PP – Champions League of Darts 2018

In 2018 the decision was made that Paddy Power would move into the traditional sports sponsorship space for the first time, when we worked with the PDC to sponsor the Champions League of Darts.

Without a existing sponsorship team within the company I was asked to lead on the event, overseeing all aspects of the tournament from event design, activation spaces, player access, merchandise, and event stage design.

The event required an enormous amount of planning and logistics, including working closely with the venue, the rights holders, the players and TV and Radio broadcasters.   In total the event delivered over 4 millions viewers on BBC across 12 hours of live coverage.  Over 10,000 ticket holders were entertained at the event.

Within our activation spaces we offered fans the chance to play 5-time World Champion Raymond van Barneveld, we handed out over 20,000 pieces of merchandise, we gave lucky fans the chance to sit in our “Best Seats in the House” and we offered the crowd the chance to win the largest collective cash prize in the history of sport – with our £50,000 offer for a 9-dart-finish going straight to the crowd instead of the player!

The event was a huge success for us internally too, with views of our social content filmed with the player exceeding 5.6m views.

The event remains one of my proudest achievements to date, and we were fortunate to be awarded the prestigious FMBE Gold Award for the most effective Sponsorship Activation at the 2019 Field Marketing Brand Awards.