Preview US Darts Masters 2023: Who takes the title at iconic Madison Square Garden?

The world's best darts players descended on New York this week for the third World Series tournament of the season. For the second consecutive year, the US Darts Masters will be finished at the iconic Madison Square Garden.

This arena is one of the most famous sporting venues in the world. Many major sporting events and music concert performances have passed through here down the years.

So after big boxing matches, basketball games and ice hockey games, there is now darts at Madison Square Garden. Admittedly not in the main hall, but in the Hulu Theatre, one of the small halls in the complex. Still, this space can accommodate 2,000 to 5,600 spectators, depending on the type of event.

The PDC first organised a televised tournament in the United States at the beginning of this century. From 2002 to 2009, for instance, the Las Vegas Desert Classic was held annually. Phil Taylor won that tournament five times and Peter Manley, John Part and Raymond van Barneveld all took the overall victory once in Las Vegas.

After 2009, the tournament disappeared from the calendar and it took until 2017 before the PDC returned to the United States. Once again, Las Vegas was the destination, where the US Darts Masters was played from 2017 to 2019. These editions were won by successively Michael van Gerwen, Gary Anderson and Nathan Aspinall.

During the corona years 2020-21, the tournament lay dormant again for a while, before returning to the calendar in 2022. And with great news; as the tournament was moved to the iconic sports temple Madison Square Garden.

The event generated a lot of media attention in 2022, with the darters appearing at baseball and ice hockey games. Snapshots were also taken at tourist attractions such as the Empire State Building and the SUMMIT One Vanderbilt. This historic edition was won by Michael Smith, who was too strong for Van Gerwen in the final.

At the US Darts Masters, eight PDC top players will take on eight North American players in the first round. Michael Smith, Peter Wright, Michael van Gerwen, Gerwyn Price, Rob Cross, Luke Humphries, Dimitri Van den Bergh and Nathan Aspinall are the eight players chosen on behalf of the PDC.

North American Tour Card holders were invited to be among the local representation. These are Jeff Smith, Matt Campbell and Dutch American Jules van Dongen.

Also among the New York line-up are Alex Spellman (winner of CDC Continental Cup), Jim Long (winner of CDC Cross-Border Challenge) and qualifiers Jason Brandon, J.T. Davis and Jake Macmillan.

Shown through the night in the UK, it will not be shown live on the usual means of ITV4 who will instead show the delayed coverage at 5:30pm on Saturday from the Friday action. With coverage of the British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) on the Sunday, it switches to ITV3 with the remainder of the tournament shown at 4:00pm on the Sunday which is delayed coverage from the night before.

In order to watch it live, fans must stay up and watch it on PDCTV. Shown for subscribers outside of Germany, Austria and Switzerland due to DAZN showing it live, it will begin at midnight on Saturday with the same going into the Sunday. The North American Championship is on at 6pm before the action begins on the Saturday.

To subscribe, fans must pay £49.99 which also gets fans access to priority tickets. There is also three-day down to one-day passes ranging from £4.99 to £2.99. Also as ever betting streams will also have it with fans needing to place a bet to watch on most providers.

The total prize pool for this tournament contains £60,000, in addition to the fact that regular PDC players also receive an additional fee for their appearance at the tournament.

So on top of that comes the prize money, which starts at £1,250. This can eventually go up to a sum of £20,000 for the winner of the tournament.

Besides prize money, there are also points to be earned for the World Series Order of Merit. Through this ranking, the top eight qualify for the World Series Finals later this year in Amsterdam.

The World Series tournaments are international events organised by the PDC to promote the sport beyond its (Western) European borders.

Earlier this year, tournaments also took place in Bahrain and Denmark, and after the tournament in the United States, tournaments in Australia and New Zealand will also be completed.

Past World Series tournaments have also been scheduled in Dubai, Singapore, Japan, Scotland, China, Germany and Austria.