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I watch it, I enjoy it, I have no Dart skills. Here is my question and I hope this doesn't come off as ignorant or arrogant American. I am watching the finals now, and they said the winner gets 250,000 Pounds. I know the conversion rate etc, and no argument that's good money, but is it Great money? How much of that's goes straight to the taxes? Are these guys walking away with less than half? (which is still a LOT I know) but...that doesn't seem like the amount it should be for the level of competition, popularity etc. I expected a million as the reward. Now I know I am skewed, Typical American championships pay far more than that.
Is the Premier League of Darts not as HUGE!!! as I think? It seems it it. Competitors from multiple countries, long season, big crowds, TV revenue...

Please enlighten a newcomer.

A quarter of a million? Assuming you didn’t do anything other than report that as income, you’d pay £100 grand in income tax. The remainder would buy my house.

Okay, it's good money then.
To show where I'm coming from I have to point out that I don't live in a major city (Bakersfield, CA) and that remainder WOULDN't buy many of the newer houses (2400 sq ft) or so here (Orange county? Most of Los Angeles suburbs? Can run 500k or more and often much more). So I just had it in my head that it should be more. I am sure these guys earn way more on sponsors, other tournaments etc, and it is STILL a lot of money, just had it in my head it would rate up there with golf and tennis majors etc.

Since the dealership is nearby, £140 grand will buy a second-hand McLaren.

Of the televised sports, darts is near the bottom of the list, I think. Which is why it’s still on free-to-Air TV here, as darts and snooker is all the BBC can afford these days.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
A quarter of a million? Assuming you didn’t do anything other than report that as income, you’d pay £100 grand in income tax. The remainder would buy my house.

Counterpoint : might get you a really run down 1 bedroom flat where I live.

maybe.

https://www.zoopla.co.uk/house-prices/canterbury/


but £150k is a fair old bit of moolah.

Of the televised sports, darts is near the bottom of the list, I think. Which is why it’s still on free-to-Air TV here, as darts and snooker is all the BBC can afford these days.

very true.

alas.

I think there's still a perception that darts is more of a pub game than an actual sport TBH.

 reds8n wrote:

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
Of the televised sports, darts is near the bottom of the list, I think. Which is why it’s still on free-to-Air TV here, as darts and snooker is all the BBC can afford these days.

very true.

alas.

I think there's still a perception that darts is more of a pub game than an actual sport TBH.

It's also on the decline - the two leagues I used to play in both closed due to lack of teams. Not enough people starting playing and not enough pubs willing to sponsor a team (or even have a dartboard).

Indeed, it's increasingly rare it seems to find a dart board in a pub these days.

Too many chain pubs with Sky showing 22 overpaid actors falling down for 90 minutes, probably.

Darts isn't very big as a professional sport. Yes, it's on TV but more because the rights for it are cheap because it's not that popular. 24-hour sports channels need something to fill up their schedules and you end up with these "sports" being fairly heavily pushed despite the lack of interest. It's basically like the parody of the Dodgeball coverage from the film of the same name.

The crowds also aren't really that big. Most darts tournaments take place in relatively small venues and the crowds tend to be quite loud and enthusiastic but I wouldn't mistake that for them being big. I think the biggest venue is still the Alexandra Palace, where the world championships are held and you're looking at, I think, around 1000 people in that at the absolute most.

If you're one of the top players you can probably make an OK living out of it and it has the advantage that your career could conceivably last a long time unlike players in sports like football or tennis, for example. Once you take travelling expenses into account you're going to need sponsorship in order to help make ends meet. It's been one of the problems many of the lower-ranked snooker players in the world have had after the expansion of the sport into the Far East. Yes, there's more money in the sport but instead of travelling around Europe for the most part they now need to fund travel over large parts of the globe, which might end up losing them money if they don't perform well enough in those tournaments.

The increase in televised coverage has had some changes, though; the players seem to put their pint down before stepping up to the oche now.

Quarter mill buys a fair few pints & pork scratchings.

It’s also only one of multiple major tournaments, and each tournament isn’t a time intensive as other sports.

So when you get good enough to regularly place, you can make a pretty decent living.

But one thing that sticks in my mind? The Lady’s matches just don’t show the same level of skill as the Men’s matches. Which seems ludicrous to me. In a game of hand eye coordination, and mental arithmetic, such a pronounced difference between the genders seems odd.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
As for the tax situation - the players are essentially self employed, so one imagines there’s quite a bit of mitigation that can be taken into account, such as travel and accommodation etc?

Does prize money get taxed? I wouldn't have thought so but you never know. Got to squeeze the tax out of taxed money as much as possible.

Prize money appears to be liable to income tax (which I would expect, it being the prize-winner's income; might be different for winning bonuses for something like footie, where the players also get a salary/wage):

https://www.lawinsport.com/topics/features/item/playing-the-game-the-uk-s-approach-to-taxing-sports-stars

 Gael Knight wrote:
Does prize money get taxed? I wouldn't have thought so but you never know. Got to squeeze the tax out of taxed money as much as possible.

Yes, it's income and is therefore taxed. If you are a UK resident winning a large tournament would instantly put you into the top tax bracket too, so you'd be losing almost half of the winnings. Worth noting that a lot of expenses would be deductible as business costs though.

It's something a lot of tennis players just below the main tour often complain about - making a living from an individual sport is a lot harder than people think, even with prize money in the five-figure range. You've got a lot of expenses to pay out of that and just one or two bad tournaments can have a serious effect on your income for the entire year since any coaches, physios or other team members all need to be paid out of those winnings, as well as travel and accommodation.