Sports > Darts > Premier League Darts
The Whyte & Mackay Premier League is a darts tournament which launched on January 20, 2005, on Sky Sports. The league is now played weekly from February to May, having originally started as a fortnightly fixture.
The tournament originally featured seven players and now sees eight of the biggest names from the PDC circuit competing in a round-robin format, with matches held across the country at different venues.
The new sponsors for 2008 will be Whyte & Mackay who succeed Holsten having signed a three-year contract to support the event in October 2007. The prize fund will rise from £265,000 to £340,000 in 2008 - with the guaranteed minimum of £20,000 (previously £15,000) for each player that qualifies. The top prize of £100,000 matches the prize of the 2008 PDC World Champion.
One of the biggest surprises of the tournament was non-playing related and featured the announcement in February 2006 that Raymond van Barneveld was switching from the British Darts Organisation to the PDC, having been a previous four-time BDO World Champion. Van Barneveld had been runner-up in the BDO World final just weeks before the announcement.
Phil Taylor has dominated this event, winning all three competitions staged between 2005 and 2007. He went unbeaten throughout the first three seasons before James Wade ended his 44 match run in the first match of the 2008 season.
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