bullseye). And finally, darters are labelled as complete drunks (this was said on ESPN's Around the Horn one night. Granted, the guy who said this has the IQ of a lab rat, but he was kind enough to answer one of my e-mails, so I'll cut him some slack), a label we'll probably never get rid of (how bowling doesn't have this stigma, even after the movie "King Pin," I'll never know).

Now, what can we do to change this? I have a few ideas, but I want to know what everyone else thinks.

Dboy

Personally dboy,

I think that to get change back for puting your two cents into anything is nearly imposible giving the fact that two cents aint worth a pile of crap these days!

Now getting to the point at hand, that question puzzles me now that i actualy herd it mentiond. Sometime in this past year i beleive that ESPN did some kind of dart tournament. (come to think of it i think it was this past summer) It had the darters of the U.S.A. Vs. the darters of the world (mostly the U.K.). It mysteriosly went of the air after about two or three weeks of it being on the air, noware near the end of the turniment. I realised that after all the darters of the U.S.A. were eliminated from the turniment poof it was gone. They probably thought that not anyone in the states would be interested in watching since the U.S.A. had no chance.

If ESPN thinks that there is no interest in this sport they must be high on a mixture or combination of several potent drugs. If anyone did any reserch on this they would find a big part of the population is interested but never get a chance to get a glimpse of the sport because they play reruns of a "sport of luck" not a "sport of skill" thats stupidity of T.V. at the peak. (by sport of luck i mean poker)

I think if the actualy give darts a chance on the boob tube they could be shocked at the response after people realise that the sport is on T.V. Give it a regular time on any kind of channel and it will catch on.

T.V. IS WHAT THE SPORT NEEDS TO EXPLODE INTO A MAINSTREAM SPORT.

This is only my opinion,
I believe it is a lot easier to be successful at an earlier stage of progression at bowling or golf than it is at darts.

Darts require more time and hard work than the other two activities that is why it is becoming less popular.

Who knows?

As far as darters being labeled as complete drunks
what was saying I forgot :) :unsure:

Both of you guys bring up good points. The fascination with cards is that it is luck (especially now that everyone knows how to play), and anyone can play because all it takes is a good run of cards.

I do agree with the level of improvement you can achieve in bowling, too. It's an easier game to play, because the margin of error is greater. You can throw a bad ball and still get a strike through dumb luck.

The thing I forgot to bring up yesterday was handicapping. In golf and bowling, they handicap players so that everyone is on the same level. It's been tried, but you just can't do this in darts. The biggest problem is that in bowling, you're bowling 10 frames, and that's that. In golf, it's 9 or 18 holes. In darts, the goal is a number (501, for example), rather than a number of rounds. The idea is to finish a game in fewer darts than your opponent. If the idea was to play 7 rounds and add up the score, then a handicap system would work. It's not the object, hence the problems with handicapping darts.

Personally, I'm against the idea of handicapping because it decays the thought of getting better. I remember in my brief bowling career, teammates liked having me on the team not because I was good (125 avg), but because I gave our team a huge boost in the handicap. Where is the motivation to improve? Why practice when I'm just as helpful averaging 125 as I am averaging 275. Granted, bowling is an expensive sport to improve (note: from now on, if it's on ESPN or Fox Sports, I'm calling it a sport. This includes the wonderful sports of dominos and scrabble), because you don't have the room at home (and if you have a house big enough, are you single?) for a bowling alley. Golf works along the same lines, though not as drastically (at least I don't think it is. I don't golf). I'm not going to pretend that I know enough about golf handicaps to say how they work, but I do know that someone with a handicap of 2 would give someone with a 6 handicap 4 strokes. Again, what's the point of improving? What would make me want to improve rather regress and get my handicap to 7 or 8, and get the extra strokes.

I'm just rambling at this point. It's just another thing that I believe people like about the other games.

I think that darts is growing, since 01/01/07 we have gained 171 new men that are playing and 35 women. Fall we had 121 teams - for Winter we have 132 teams.

I think that the reason darts doesn't seem bigger is that it is not on TV, golf is on all the time, bowling I do not see on tv as much as I used to,

We also dont have a Tiger Woods of darts here in America, We do have #2 Gary Mawson, #1 Darrin Young and Johnny K and #4 Isen Veljic -- Gary is #2 in the United States and lives in Cleveland - he was at our Classic Tournament - He beat the (I believe #2 in the world) and I believe this week - will be playing The #1 in the world Phil Taylor. Isen was at the Classic

I guess that you can call the above guys the Tigers of Darts - they are just not on every tv commerical that you see. If they were darts would be as big as golf.

As far attending tournaments - I had this discussion with Dave Faldpusch (runs Ohio Pro Darters) Darts is not cheap - if you attend just the 6 to 7 Major Tourneys that are held with-in a 3 hour drive - hotel alone is $1000.00 that doesn't include entries, food and Beer, people can not support all those tournaments. They pick and chose what they can afford.

As far as local tournaments - I hear alot of different reasons why people do not attend - Diamond guy always wins, no money at the Holidays, but we are getting alot of new faces at the tournaments.

As far as our league we are growing - membership wise and team wise.
Since my office is in VOKS darts - You would be amazed at how many people have come in and bought the set-ups for darts in their basements - that do not play in the league - (I have recruited some of those people for league) there are many that just play at home.

