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The Premier League Darts is a darts tournament which launched on 20 January 2005 on Sky Sports. The league is now played weekly from February to May, having originally started as a fortnightly fixture. The tournament originally featured seven players and now sees ten of the biggest names from the PDC circuit competing in a double round-robin format, with matches held across the United Kingdom and Ireland at different venues. The top four players in the PDC Order of Merit are joined by six wildcard selections to make up the ten-man field. The current sponsor is Betway. The previous sponsors were McCoy's, Whyte and Mackay, who succeeded Holsten, having signed a three-year contract to support the event in October 2007,〔(Whyte & Mackay to sponsor Premier League ) planetdarts.tv〕 and 888.com. The prize fund rose from £265,000 to £340,000 in 2008, steadily increasing each year for a prize fund of £550,000 in 2014. The winner currently receives £150,000. Phil Taylor has dominated this event, winning six of the eleven competitions to date. He went unbeaten throughout the first three seasons before James Wade ended his 44 match run in the first match of the 2008 season. A new champion was to be crowned after Mervyn King defeated him in the 2009 semi-finals. Wade defeated King 13–8 in the final, to pick up the £125,000 first prize. Phil Taylor defeated James Wade the following season to claim his fifth title in the competition in 2010, however he was defeated in the semi-final of the 2011 tournament. Gary Anderson became champion in his debut season. by defeating Adrian Lewis in a repeat of the world championship final earlier that year. Phil Taylor reclaimed the title the following year, after defeating Simon Whitlock in the 2012 final, but lost the 2013 final to Michael van Gerwen. A year later, Taylor - who lost four of his first five games of the season and only secured qualification to the playoffs on the final league night - lost to eventual champion Raymond van Barneveld in the semi-finals. ==Television coverage== The matches have been broadcast on Thursday nights on Sky Sports since the tournament inception. Originally the league alternated with Premier League Snooker one week and Premier League Darts the next. From 2006, the snooker moved to late autumn – giving the Premier League darts a straight weekly run in the spring. American sports channel OLN aired the 2006 Premier League Darts season on a slight delay, in August 2006. German sports channel DSF (Deutsches Sport Fernsehen, now Sport1) has broadcast many matches of the past two years live on TV and gives coverages of a selection of matches. The PDC announced in January 2007 that the contract with Sky Television for coverage of the Premier League had been extended to 2010. 〔http://www.planetdarts.tv/page/PremierLeagueDetail/0,,10180~962208,00.html〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Premier League Darts」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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