A pale pastel sun has settled over the Somerset coast. Two voices carry through the still of the dusk, over the shrieking seagulls and the roar of the surf. “ZOMBIE, ZOMBIE, ZOMBIE-BIE-BIE,” the voices chime. Fifty yards down the beach, William O’Connor smiles and waves. Most streets, most weeks, the world’s 49th-best darts player could take an evening stroll in total anonymity. But not this street. Not this week.
Inside the vast Skyline Pavilion, with 4,000 empty seats for company, Luke Humphries is throwing practice darts. Most of his rivals are taking a well-earned break between the afternoon and evening sessions, but Humphries likes to case the joint. He wants to pace the stage, visualise the moment, feel the way the air moves and circulates, and it moves differently at every venue. And that’s why Humphries is the best in the world.
They call it the FA Cup of darts, and for most viewers the appeal of the UK Open lies in its classic knockout format: a completely open draw, amateurs mixed with professionals, 158 players whittled down to one over the course of three gruelling days. With no seedings to protect them, the top players entering in round four are thrown straight into the bear pit. Luke Littler gets a devilishly tough opening assignment against the double world champion Peter Wright and squeaks through in a deciding leg.
But frankly the real grace of Minehead in March is something you need to glimpse up close: a bustling little village, a place where past and future, hedonism and heritage collide in an orgiastic feast of elite darts, faded seaside glamour, happy campers and £20 pitchers of strawberry woo woo. Because this is not your ordinary darts tournament, and nor is it your ordinary darts crowd.
Everyone here has booked a weekend package, either a chalet or an apartment: an entire holiday built around the darts. Yes, there is fancy dress and yes, there is booze by the tun. But this is also a place for the devotees and the obsessives, the only place you are likely to see a Martin Lukeman shirt on anyone other than Martin Lukeman. If Alexandra Palace has become something of a cultural honeypot in recent years – the sort of place you might bump into your estate agent – then Minehead is where the hardcore hang out.
“It’s the best tournament of the year for the proper fans,” the world No 39, Cameron Menzies, says. “Premier League fans go for a drink. Here, everyone’s here for a certain player.”
And while players such as Humphries and Littler regale the main stage, the guts of the competition actually takes place in an upstairs room, where six boards have been set up in a row and anyone can mill around and watch. No mass singalongs here, no walk-ons or MCs: instead a reverential hush punctured by occasional squalls of encouragement. Big-name players such as Chris Dobey and Dirk van Duijvenbode perch unassumingly among the crowd, watching their mates, fielding the occasional photo request.
This is how darts used to be everywhere. Now it is pretty much the only place on the circuit where the classic ambience of competitive bar‑room darts has survived. Nathan Aspinall was playing Premier League in front of 5,000 people on Thursday night. Now he’s on Board Five in front of about 75, some of them so close they can touch him.
“It’s carnage,” the 2019 champion says. “I’ve got Ross Smith two yards to my right, arguing with José de Sousa because he’s got change in his pocket. I’ve got Willie O’Connor jumping around like an absolute nutter on my left. But that’s the beauty of the UK Open. This is where I started, and I’ll never disrespect it.”
With so much darts happening in every direction, the speed of play is dizzying. “I’m sweating my fucking beans off here,” the world No 121, Adam Lipscombe, gasps after winning his third game of a raucous afternoon. Lipscombe, a groundworker from Portsmouth, has brought 45 fans with him, and when he dispatches the former top-10 player Ian White to reach the fourth round they make the biggest noise the room has heard all day.
For all the ale-soaked nostalgia, there are fresh fantasies being minted too. Lipscombe wasn’t even supposed to be here. In January he was driving home from Q-School, having agonisingly missed out on a Professional Darts Corporation tour card. He arrived to a phone call informing him that someone had dropped out and he was back in. He returned to Milton Keynes, won his card and changed his life for ever. “It’s mental,” he says. “You’ve got to pinch yourself a little bit. Now I’ve just got to keep plodding.”
