Ronnie O'Sullivan wins Eurosport Snooker's 9-dart challenge at the Alexandra Palace

The Alexandra Palace is one of London’s most famous and recognisable venues that has been home to several big sporting events down the years.

Every year since 2007/08, the PDC World Darts Championship has been held there over the Christmas and New Year period, with the recent 2024/25 edition won by teenager Luke Littler after he defeated Michael van Gerwen in the final on January 3rd.

Just several days later, the ‘Ally Pally’ arena was transformed for the 50th anniversary staging of the Masters - snooker’s most prestigious invitational event.

The iconic venue has firmly established itself as the home of the Masters, having held the tournament every year (except for 2021 due to the Covid pandemic) since 2012.

Both the BBC and Eurosport covered the 2025 Masters, with live televised coverage and analysis throughout the eight days in the capital city.

Eurosport - who had studio pundits O’Sullivan, Jimmy White, Alan McManus and Reanne Evans during the event - decided to have a little bit of fun with some of the players, setting up a dartboard and a 9-dart challenge to see how many total points they could each score against each other.

Eight contestants participated - O’Sullivan, Trump, Wilson, Evans, Mark Allen, Mark Selby, Shaun Murphy and Neil Robertson - and it was eventual Masters title winner Murphy who quipped that he may have had something to do with the challenge being created given his recent comments about the 147, 9-darter, hole-in-one debate.

He may not have been playing snooker there that week, but O’Sullivan - who is no stranger to winning at the Alexandra Palace - was happy to have a few throws, and with a total score of 205 across his three visits to the oche, ‘The Rocket’ finished top of the leaderboard and took the spoils amongst his peers.

With his first dart of the challenge, O’Sullivan hit treble 20, and scored 98 with his first visit. He followed that up with scores of 53 and 54 to be the only thrower to break the 200-point mark.

Mark Allen hit two treble 20s in his opening visit of 125, while Mark Selby kept his darts straight when scoring exactly a ton with his opening visit.

To watch the whole video, please visit the Eurosport Snooker YouTube channel here.