Dubai: Matchroom Sports Group CEO Matthew Porter said the Dubai Duty Free Darts Masters is here to stay after the success of last weekend’s second annual staging of the tournament at Dubai Tennis Stadium.
The Netherland’s Michael Van Gerwen retained the $50,000 (Dh183,645) Coffee Pot with an 11-7 win over Scotland’s Peter Wright on Friday in front a 5000-strong crowd and a live televised audience of 300 million.
The event, which features the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) Order of Merit top eight, again kicked off the three-stage World Series of Darts, which next travels to Perth and Sydney in Australia in August.
Dubai Duty Free initially agreed to a one-year deal before last year’s inaugural hosting but extended that to another two years ahead of this year’s event. Based on this year’s success, however, Porter was confident that the deal would extend beyond 2015.
“We see no reason why we can’t keep returning to Dubai every year for the foreseeable future,” he said. “The reaction to the event in Dubai was fantastic and it seemed to be well received by everyone who was there.
“There’s a large expatriate community and our tournaments are shown live on television in the region so it was a logical choice. We obviously thought it would [take-off], hence why we chose to do the event there, but we’ve been delighted with the response – it’s better than expected.
“We’re looking to grow the crowd year-on-year and I think the reputation of the event will spread and more people will give it a try if they haven’t done so already.”
With the tournament held outside, players have continually voiced concerns over heat and wind. But Porter said they weren’t planning to move indoors.
“No, we love the unique nature of the event being outdoors and it’s not something we’re looking to change.
“I don’t think there’s too much more for us to do with it, why change a winning formula? But we’ll continue to work with our local promoter to tweak and improve things here and there,” said Porter when asked to comment on future improvements.
Matchroom Sports Group also organised last Saturday’s WBA and IBF super middleweight bout between Carl Froch and George Groves in front of 80,000 people at Wembley Stadium in London. And when asked if — following the success of the darts show — they could bring other events here, Porter replied: “Yes possibly — watch this space.”
