Darts fans love many things. Big fish finishes. Late-night deciders. Someone absolutely detonating a 110 average out of nowhere. But above all else? We love a good moan.
Give a tungsten fanatic around ten minutes and they’ll find something to grumble about. Over the years, absolutely nothing has escaped scrutiny. Walk-ons. Music. Shirts. Interviews. Averages. Lighting. Angles. Breathing patterns. You name it, someone’s written a paragraph about why it’s ruining the sport.
And to be fair, opinion is king. For every fan sharpening their claws, there’s another waving it off as nonsense. The Premier League selection process remains the undisputed heavyweight champion of online outrage but bubbling just beneath it is the eternal background noise – commentators, camera shots, graphics, fonts, colours, vibes.
So when ITV unveiled its refreshed darts broadcast team for 2026, fronted by Gabby Partington, you might have expected the firing squad to be aimed at the humans. Not a bit of it. The real villain emerged in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. Yes, the scoreboard. A circular themed redesigned, modernised, information-packed scoreboard – and darts social media collectively lost its mind.
Different is dangerous in darts. Change is suspicious. Anything unfamiliar is immediately guilty until proven innocent, and even then it probably still needs locking up. The new graphic dared to stray from the norm, and that alone was enough to fuel the fires.
Never mind that it shows the players’ names, nationalities (assuming you know your flags), leg and match scores, format, and tournament name. All the useful stuff. All the things you actually need. Logic, however, had already left the building.
The verdicts came in hot and heavy.
“It’s awful as it’s difficult to see the scores. Too much crammed into the stupid shape to represent a sport that we are not watching. Go whistle F1 and leave our darts alone.”
“Very distracting and not clear, not a fan”
“Too busy with colour, an assault on the senses which is not necessary. Not a fan of this one!!!”
To be fair, not everyone grabbed a pitchfork and charged the ITV graphics department. A handful liked it. A few shrugged. But they were drowned out by the fury of people who felt personally wronged by a box of pixels.
And so, another darts debate reaches its inevitable conclusion. You can change the format, the venue, the country, the prize money – but tweak a scoreboard and all hell breaks loose.
Moral of the story? When it comes to darts coverage, apparently the safest move is doing absolutely nothing at all.
—–ENDS—–
Images: T lanning / PDC ( Main)
