When you think of mainstream sports, darts may not cross your mind right away. But you’d be amazed to know how many people tune in from around the world to watch high-voltage tournaments. We have one such tournament for discussion today, the PDC World Championship. To be precise, we’re going to focus more on PDC World Championship betting. Believe it or not, lots of punters in the UK are fans of this activity. They eagerly wait every year to test your betting skills.
On this page, we’re going to cover a little history of the event, what kind of markets you can expect across the bookmakers, who the top 3 darts betting sites are, predictions for this year’s installment, and so on. If you’re setting aside a bankroll, this is a must-read for you. When you think of mainstream sports, darts may not cross your mind right away. But you’d be amazed to know how many people tune in from around the world to watch high-voltage tournaments. We have one such tournament for discussion today, the PDC World Championship. To be precise, we’re going to focus more on PDC World Championship betting. Believe it or not, lots of punters in the UK are fans of this activity. They eagerly wait every year to test your betting skills.
On this page, we’re going to cover a little history of the event, what kind of markets you can expect across the bookmakers, who the top 3 darts betting sites are, predictions for this year’s installment, and so on. If you’re setting aside a bankroll, this is a must-read for you.
The event organiser, PDC stands for Professional Darts Corporation. If you’re familiar with FIFA for football or ICC for cricket, PDC has the same job. It’s governing the sport on a global level. Currently, it’s known as the Cazoo World Darts Championship where Cazoo is the primary sponsor of the event.
The tournament started its journey back in 1994 and Sky Sports has been the sole TV part since the very beginning. It’s an annual championship where the best dart players from all over the world participate for the title of world champion. England has always been the home ground for the PDC World Championship. Initially, it was held as the Circus Tavern, located in Purfleet, Essex. In 2008, it shifted to the Alexandra Palace.
As for the format of the tournament, the matches are played as single in, double out. To win a leg, a player must score at least 501 in a leg. The player must finish on a bullseye or a double. All the matches follow the same set format where each is the best of 5 legs, first to three. As the tournament progresses, the matches get longer. The final match is the best of 13 legs, first to seven.
The winner, whoever that lucky player may be, will take home a massive £500,000 of the £2,500,000 prize pool. The runner-up gets a respectable £200,000 and the 2 semi-finalists get £100,000 each. The best thing about the PDC World Championship is that even the first-round losers get a £7,500 consolation prize! The tournament kicks off on 15 December of every year with the first round. This round lasts till 21 December.
Every year, a total of 96 players complete. The first 32 are seeded to the second round based on the PDC Order of Merit. The next 32 players are the highest-ranking players from the previous year’s PDC Pro Tour. And the last set of 32 players qualifies based on various qualifiers during the first round of the tournament.
As we already confessed, our focus for this page is World Darts Championship betting. As the event is hosted in England, it’s the local punters who’re most excited to dive in. Thankfully, online sports betting is completely legal and regulated in the UK so you have no legal restrictions. Of course, you must be at least 18 years old to sign up.
In this section, let’s go over the popular bet types and markets as well as where you can follow the matches to know your options.
If you’re not aware, a “market” in a betting context refers to an individual outcome. You add the markets to your bet slip. You can always add multiple markets or selections to a single bet. Let’s take a quick look at the markets.
As we stated in one of the previous sections, Sky Sports is the TV rights holder for the Darts championship tournament. If you’re in the UK, you can just tune into the channel during match hours to witness the madness.
If you’re not subscribed to Sky Sports, however, you can also get a one-time pass for Now Sports for the time being. You can also use a VPN to stream on other platforms like Kayo.
If you haven’t participated in online betting before, it might be a little hard for you to wrap your head around the topic. Trust us, it’s not nearly as hard as you think it is. Let us take you through the process of PDC betting in the UK, step-by-step.
Betting offers for particular sports and events are one of the most enjoyable things for the punters. It’s just as much trust in the UK as in the rest of the world. Plenty of bookmakers offer unique bonuses for PDC betting.
The most common bonus you can expect is an accumulator bonus on the tournament. These promotions usually let you place accumulator bets. The more selections you add to your bet slip, the more you can score in bonuses.
Another common form of bonus is bet insurance of cashbacks. For a particular match, an online betting site may offer a refund bonus if your first bet loses. The idea is simple. If you lose, you don’t lose your motivation to bet. With the refund amount, you can get back to betting even stronger than before!
Enhanced odds are another common bonus for PDC betting. When that happens, the bookmaker will offer extended odds for a particular player or a few players. In our experience, these players are not very likely to win the match, as in they’re underdogs. But in case they win, you can rack up a lot of money through it, thanks to the enhanced odds.
Choosing the right World Darts Championship 2023 betting site is one of the most crucial aspects of the process. A reputed bookmaker will not only emphasize your safety but also provide excellent features for the tournament. In this section, we’ve listed the top 3 World Darts Championship betting sites in the UK.
