Dartboards Return
To the Rec Room

"Thwack!" Demand for dartboards is sharper than ever.

The old-fashioned black, red and green targets, a standby of British and American pubs, are increasingly coming home with consumers to hang on the rec room wall. Spurring the sales, manufacturers say, are smoking bans that have driven some players out of their usual haunts, plus new models of electronic boards that are not only safer (darts are plastic, not metal, and soft-tipped) but add computerized voices, flash lights when a bull's-eye is hit -- and tally up the score.

DMI Sports, based in Fort Washington, Pa., has seen a 15% increase in sales of dartboards this year, mostly for home models in the $79 to $200 price range. Mike McBride, co-owner of online retailer HorizonDarts.com, based in Kansas City, Kan., says the company has seen a 25% increase in sales this year in its electronic models. A big appeal: Players "don't have to know how to add or subtract."

Restaurant owners Rocco and Patricia Cusat in Hazleton, Pa., bought an elaborate $2,900 Arachnid Galaxy II model in August for their downstairs game room and now, says Mr. Cusat, it's getting more use than the room's pool table and videogame machines combined. After busy days, "We'll stay home and shoot darts," he says.

Jeremy Fipps, an employee at Ford Motor, says he and his friends started playing league darts at local pubs near St. Louis a few years ago and now he's hooked. To improve his game, his grandparents bought him a $150 Halex model for his birthday recently and now he practices nearly every day. Besides being "a cheap hobby," Mr. Fipps says, "It doesn't take much skill to throw a dart."

The sport of electronic darts has been growing in the U.S. The number of serious players -- those sanctioned by the National Dart Association in Indianapolis -- rose 6% this year, says executive director Leslie Murphy, to 59,077 players from 55,909. But revenue from coin-operated dartboards dropped last year, in part because leagues have been hard-hit by smoking bans.

So retailers from Sears, Roebuck to online ones like DartWorld.com and GameRoomsUSA.com are now selling home models: These include a $160 Harley-Davidson edition that roars like an engine when you hit a bull's-eye. Then there is the Arachnid Interactive 6000, with a heckler option ("You Stink!") But one drawback of the electronic models, says Sam Zammuto, vice president of marketing for Arachnid: "You can't cheat."

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