The Darts Rebellion: How 16 Players Broke Away and Changed the Sport Forever

In 1993, sixteen of the world’s best darts players walked away from the sport’s governing body in a revolt that would reshape professional darts. More than three decades later, the consequences of that split are still playing out.

The Golden Age That Wasn’t Built to Last

If you had walked into a British pub in 1983, chances are the television above the bar was showing darts. By that year, there were 23 televised darts events across the UK, and the sport’s biggest names were genuine celebrities. Eric Bristow, Jocky Wilson, John Lowe — these men appeared on chat shows, filled tabloid pages, and drew millions of viewers for the BBC and ITV.

But the boom carried the seeds of its own decline. Television executives grew uncomfortable with the image of competitors drinking pints mid-match. Sponsors drifted away. By the end of the 1980s, the sport that had once rivaled football for TV ratings was down to a single televised tournament — the Embassy World Championship. For players who had built careers around prize money and TV exposure, it was a crisis. And the man they blamed was Olly Croft, the founder and iron-fisted leader of the British Darts Organisation.

The Rebels at the Oche

The frustration had been building for years. In 1986, players formed the Professional Dart Players Association to give themselves a collective voice, but the BDO refused to recognize it. By 1992, a group of sixteen top professionals — including every previous world champion still active in the game — created their own body, the World Darts Council. They wanted something simple: a PR consultant to improve the sport’s image and more tournaments on television.

The WDC staged its first televised event in October 1992, a tournament called the Lada UK Masters, broadcast on regional Anglia Television from Norwich. It was modest, but it was a start. The real showdown came at the January 1993 Embassy World Championship. The WDC players wore their new insignia on their sleeves — a small act of defiance that Croft treated as an act of war. He ordered the badges removed, calling them unauthorized advertising.

That tournament turned out to be the last unified World Championship in darts history. John Lowe, then 47 years old and already a two-time world champion, won the title by defeating Alan Warriner in the final. It was his third world crown, earned across three different decades — a feat only Phil Taylor would later match. Within days, the sixteen rebels issued a statement: they would not return to the BDO. On January 24, 1993, the BDO responded by banning them all.

The Price of Revolution

The ban was sweeping and punitive. The BDO barred the sixteen players from county darts, Super League, all BDO tournaments, and international competitions. Worse, any BDO member who so much as played an exhibition match with a WDC player — even a charity event — faced the same punishment. It was designed to isolate and break the rebels.

Two players cracked under the pressure. Mike Gregory and Chris Johns returned to the BDO fold. The remaining fourteen held firm, though the cost was enormous. Player managers Tommy Cox and Dick Allix, who had led the breakaway alongside the players, poured their own money into keeping the fledgling organization alive. Cox remortgaged his house. Allix once sprinted up Drury Lane in London to deliver a check for 20,000 pounds (approximately $25,000) to the solicitors before a court filing deadline expired.

The legal battle dragged on for years. It wasn’t until 1997 that a compromise known as the Tomlin Order was reached. The BDO lifted its ban. The WDC, in turn, agreed to rename itself the Professional Darts Corporation and drop its claim to being a world governing body. Players could now choose which world championship to enter. Almost all of them chose the PDC.

Two Worlds, One Winner

Croft had dismissed the breakaway players as ‘has beens.’ Lowe’s response was pointed — he had been world champion just weeks earlier. But the BDO chief had a point about some of the rebels. Bristow and Wilson were past their prime. The question was whether the new organization could attract fresh talent and, crucially, television money.

It could. The PDC secured a deal with Sky Sports that would prove transformative. Phil Taylor, who had won two BDO world titles before the split, became the dominant force in PDC darts, eventually amassing sixteen world championships. Players like Raymond van Barneveld, John Part, and later Michael van Gerwen crossed from the BDO to the PDC, further draining the older body of its best talent.

The BDO lingered for decades, but its decline was relentless. The BBC dropped its coverage after 2016. By 2020, the final BDO World Championship was a sorry affair — only 15% of tickets sold, no title sponsor, and the winner, Wayne Warren, received just 23,000 pounds (roughly $29,000), a 77% cut from the previous year. In September 2020, the BDO went into liquidation after 47 years, carrying debts of approximately 468,000 pounds (about $590,000).

A Million-Pound Vindication

The contrast with the PDC today is staggering. The 2026 PDC World Championship, held at Alexandra Palace in London from December 2025 to January 2026, featured 128 players competing for a total prize fund of 5 million pounds (approximately $6.3 million). The winner, teenage sensation Luke Littler, took home 1 million pounds (about $1.26 million) — the first seven-figure winner’s check in darts history. The 2025 final between Littler and Luke Humphries had drawn a record 4.8 million viewers on Sky TV.

Across the entire PDC circuit, prize money in 2026 surged past 25 million pounds (roughly $31.5 million), a historic increase of 7 million pounds from the previous season. The organization announced a 3-million-pound-plus investment into global affiliate tours spanning Asia, North America, Australia, China, Africa, and Latin America. Darts is no longer a British pub game with delusions of grandeur. It is a genuinely global sport.

John Lowe, now 80, still throws darts at exhibitions and raises money for Macmillan Cancer Support. He once reflected on the split with characteristic understatement, noting that the future of darts ‘is all maybe down to the 14 players who looked at their future and beyond.’ The numbers suggest he was right. When those sixteen men pinned WDC badges to their sleeves in January 1993, the total prize fund for the world championship was 128,500 pounds. Thirty-three years later, the winner alone earns nearly eight times that amount. Revolutions, it turns out, can be measured in prize money.