All across Asia and the USA. Literally 10's of thousands of players. Will this spread to the UK eventually? And is this the wave of the future ?


I think the UK will be the last to embrace IMO. What say you?

Not being in the UK hard to say for sure. It is spreading and is more widely accepted in other Euro countries. I think it depends on the payout for professional players. I'm sure they would follow the money versus following tradition. It is after all how they make a living (most of them anyhow).

If you start to see large purses in soft tip venues in the UK etc.. you'll have a lot of PDC players giving it a go. If you have big name PDC players giving it a go; soon to follow would be the fans.

I think this is a win-win for the game as it would attract more players, help manufactures sell more products, and in the end grow our sport!

There is room for Steel and Soft to be played side-by-side!

Naw. Can't stand the bounce outs. Targets are too big. Way to easy. Toy game. Lights and noise drive me nuts. Handicaps blow. Don't want to pump quarters into a machine.

Did I miss any of the cliche sayings?

Winmau wrote:

Naw. Can't stand the bounce outs. Targets are too big. Way to easy. Toy game. Lights and noise drive me nuts. Handicaps blow. Don't want to pump quarters into a machine.

Did I miss any of the cliche sayings?

Come on now... you know it's "Can't stand bounce outs being scored" get it right! Funny thing is while you are spot on for the cliche statements, they typically come from those that have not played soft..

Hell took me a while to come around and that was with Paul Lim helping to drive me to give it a go. Now I see them both as the same but different.

In the end it's about the money! Pro's follow the money!

the thing in the uk is, why would we want to put cash in a machine when we can play for free, cheaply??

JEDI wrote:

the thing in the uk is, why would we want to put cash in a machine when we can play for free, cheaply??

Jedi, it may be entirely different in the UK than it is here. On the West Coast I have noticed that steel tip venues are getting harder to find. This is due to profits brought in by the establishments that hold leagues and events. I noticed this while playing in the 90's. I could play in 6 or 7 tournaments a week and often chose the game I wanted to play most places added to the pot as well. The more I played the more I noticed that not a lot of players were buying drink or food. Some would even sneak drink in to save money.

After a while, bar owners etc. were pulling to boards down, or decreasing the numbers of them and putting in tables/chairs or pool tables. It costs a great deal of money in lost revenue due to lost space and cost of boards etc...

I took about 10 years off the game and came back to it. I found a local blind draw that usually only has about 6 to 10 players. I still notice the same thing; not many of the players are spending much money on buying to board a beer.

Again, could be entirely different in the UK. I just want the sport overall to grow. And if it takes play to play in the states then I'm for that, whether soft or steel.

I said it a long time ago that soft tip will take over eventually its just a matter of when

A smart publican could use soft tip machines to his advantage.

Have happy hours where games are free and drinks are cheaper.

They need to attract casual players as well as the regular players. Sunday afternoon come and try sessions. This could be done for both steel and soft tip. Get some of the pubs league players to come in and give tips and play a few games with the learners.

The pro money side of the game will work itself out. The amateurs are the ones you want to target. They are the money spenders. Look at the dart bars in Asia, great idea IMO.

The free play you mentioned Jimbo is something that a lot of dart players aren't aware of. Since i used to run several leagues in upstate NY and work for a vendor I am very familiar with the older Galaxy boards. They can be set up for free play for certain times everyday. This would certainly entice dart players to come at a given time to play darts.

Funny... back then I used to set our home boards up for free play on league nights from 7 until 7:30 when league started. Place was packed. Even other teams would show up at our place for a quick practice.

I was born and bred in the UK and they don't come more English than me. We love our traditions and sure as hell hate change. My grandfather taught me how to play steel darts when I was just three years old. 30 years later and my passion for steel tips is the biggest in my life...until I moved to Japan.

My Japanese friend and I were talking in a bar and be mentioned that he likes playing darts. "Great! Let's go find a dart bar!" I said so we headed off to a chain of darts bars called Bane Bagus. When we walked in, my heart sunk. The whole bar was full of soft tip machines. Not a single steel tip board in sight. I asked my friend if there was a bar with a steel tip board and he just laughed and said no. I decided what the hell, I'm here now so may as well play...

That was 10 months ago and I have since left Japan. I have been trawling the Internet desperately to find a soft tip bar in England but to no avail. I reverted back to steel tips as that is all that's available but it's not the same. I'm fully converted and addicted to soft tips. So much so that my Japanese friend and I are investigating the plausability of DartsLive UK. Watch this space

Thats great Ritchie, just goes to prove that you dont know until you try it but if someone were to start a Rileys type bar just for soft tip (which I think will happen soon) then I'm sure it will take off faster than people believe.

Keep us updated on your plans mate!

richie i would give it a go for sure when i was 16 i was in thailand on holiday and won a local
soft tip comp and i hadnt even thrown a steel tip dart then lol


i would love it to come to the uk

Good luck with the dart bar there Richie. I hope it works out for you mate.

My Tuesday night league have been looking into DartsLive for our clubrooms, but nothing has happened yet.

Keep us posted on this. I to love soft tip though 90% of the time I play steel tip as that is all that is close by. Still darts is darts.

Would love to see Dartslive come into my area. Got to play on some of the Dartslive 2 boards while visiting my sister-in-law in the Los Angles area (Simi Valley). It was a blast really quality machines.

