Venue Ethias Arena Country Belgium Organisation(s) PDC | Location Hasselt Established 2008 Format Legs | |
The European Championship is a PDC darts tournament which allows the top European players to compete with the highest ranked players from the PDC Order of Merit. The tournament takes place in a variety of months and features a field of 32. The inaugural tournament – the 2008 European Championship – was held at the Südbahnhof in Frankfurt, Germany and featured a prize fund of £200,000. The tournament moved to the Claus Hotel & Event Center in Hoofddorp, Netherlands for 2009 featuring a similar prize fund. The tournament returned to Germany in 2010, where it was held at Dinslaken. The 2011 tournament remained in Germany, only this time, it took place in Düsseldorf – the capital of North Rhine-Westphalia. From 2012 to 2014, the tournament took place in Mülheim, Germany. Since 2015, the tournament has taken place in Hasselt, Belgium.
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Phil Taylor won the tournament on each of the first four stagings of the event, before Simon Whitlock took the title in 2012. Adrian Lewis gained -at that time- his third major win after beating Whitlock in the 2013 edition of the tournament. Michael van Gerwen won the tournament for the first time in 2014 beating Terry Jenkins in the final. In 2015 van Gerwen came back from 7–10 behind to defeat Gary Anderson 11–10 in the final. The current champion is van Gerwen who beat Mensur Suljović 11–1 in the 2016 final.
Television coverage
The PDC announced on August 12, 2008 that ITV4 would broadcast the entire event. This was the second PDC darts tournament that ITV4 have broadcast, after the inaugural Grand Slam of Darts – after its rating success ITV had chosen to broadcast this event as well as the 2008 Grand Slam of Darts.
The 2009 event was not televised, but the 2010 event was broadcast on Bravo, which screened live darts for the first time in its history. However, Bravo ceased broadcasting at the start of 2011. On June 26, 2011, it was announced that ITV4 would broadcast the 2011 event. In the Netherlands it is broadcast on RTL7 and in Germany it is broadcast on Sport1. On August 8, 2012 it was announced that ESPN would televise the event, becoming the first broadcaster to show both BDO and PDC dart tournaments. From 2013, the tournament returned to ITV4 as part of a deal between ITV and the PDC to show 4 tournaments from the PDC calendar.
List of United Kingdom Broadcasters
Sponsorship
PartyPoker.net sponsored first six editions of the tournament – they also sponsored the US Open and the Las Vegas Desert Classic, two other non-defunct televised PDC events.
In 2014, 888.com took over sponsoring of the tournament.