Stadium MK's Marshall Arena will play host to the 2020 Betfred World Matchplay Darts this month – the fourth major live sporting event to take place at the home of MK Dons during the Coronavirus pandemic.
The Professional Darts Corporation announced on Wednesday (1/7) that the tournament will not take place at the Winter Gardens in Blackpool, following extensive talks with the UK Government’s Department of Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS), the venue, host broadcaster Sky Sports and other stakeholders.
For the first time since being introduced in 1994, the World Matchplay Darts will instead take place behind closed doors at the Marshall Arena, which is able to provide a protected environment to ensure the safe staging of the event.
The tournament will take place on its originally scheduled dates of July 18-26 and will be the first fully televised PDC tournament to take place following the suspension of events due to the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic.
Prior to that, the Marshall Arena will host the PDC Summer Series which will see the sport’s stars return to action from July 8-12 for a series of five one-day Players Championship events, with coverage being streamed through PDCTV from 1200 BST on each day.
This follows the two live snooker events which were held at Stadium MK in June – the Championship League Snooker and the Coral Snooker Series.
