WDF still not set on format for either upcoming major: "I personally am in two minds"

With just three months to go until the return of the WDF World Masters, Secretary General Nick Rolls admits a major decision still hangs in the balance, the tournament format.

“I personally am in two minds,” the WDF Secretary told Tungsten Tales. “It’s not only Nick Rolls that makes a decision on this. We have a bit of a chat — we haven’t had that for this year — but where my head’s at is that throughout the year, all of our players play leg play. Simple as that. We have no tournaments where we have set play.”

It’s a dilemma that speaks to a broader question of consistency and identity within the WDF’s structure. “Then when we get the players to come to Lakeside or to the World Championship, we go and turn it into set play,” he continued. “Is it right to have both of our major tournaments — the World Masters and the World Championships — as set play? Or should the way they’ve been playing throughout the whole season be represented in one of our major tournaments as in leg play?”

A final decision will be made within weeks. “There are contrasting opinions, of course there are. Myself and the team are going to have a chat about it in the next two or three weeks to finalise and decide which way we go. So yeah, watch this space on that one.”

Beyond the format debate, Rolls and the WDF are preparing for a significantly expanded and improved version of their eight-day festival in Hungary. He reflected candidly on 2024’s inaugural staging: “There are always going to be — I call them — teething problems. And there were a few things last year that could have gone better, for definite. We’ve addressed those. I’m quietly confident that we’re going to be able to provide a better tournament this year, in so much as those little problems are hopefully going to be ironed out.”

“On the surface, it did go well last year,” he added. “I think it was more the underneath bits — that swan scenario. We looked lovely on the top, perhaps, but not quite so great underneath. There were some things that affected the players, which we’re definitely trying to improve on for 2025.”

Now just weeks away from the start of the October 25–November 2 event, players are being encouraged to act quickly.

“We’re getting towards the nitty-gritty end of the WDF season,” said Rolls. “The season ends at the end of October, start of November — we’ve almost come through the summer holidays now, and it really gets going again in August.”

“There is a specific website that details all of the tournaments across the eight days. There are hotels, and I’m being told by a couple of people that there are some really good deals available in and around Budapest.”

“My encouragement would be to everyone: listen, have a look at that website. It’s for you to make a decision as to whether the deals you’re seeing are as good as you need them to be. And from there, you can go on to place your entries as well.”

With Budapest once again hosting the festival, Rolls was full of praise for the location: “It’s an amazing city. The Danube flowing through, amazing restaurants, amazing views, and some great things to go and see. Obviously, we’d love for everybody to play darts for the full nine days,” he laughed. “But if you need a bit of a break, there might be a day where you just go down into Budapest and have a bit of a sightseeing visit.”

The packed schedule includes a gold tournament, a silver tournament, pairs, triples, the World Masters, the Open, and the World Championship Qualifier.

A major improvement from last year comes in how World Championship qualification will be determined.

“We were a little bit bound by the dates and times last year,” Rolls explained. “There were tournaments after the World Masters, and players weren’t sure — have I qualified or haven’t I?”

“In 2025, we’ll get to the end of the Saturday night and the World Masters will have played out. We will know the players that are definitely in Lakeside by that time, because there are no tournaments after that. It means that the players who play in the World Championship qualifiers will only be the players that are not already qualified.”

“We can have a definitive understanding of who’s in and who’s not. So those players are definitely playing for a place — whereas last year, there was a little bit of ‘Am I in? Am I not? I better go into the tournament just in case.’”

In a significant step forward, the 2025 festival will also include a full suite of Paradarts events.

“Technically, there are four tournaments — World Masters and World Championships for standing and sitting events,” Rolls said. “It’s great to have the Paradarts on board. We wanted to do it in 2024, but it didn’t quite work out. It was all very tight last year.”

“It’s still tight in 2025 — but not as tight. We were able to speak to Sarah Smale in particular from the World Paradarts team, and they’ve agreed to come over to Hungary. It’ll be great to have them as part of the event.”

One final point yet to be confirmed is whether youth players will be able to compete in senior events, as seen in previous years.

“There are some questions around whether the youth can play in the senior tournaments,” Rolls admitted. “That will actually depend on how many entries we have — whether we need to run the tournaments at the same time. If we do, then the youth may have to just play in just the youth tournaments.”

“But I would love for the youth to be able to play in the seniors. You can look at some of the great players now — Luke Littler is the obvious one, right? He played in a lot of youth tournaments but was also able to play in a lot of our senior tournaments. We’d love to be able to do that, but time does determine that.”