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The BDO World Championship was played from 1978 to 2020 and was till the split in darts the only darts World Championship.
It was always played at the beginning of January so that now the early rounds overlap with the final days of the PDC World Championship.

Since 1985 it is hold in the Lakeside County Club in Frimley Green in Surrey and when Embassy stopped to sponsor the World Championship in 2003 the Lakeside Country Club took over the sponsoring. So one often hears "Embassy" for the early days of the tournament while now it is called "Lakeside".

From the beginning the tournament was televised by the BBC on terrestrial TV. Betweeen 1988 and 2001 it was the only dart tournament on TV but the BBC didn´t start to televise it complete since 2005. Often one hears the quality of the transmission is not as good as that from Sky Sports. But the BDO World Championship nevertheless has much more TV spectaors then the PDC World Championship. Parts of the tournament are televised in other European countries by Eurosport.
Till today many people think of the BDO World Championship as the "real" World Championship and many of those players - including all World Champions to this time - who founded the PDC in 1992 had been successful BDO players.

Like in the PDC World Championship the format of the BDO World Championship is sets, in the first round best of five, second round best of seven, quarterfinals best of 9, semifinals best of 11 and final best of 13.
While in the PDC World Championship 64 players take part ind the BDO World Championship it are only 32 and there are none preliminary round matches. The participants come over the BDO invitation table, sometimes a player gets a wild card and the free places are filled with qualifiers from a qualification played during the World Masters.
The price money is far less then in the BDO though over the last few years it increased.

In all those years since the first World Championship never a player was so dominant as Phil Taylor is in the PDC. In the 1980's Eric Bristow won the title five times, but only he and Raymond van Barneveld were able to defend their titles.
Raymond van Barneveld won four times and John Lowe three times.
Jelle Klaasen in 2006 was the youngest winner, Martin Adams with almost 54 years in 2010 the oldest. Raymond van Barneveld, John Part, Tony David and Jelle Klaasen were the non British champions and Martin Adams was the player who with 17 times most often took part.
Though Bobby George never managed to win the title, only two times stood in the finale, he certainly is one of the most enigmatic players of the BDO World Championship. Ted Hankey is the "bad" boy and hands out plastic bats to the crowd during his walk-ons. Les Wallace was a winner wearing a kilt.
The only nine-darter so far threw Paul Lim in 1990.
Well-known and with a lot of influence in the BDO and th IDPA is the MC Martin Fitzmaurice who opens the tournament session with "Let's play darts!"
Only recently the BDO modernised the stage in Lakeside though the rather garish coulours are not to everybody's liking. On the Lakeside stage you´ll not find any chalkers any more - they were replaced by a screen only visible for the players and the MC.
In 2013 the BDO announced that the field of participants in the tournament would be enlarged to 40 players from 2014 onwards. The eight additional players will come from national qualifications in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia, Baltic and Scandinavia and the USA.


After the end of the BDO the World Championship will continue from 2022 as WDF World Championships. It will return to Lakeside.

BDO World Champions

BDO World Championship 2011

BDO World Championship 2012

BDO World Championship 2013

BDO World Championship 2014

BDO World Championship 2015

BDO World Championship 2016

BDO World Championship 2017

BDO World Championship 2018

BDO World Championship 2018

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