Lipscombe is not the only one daring to dream. Beau Greaves, the best female player in the game, cuts a swathe through the draw and ends up giving Humphries an almighty scare in round four. Jurjen van de Velde, a qualifier from the Development Tour, makes it to round five – beating Lipscombe on the way – before being dispatched by Aspinall.
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Back outside, a sad slow trickle of taxis arrives to ferry away the vanquished. There is a unique pathos to the beaten darts player: these superheroes of the stage standing at the kerb drained of adrenaline, alone with their bleak thoughts, and yet still contractually obliged to pose for selfies with whatever lads in costume happen to stumble past. “Bad luck today,” a man in a lime‑green onesie tells Richard Veenstra as his taxi door slides shut.
For a tournament known for its shocks and upsets – Andrew Gilding winning in 2023 was one of the sport’s most heartwarming moments – this year’s edition largely follows the form book. There are few surprises in the later stages. Six of the eight quarter-finalists are former major winners. Greaves and Van de Velde, the only non-Tour Card holders to make the last 64, are both serious players with an established reputation in the sport.
The origin story of darts was that anyone could walk into the pub, win a few games and find themselves face to face with greatness. But the sport has changed ruthlessly, even in the nine years since Rob Cross turned up in Minehead as an unknown pub qualifier and left it as one of the rising stars of the game. “That era’s gone,” the PDC chief executive, Matt Porter, says. “The depth is so much greater than it was 10-15 years ago. The chance for a genuine pub amateur to come through is less than it was.”
For an aspiring amateur or recent professional, there have never been more opportunities to prove yourself. The competition to break into the elite has never been greater. It is in darts’ squeezed middle, by contrast, where the pressures of growth are felt most keenly: where many players are being forced to decide whether to commit full-time to a job where the schedule is ruthless, the returns relatively modest and the long‑term job security perilous.
“You can keep your tour card, but you can’t get in the top 32,” says Alan Soutar, a firefighter from Dundee and the world No 56. Soutar, like many mid-ranking players, is furious at a sport he feels is being increasingly rebalanced towards the top players. Last year, for the first time, the top 16 were granted automatic entry to European Tour events. This year, they were granted an automatic bye to the second round.
“I get why they’re doing it, it’s a business and they want the marquee players,” Soutar says. “But the PDC have just closed the door on us. All they say in response is: ‘Play better.’ I can beat anybody. I can beat them all. But I’m not a professional dart player, I don’t do this as a job, so it’s very hard. A normal guy that works? They don’t want us.”
And yet with the amount of money pouring into the sport, the shift towards full professionalisation feels like more like an inevitability than a negotiation. “We want to get to a point where even if you’re No 128 in the world, you can still earn a living exclusively from darts,” Porter says. “At the moment, the number’s somewhere around 80. But we will get there.”
But of course the wider implications of professionalism go well beyond the financial. The great popular appeal of darts is that the people who play it are essentially the same as the people who watch it. But in the post-Littler era, the era of untold riches, where players will be powered by academy rather than brewery, will this still be possible? Sports as different as golf, cycling and women’s football are grappling with the problem of maintaining their accessibility in an era when fandom is becoming more transactional, more parasocial.
Even here, darts lovers among darts lovers, intimacy occasionally ignites into something darker. Mensur Suljovic offers out a fan in the front row who keeps chuckling when he misses. “I’ll see you later,” he warns, showering his interlocutor in a hail of expletives. James Wade clashes with Scottish fans cheering heartily for Menzies. “Idiots, in my opinion,” he says. “Too many lemonades, too many bubbles in their lemonades.”
But of course over three days, eight stages and 157 games, you can paint any picture you like.
And of course darts has always had a certain gift for eliding the questions that paralyse other sports. Can you police the crowd without squishing the vibes? How do you keep millionaires relatable? And above all, can you chase the riches of the next world without mislaying the glories of the last? Can you face the past and the future at once? Well, the PDC expects that by Monday morning about 70% of the packages for the 2026 UK Open will already have been rebooked by this year’s attendees. There, in a way, is your answer.