It’s obvious for William Hill to make our list. Why is it obvious, you ask? Well, if you navigate to the PDC website right now and choose the Cazoo World Championship, you’ll see William Hill as a sponsor!
Yes, this UK-based betting company has been a major player in the previous year’s championship. The Alexandra Palace used to be packed with William Hill branding on match days.
If you navigate to the website right now, you’ll see that the bookmaker has already projected odds for the first round of the tournament. The common markets are home and away. As you would expect, the odds for away are longer than the home markets.
Along with the individual match betting markets, William Hill is also offering outright markets like the tournament winner. From what we can tell, the company is a big advocate of darts. So, it also offers markets for Premier League, US Darts Masters, and so on.
As a prospective bettor, chances are high that you know about Paddy Power. If you don’t, it’s simply because this online company doesn’t use this name as much as its sister concerns. Just like William Hill, Paddy Power has also shared the odds for this year’s PDC World Championship.
To get the darts betting page, you’ll first need to land on the Paddy Power homepage. Then, you can choose the A-Z betting tab which will give you the complete list of sports that qualify for betting. From there, you can choose Dart. The very first entry on that page should be the PDC World Championship. If you scroll down, there is a section where the dynamics for darts betting are explained.
To ensure a safe betting experience for the punters, Paddy Power is licensed by the UK Gambling Commission as well as the Malta Gaming Authority.
Betfred has one of the nicest All Sports pages across all the online betting sites in our opinion. It’s very nicely sorted and alphabetically ordered. When you scroll down to “D”, the only entry there is “Darts”.
Upon clicking that tab, you’ll land on the page where the available tournaments are listed. At the time of writing, there are the World Series of Darts, Online Darts Live League, and PDC World Championship 2023. If you’ve been paying attention, you already know that we’re going to click on the last one.
Betfred is offering fractional odds across all the matches. For this particular tournament, it’s going for the Each Way: 1/2 1, 2 model. The list starts with decent odds for the favourite players. As you scroll down, the odds get longer and longer. The highest we’ve seen is a jaw-dropping 1000/1 for the last few players!
Before a major sports event kicks off, all reputed betting sites offer predictions and tips for the punter. Now, there is no guarantee that these tips will turn out to be true but they will work as a great baseline for newcomers.
As William Hill has been one of the main sponsors for previous events, we believe it’s only fair to share the odds from it. Thankfully, William Hill has shared the entire list of outright tournament winner odds for the 2023 PDC World Championship.
According to the analysts, Michael Van Gerwen is the most likely winner, riding at 4/1 odds. He’s a Dutch player and is one of the icons of the darts industry. According to the current rankings, he’s No. 3 in the world. Up until 2021, he was No. 1! The next likely winner according to William Hill is Gerwyn Price, a Welsh professional player. Interestingly, he was a big name in Rugby Union too! He’s currently boasting 11/2 odds.
Then, we have the current PDC World Champion, Mr. Peter Wright. He’s the one who dethroned Michael Van Gerwen from the No.1 position in 2022. But William Hill doesn’t peg him as the absolute favourite for this year. He’s currently at 7/1 odds. Peter Wright is also known for his unconventional looks. He’s from Scotland and he represents his homeland like no one else. He often shows up in the arena with colourful haircuts that you can spot from a mile away!
From there, the odds get weaker for Jonny Clayton, Michael Smith, Dimitri Van den Bergh, Luke Humphries, Nathan Aspinall, Joe Cullen, Danny Noppert, Rob Cross, and so on. The odds at William Hill don’t go as crazy as Betfred though. The longest we’ve seen is 750/1 for Paul Lim, David Evans, Diogo Portela, Daniel Larsson, John Michael, John Norman Jr, and Michael Unterbuchner.
The previous year’s event was the PDC World Championship 2022. Now, if you’re reading this post on 2022 as well, you might be wondering how it works. Well, the PDC tournament 2022 started in December 2021 and it ended right at the beginning of 2022. The same is going to happen for the 2023 season too!
Last year, Gerwyn Price was the defending champion. He was a favourite across the PDC World Championship betting sites. But Peter Wright managed to win the title instead. Gerwyn was out of the tournament during the quarter-finals.
The 2022 season of the PDC betting saw 3 nine-dart finishes. It was a record because no previous season saw this many nine-darters in a single championship! A total of 3 players were forcefully withdrawn from the tournament and one of them was world-famous Michael Van Gerwen, who also happens to be this year’s favourite according to William Hill.
The 2022 PDC World Championship was the last year where William Hill was the primary sponsor. From this year on, the place has been taken by Cazoo, a British car sales company.
Peter Wright, a Scottish darts player is the current world champion.
The total prize pool is a massive £2,500,000 where the winner gets £500,000.
There are 2 major championships. One is the PDC World Championship we’ve discussed on this page and the other one is the WDF (World Darts Federation) World Championship.
For the 2022 season, Michael Van Gerwen is the favourite across all major bookmakers.