Every football fan on the planet knows of the Ballon d’Or, with players desperate for the recognition that will come with being handed the trophy by the French magazine France Football every year.
The record number of wins of the famous trophy belongs to Lionel Messi, who has won it eight times, three more than Cristiano Ronaldo. The news of there being an award called the Ballon d’Art might have led some to believe that the Portuguese star had created his own award in order to be able to have more of them than his Argentinian rival, when in fact it has nothing to do with football at all.
The question is, what on earth is it?
Blame Paddy Power
As is so often the case when it comes to something that feels a bit like a stunt, you don’t have to look much further than the press releases of the bookmaker Paddy Power to be able to find your answer.
It was at the conclusion of the 2024 PDC World Championships that the trophy was seen for the first time, awarded to Luke Humphries moments after he’d defeated teenage sensation Luke Littler in one of the most incredible finals of recent times. Not long after having hoisted the World Championship trophy above his head, Humphries had to engage all of his muscles in order to lift up an oversized trophy given to him by the bookie.
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That trophy was the ‘Ballon d’Art’, which Paddy Power had created as a prize to be given to the player who managed to achieve the most 180s during the course of the tournament. We aren’t kidding when we said that Humphries needed to engage his muscles either, with the trophy itself standing at 84 centimetres in height and weighing 16 kilograms.
The base itself is made of solid oak and boasts a 24-carat gold-plated aluminium plate on both the top and the bottom of it. There are then three 24-carat gold-plated darts, topped with three 3D-printed flights that have also been sprayed gold, standing on top of an acrylic section of the dartboard.
They Did It For Prostate Cancer UK
The Irish bookmaker has long been known for silly stunts, from making a statue of ‘Roy the Redeemer’ to stand on the White Cliffs of Dover before the 2012 European Championship, through to sending a group of adult-sized babies around London as the world waited to find out what Prince William and Kate Middleton would be naming their baby.
When the oversized trophy appeared, complete in its golden glory, at the World Championships, therefore, not a lot of people were all that surprised. In actual fact, this has been about more than just Paddy Power persuading people to spend money on their betting accounts, instead offering an important message.
The idea is to raise both money for Prostate Cancer UK, as well as highlighting the existence of the condition. Alongside the trophy, Paddy Power also committed to donating £1,000 to the charity for every 180 that was thrown during the tournament.
Given the fact that 914 were thrown in the 2023-2024 tournament and more than 1,000 went in a year later, it’s fair to say that the Irish bookmaker was essentially saying that they’d donate in the region of £1 million to Prostate Cancer UK every time the tournament takes place. Not only that, but the very existence of the trophy means that a huge number of people will learn about the disease.
It Doesn’t Make Sense, But That Doesn’t Matter
One thing that darts lovers were quick to point out was that the name of the trophy doesn’t actually make any sense. It is designed to be a pun on the Ballon d’Or, with the marketing team at Paddy Power deciding that the use of the word ‘dart’ within the title somewhere was more important than getting any translations correct.
When translated, Ballon d’Or means ‘Ball of Gold’, so ‘Ballon d’Art’ essentially means ‘ball of art’. That obviously isn’t what Paddy Power will have been aiming for, instead hoping that they were calling it the ‘Golden Dart’. Not that anyone at either Paddy Power or Prostate Cancer UK will have cared all that much.
Do Paddy Power know what Ballon D’Art translates to? 🤦🏻♂️
— Craig Ford (@FordytenCraig) January 3, 2024
When ‘Cool Hand’ Luke Humphries won the trophy in the first year that it was available, he donated some of his own money to the cause too. He said, “My father-in-law has battled prostate cancer, he went and got it checked out early, so this is a close thing to my heart.” That money, given each year thanks to a ‘stunt’ from Paddy Power, will be used to diagnose men sooner and fund lifesaving research.
It is the most common of the cancers that men suffer from, with one in eight getting diagnosed with the issue. If that can be done with a giant gold trophy, then long may the Ballon d’Art be awarded, even if its name makes no sense.
