- On the good side, that the event allowed for a pretty darned wide host of players to play is good. We only had the UK Open that was like that, this is a welcome addition to get all of the 128 (at least those that wanted to/could play) along with a wide selection of players from all over the world. That not as many as we might have liked took the PDC up on their invitation is unfortunate, but we'll come to that in a second.
- Also on the good side, the best of three leg set up worked very well. It has the nice mix of some legs having more drama than others due to added significance, but that the sets are shorter, it still allowed for people to rack up a big lead quite quickly - have a good five leg spell, and you can quite easily put three sets on the board, whereas in regular set play you're really only getting one break of throw in the lead.
- Some good games in the event. The final is the obvious pick and a possible match of the year contender already, but some others like MvG/DvdB, pretty much any of Bunting's games and Clayton/Searle would all look pretty good outside of that, amongst others.
- On the bad side, we did have some issues, this event would have been much better if more people who were invited took up the invite. This seems directly correlated to the prize pool - only getting money at all if you get out of the group stages, and not getting more than a grand unless you get to the last round before the televised stages, makes it pretty darned hard to make a case for someone to come over from half way around the world on a cost:benefit issue. A lot of people did, but maybe more could be done, those who were able to parlay this into the Dutch Open immediately after (did anyone rush off to it?), the Challenge Tour just before, or other events like the Super Series, UK Open qualifiers and so on. I'll come to the specific prize structure in a second, as it kind of relates to another bad point, but more working in conjunction with other events would help all parties. Put on a party bus to Assen for those that are eliminated in the group stages? It's a lot easier to justify coming from Australia or wherever for this, knowing there's a fair chance to get nothing in prize money, if you know you're going to get guaranteed appearance money from Modus or similar.
- The tournament structure was also bad. Granted, it's not the PDC's fault that we had some preliminary groups only running with two players, and I think there's a partial issue in that they had likely made some agreements with the top 24 in terms of them knowing that the Masters was changing format, but also not fucking over any of the top 24 with respect to expected prize money dropping from such, hence why there were quite so many byes. That needs revisiting - only having eight players getting out of the prelim day is too few.
- The prize structure, as mentioned, is bonkers. Having it so that you win £5k for a last 32 game, and then only winning £2.5k for the next match, is backwards - at least according to the Order of Merit page, which lists a different quarter final prize money amount compared to the original press release. I'm guessing that the OOM rules page is just wrong, as the totals there don't add up to the total prize fund quoted, but who knows. The lack of prize money at the bottom end is also a concern. So, pulling this and the tournament structure together, what I would suggest is a revamp like this:
- Only the top 12 in the OOM get a bye through to the last 32. Top 8 are seeded, the remaining four are drawn at random along with 20 coming through from an earlier stage. This restores some possibility of huge last 32 games like you saw in the Grand Prix which you won't see going forward,
- Previous round has 13-32 in the OOM along with 20 from a previous stage. This is 20 matches - I think that it is feasible that you can fit ten best of five set games into one session, so these could quite easily be played on the Thursday with the last 32 being added to the Friday, just by adding an afternoon session on each day where at the moment there is nothing. Extra televised darts, extra people with bums on seats in the arena, extra exposure for the players, everyone wins.
- These 20 from the previous stage come through prelims like present. If you were to retain a 32 group structure, you can do this by having to win two knockout games to get to the Thursday, so 48 players would be seeded through to skip the group stages (i.e. numbers 33-80 in the order of merit), then the remainder are in the group stages - seeding it so that the remaining 48 players who are tour card holders are split so that there is one in every group, and the remainder can't get places as such that you don't have more than two card holders in any given group.
- As such, you would need 48 players to ensure every group has at least three players. At the moment, they are inviting eight players from each of the Challenge Tour, Development Tour, Women's Series, Nordic and Baltic Tour, Asian Tour, CDC Tour, DPA and DPNZ tours, plus four from the JDC That's a total of 68. Honestly, I think you should try to go big - aim to get every group having four players, so 128 players in the group stages. Be ambitious. How can you do that? I think there's two ways. First, you can look to other avenues. Why not invite the last 8 from Lakeside? Why not invite the last 8 from the World Seniors? Why not add four invite spots to other developing tours like the African and Caribbean ones? Assuming that you had 100% tour card holder take up, you'd be aiming for 80 invites. If you added these, you'd get up to 92 - now you're not going to get all 92 take up an invite, clearly - for example, Jim Long would have got a seniors invite, but he's now a tour card holder, you'd expect that some of the Lakeside players would also have progressed to the tour (although, in what is quite a surprise, there are none this year). Invite more than you need - if you get more than 80, then if a group has to be one of five players, then that's a minor inconvenience, but I think getting 80/92 would be a real surprise. If you get less, use the Challenge and Development Tour lists from the previous year to get up to your quota.
- The prize fund would hen need amending. I do not see it as critical that the winner needs to have quite so huge a cut of it. Whoever's going to win is likely making enormous amounts of money already. With the modified format as I'm suggesting, you could go for the following:
For the old prizes, I'm assuming what is listed in the press release is right, and what is on the OOM page is wrong, but by simply not assuming that every major tournament requires more than half the money to go to the top 8 players, you can flatten out the payouts and guarantee everyone that shows up some money. Sure, you'd do well to get a return flight from NZ for £500, but if it cuts your costs by a decent percentage, it'd identify more players to take the shot. Thoughts?