Paddy Power green treble 20 revealed as charitable hoax

Paddy Power’s new-look dartboard with a green treble 20 for the Ally Pally World Championship has been revealed as fake.

The Irish bookmaker has come clean on Twitter stating that it is not turning the treble 20 green, but instead, donating £1,000 to ProstateUK for every 180 hit at the Paddy Power World Darts Championship – running from 15 December to 3 January.

The firm announced the bold move earlier this week – after being named the new title sponsor of the tournament in July – and even unveiled images on Instagram of the new Winmau board next to top players such as Michael Van Gerwen and Queen of the Palace, Fallon Sherrock.

A Paddy Power statement read: “One in eight men are at risk of prostate cancer, so our aim is to hit them right between the bullseyes with The BIG 180 campaign which will be unmissable this Christmas.

“We’re challenging 180,000 fans, followers and customers in the UK to use Prostate Cancer UK’s online risk checker. It takes just 30 seconds, folks.

“Based on last year’s World Championship the campaign would have raised a monster £910,000 and we’re hoping to give away over £1m in the 2024 edition and to raise awareness for chaps to go get themselves checked out over Christmas.”

The company also included a link to answer three questions that checks a person’s risk of prostate cancer, which can be found here.

Further big names in the sport such as Nathan Aspinall are also urging men to get themselves checked, as well as Gary Anderson, who said: “The more out there it is, the more people hear it and the more people who might do something about it.

“There shouldn’t be any embarrassment, it’s like with everything, you’ve got to help yourself out. There’s so many things going about now you’ve just got to look after yourself and if not yourself then your brothers, your dad, uncles, grandads. The more it’s put out there the more people will listen.”

Paddy Power concluded: “So while the treble 20 is saying red, Prostate Cancer UK gets the green.”

The new design had many darts fans fooled, with PDC Chief Executive Matthew Porter convincingly explaining how the organisation has always been keen to ‘evolve with the times’.

“If after 30 years of our World Championship being played on a traditional dartboard, change means improvement for the standard and quality of the sport, and it directly benefits the health of players, then we owe it to them to give it a go,” he said during the hoax.

Many were sceptical, however, that the PDC would make such a drastic change to the traditional board on its biggest event of the year, with some even expressing anger towards the news describing it as ‘crazy’ and ‘outrageous’.