As Tournament Director I'd like some feed back on how to get more emerald and saphire darters coming to our tournaments and Trails. Would any of you be interested in Saphire and Emerald only Single tournaments with open blind draws to follow? The argument that diamond players always win is wrong. When I was just starting out I won two tournaments while being teamed up with a "diamond" partner. It was a great way to watch and learn different stratagies. Plus playing better compitition only makes you better. It took me over a year to win a singles match at trails. Please fire away with your comments!

In order to get more of the sapphire and emerald guys to turn out for things, there needs to be more total buy in from the newbee and casual darter crowd. As random and unrelated as this may sound, I think it goes back to write ups on wednesday nights. If I as a Sapphire player have 5 or ten top darter points why would I want to show up and play a guy with 70? People enjoy and become increasingly more involved in things that they feel successful at. If I have a large amount of points in sapphire (even with the lower standards) I'm going to feel like I can better compete and I'll be more likely to show up for something outside of Wednesdays.

Ian, One of the reasons the darters in Dimond get so many top darter point is that we play best of three on every game witch gives us more opritunitys for points.

Now to talk about the turniments, i think spiderman brings up a good point about having the lower divisions have there own singles turniment. But what if some of thoughs guys do want to play a dimond player? Also if you do that if you were to have a doubles turniment after the singles thats open for everyone what would be the point of Dimond players to come out to the turniments.

What i think might be a bit weird idea. What if the tourniments were set up so that no dimond player can get pared up with another dimond player? it might get a batch of players that just think that they will get pared with another lower divison player (witch will still be possible depending on the number of dimond players that show up) but we might even get more of the higher division players who think it will be better compition since no dimond player could get pared up with another.

So what if we gave this a chance there is nothing to loose. The only thing is that it would have to be well advertized throughout the whole league. Maybee even get people thoughts on the idea it could be SHOCKING!!!

But you never know what people would say. Its something for the league to think about.

True about the best of three thing, but that's all the more reason to add additional writeups for sapphire darters. The problem is that the writeups for us are the same as the diamond division with the exception of low darts. I think this comes from a lack of sapphire voice in the decision making in this league. That's not intended as criticism on anyone, it's just that we don't participate nearly as much. I have played 5 seasons in sapphire and in the lower summer divisions. I can count on one hand the amount of ton 40s, 3 or more bulls in a turn, and other quality dart shots that I've seen. Unfortunately, we don't recieve any recognition for these because because in the diamond divisions where the decisions are made, these are considerably more common place. I just don't see any down side to adding some writeups for sapphire.

As a sapphire darter this is my opinion as to how to retain and increase participation from other darters in my division. I see no down side to making this change, and as I said before people are much more likely to participate in hobbies where they feel successful. If someone feels great about their wednesday night game, they will be much more likely to participate in other league events.

As far as the sapphire only tournament ideas, they've tried that with the league championships events. If memory serves me there were only four guys who showed up last year from sapphire and I don't think many more before that. I think Bob's idea about pairing diamond darters with others from lower divisions at tournaments is an awesome idea. We should definately give it a try.

Couple of points:

Bob, you really need to use spell check. Don't take this the wrong way, but your spelling sucks. :)

I agree that success breeds success (I dare someone to make sense out of that!), and that the better someone gets at something the more they are going to like it and become more involved in it.

I think that a part of that is knowing the game. Players tend to believe that the really good players are only good because they hit their targets. But they seldom realize that the player has a clear objective of how to approach the shot ahead of them. There are several websites out there that have good bits of advice. I suggest them strongly, and if I knew them off the top of my head, I would post them here.

Dboy

I appreciate the feedback that has come in. Keep it up.

Dianna, I agree with you entirely. The game is growing nationwide. I just think it's more of a misconception.

dboy, i dont think i care about your statment obout my spelling. Only because i probibly was the worst speller in my GRADUBATING class of probibly the worst class they ever had at wickliffe. So who gives a s@$t about my my crappy spelling? Oh! by the way if you care about my spelling what do you think about my grammer? :D

But getting back to the point. I think that the statment "success breeds success" is a great way to discribe my family. dboy i know you know my family becouse were all on the same team in Dimond-2. So you have seen the way success breeds success in the family. My grandpa you might know him as Dick Malinowski taught my uncle Dave Malinowski, My mom Fran who has retired due to my birth and the lack of time, and my dad Bob. Now you see that, then you see a hole new generation in the family who has been taught by all of them. My cousin Jayson Stapp, and me SpungeBob. Now that is a example of success breeding success.

Another way to do that is to have the high division darters shoot with the lower division darters is a great way for them to teach and learn. Plus it will get more darters out and that will give more experance to the average darter. makeing the league more competitive in all of the divisions.

Now how would that hurt the league in any way?

IMO lower division darters have to want to get better. I feel that many of them are there wed. night for fun. Im sure that showing up to trails and paying to play only to sit down 5 min. later is no fun (i know this from experience) I went to trails every week my first year of darts. I usually got beat 1st. round,so what did i do with all my spare time as i allready went out of my way to be there. I watched, i challenged other loosers on extra boards, and i asked higher level darters for advice. I set goals for myself to become better and i made myself practice for a minimum of 1 hr. a day(everyday!!!) I went to every tournament because i wanted to beat a diamond player more than anything in this world. I didnt want writeups to be easier i wanted to be good enough to meet the standards. I feel like everyone is trying to force lower division darters into showing. If they really want to get better they will be there.

That's a very good point, Twisted. If the desire isn't there, then nothing you do is going to help.

BTW, I might have to start internet grammar courses this winter.

dboy, if you start that grammer class this winter i would deffinetly sighn up for my own good before i loose my mind talking or writing back and forth to you.

So let me know when and were to sighn up!!!!!!!!