There is actually a "Dart Bar" there, called The Dirty Bull. Have 45 different beers on tap to boot!

^^^ Dirty Bull does a bunch of live streams for darts. Not the best quality but it's something to watch when bored at 1 in the morning (3 hour time zone diff)

Yea I posted a not so warm review for them on yelp. I was pretty excited to play in a soft tip tournament at a "Dart Bar". They had a calendar that showed them as having some type of tournament going on nearly each day of the week!

I showed up on a Saturday to play and turns out they were not having a tournament. I was pretty disappointed as you'd think a place that called themselves a dart bar would have an updated calendar of events.

I went to the site recently and they have taken the calendar or any reference to tournaments down. So I guess that is a good thing.

I hope they sort it out and figure out how to draw people into tournaments. They did have 8 steel tip boards and 10 DartsLive 2 machines. Would have been nice to see them all being played on, but there were maybe 6 people playing on a Saturday night?!?

In the US I'm thinking Saturday night is football or baseball time. Hard to compete with those 2 sports.

Jimbo21 wrote:

In the US I'm thinking Saturday night is football or baseball time. Hard to compete with those 2 sports.

More of a Sunday/Monday thing in the states. None-the-less, I'd expect a place with the claim of being a dart bar to have their venues updated. It's akin to a restaurant advertising a dinner special that they don't actually have on the menu.

if you had travelled an hour or so to get there for a tourny that was listed and then find it's not on, I doubt you would ever go back there.

Bump for an update from Richie. Any updates?

Hey Jake, I registered a new company called British Soft Tip Darts Association Ltd. I now need the BDO (or an equivalent pre-eminent authority) to endorse the company due to it having the words 'British' and 'Association' in the name. I contacted the BDO to speak to one of the directors but the relevant ones are currently at the Turkish Open so I need to follow up next week...

Also, when I was looking up company names here in the UK, it turns out Dartslive Europe Ltd is already an active company...

Was looking up dartslive yesterday . Would be great to have that in the UK.

Have your tried asking the big dart companies for their input?

Thanks for the update Richie! I'd contact DartsLive as I know they are trying to aggressively grow. May be able to help you.

Get some soft tips my UK/Euro brethren! It's coming you way! Oh, and post some pics of your new darts when you get them. Not enough pictures of soft tips on here!

Personally I wouldn’t mind Soft Tips coming to the UK, but, I would hate Soft Tips to eventually replace Steel. Call me old fashioned, but, I much prefer the Steel, it is what I was brought up on. The lights and all that noise would get on my nerves if I played Soft Tip, and pumping money into a machine to play darts? Well, as far as I’m concerned that’s about as welcome as a fart in spacesuit!

Taffy wrote:

Personally I wouldn’t mind Soft Tips coming to the UK, but, I would hate Soft Tips to eventually replace Steel. Call me old fashioned, but, I much prefer the Steel, it is what I was brought up on. The lights and all that noise would get on my nerves if I played Soft Tip, and pumping money into a machine to play darts? Well, as far as I’m concerned that’s about as welcome as a fart in spacesuit!

Taffy,

I don't think it would replace steel. I do think it could only help. I've made the point many times about any growth in the sport being a good thing. I have also said you have Steel tip pros playing in Soft tip matches in Asia and you have Asian's playing in PDC matches! This is just awesome to see.

The lights and noise really go unnoticed when you are playing in a match. It does the job of the PDC and BDO score shouter (what ever the guy that yells the scores in matches) anyhow, so not much difference there.

This is mostly people fearing change and fearing what they don't understand.

Net-net any growth is good for out sport.

P.S. Spacesuits have excellent filtration systems built into them so farts go largely unnoticed.

Richie1720 wrote:

Hey Jake, I registered a new company called British Soft Tip Darts Association Ltd. I now need the BDO (or an equivalent pre-eminent authority) to endorse the company due to it having the words 'British' and 'Association' in the name. I contacted the BDO to speak to one of the directors but the relevant ones are currently at the Turkish Open so I need to follow up next week...

i am well up for some soft tip darts

Jake you hit the nail on the head I suppose when you said about people fearing the change.....that's me! And I will also say that I have never, ever played soft tip darts, I've only ever watched it on TV. But, if it will help the sport that we all love, then it can only be a good thing! I suppose I've always looked at Soft Tips as a threat to steel, however, the way you explain it, I can now see the benefits.

Taffy wrote:

Jake you hit the nail on the head I suppose when you said about people fearing the change.....that's me! And I will also say that I have never, ever played soft tip darts, I've only ever watched it on TV. But, if it will help the sport that we all love, then it can only be a good thing! I suppose I've always looked at Soft Tips as a threat to steel, however, the way you explain it, I can now see the benefits.

That's the biggest thing mate. People saying they are put off by the size of the triples/bulls, sounds, bounce outs counting for score, or how it is played. Usually by people that have not given it a go. One has to always remember two things, one if it grows the game it's a good thing, two your opponent is throwing at the same size targets you are. If you don't keep up in scoring no matter how large or small the target is you'll lose. I actually like that bounce outs count (though on modern machines and darts it rarely happens), as I've heard sooooo many times in a steel tip match someone saying I would have won that match if my dart did not bounce out. This kinda cares for the complaint/argument; not to mention your bounce outs count as well as your opponents!

I give ya a +1 for rethinking your approach.