In 1989 and in the early 1990s, the image of darts collapsed due to just 1 tournament being shown on TV (the Embassy World Championship), compared to 14 TV events in 1988 and as many as 23 TV events in 1983.

This led to a 5-year dispute in darts from 1992 to 1997, and left darts with two bodies, the British Darts Organisation and the World Darts Council, before the WDC renamed itself the Professional Darts Corporation due to a Tomlin order on 30 June 1997.

The Tomlin order had established the freedom of darts players to ply their trade in the WDC without being banned from all BDO-sanctioned darts.

Original 16 Players

Phil Taylor
Dennis Priestley
Rod Harrington
Alan Warriner
Peter Evison
Richie Gardner
Jocky Wilson
Eric Bristow
Keith Deller
John Lowe
Bob Anderson
Cliff Lazarenko
Kevin Spiolek
Jamie Harvey
Mike Gregory
Chris Johns

THE Professional Darts Corporation was initially formed as the World Darts Council in January 1992, and is now the leading professional body in the sport with over £7 million in prize money being paid out on its global circuit of tournaments.

The WDC was formed after 16 top professional players (Above), along with managers Dick Allix, Tommy Cox and John Markovic, decided to break away from the British Darts Organisation to take the sport to a new level.

The first WDC event, the UK Masters, took place in October 1992 and the first World Championship was played over the 1993-94 festive period, establishing the partnership with Sky Sports which remains to this day.