The World Matchplay begins tonight with a bumper session including Michael van Gerwen and Gary Anderson and it has been revealed that alongside crowd noise, there will be walk-ons as normal.

A fundamental part of the darts but one which could have been scrapped due to the lack of fans at the Marshall Arena. This will still be a part of this albeit not from as far away as usual; as well it will be more interactive as a result.

"We're looking at fake crowd noise to create some sort of atmosphere, I think that the players will respond to that better than they would do to a silent hall," said PDC Chief Executive, Matthew Porter to Sky Sports.

"We will have that playing in the background and it will be a little bit a trial and error at the start. There's been plenty of testing and we've been working closely with Sky, the players have been sending videos of themselves dancing around to 180s at home.

"There will be walk-ons, the players may feel a little awkward with that but there will be some videos to help them along their way. We're not going to ask them to walk too far, though!"

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