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“Definitely,” Stephen Bunting says as he considers whether working so hard as a darts player on social media is like making a deal with the devil. After Luke Littler, the prodigiously gifted teenage world champion, Bunting is the most heavily marketed player in darts. But, over the past year, some of his success on and off the oche has been accompanied by vicious abuse.
Bunting has had death threats and he recently moved his eldest son to a private school to end the bullying which had hounded 14‑year‑old Toby, who often shares his social media space. But Bunting remains amiable and happy to reflect on his Faustian pact during a lucrative rollercoaster ride through darts.
On a quiet Thursday afternoon in St Helens, in a friendly little bookshop, we’re not about to go Bunting Mental, as one of the famous chants associated with him always promises. His trademark walk-on song, Titanium, is also briefly on pause as Bunting reflects on the downside of being so widely known.
“We found that out more from X. It’s a very toxic platform, and it doesn’t take long for one dart to go wrong and people are saying: ‘Oh, I want my £50 back for my bet.’ So we came off X. I’m still there as a presence but I’m not messaging. Instagram and TikTok have been brilliant and you very rarely see any toxicity there.”
As he promotes his new book, Bulletproof: From Pub to Palace, My Life in Darts, Bunting is being tracked by Jack, a young man with a video camera. They ask if I am happy to be filmed for Bunting’s YouTube channel and I decline, politely, as I’d prefer to focus on our interview.
A consequence of the relentless exposure is that Bunting is increasingly famous. “We did a book signing in Blackpool yesterday,” the 41-year-old from Merseyside says. “By the time we got out of the car, three or four people were saying: ‘It’s Stephen Bunting. What are you doing here?’ It was crazy. We went to New York and a policeman stopped me and said: ‘Oh, you’re the guy with the walk‑on.’ Not: ‘You’re the dart player.’ You can feel darts is getting bigger worldwide. With ESPN signing a five-year deal in America, that’s only going to increase the profile of the sport over there. It’s the same in China and Japan. So it’s important to showcase our sport across the world and I’d love to be part of that.”
Life has changed radically. “I definitely get stopped quite a bit. When I go round the Trafford Centre [in Manchester] with my family I’ve got 10 or 15 kids following me. The missus and the lads don’t mind as long as we’re not eating. If you’re in a restaurant, and people come over to you, it can be quite annoying. Apart from that, I embrace it all. It shows I’m doing something right and, yes, the socials are part of that. I do this for the fans as well as my family.”
In today’s online world, some of those fans are capricious and cruel, as Bunting discovered when, during the world championship last December, he described himself as the people’s champion. “After I won my first-round match,” Bunting says of his narrow victory against Sebastian Bialecki, “you get dragged into the back where the press are and I was asked how I was going to cope with my next opponent, [India’s] Nitin Kumar, as he’s got a big fanbase. I said: ‘Well, I’m the people’s champion’ as I’ve been called that by Sky, ITV and other channels. That was a tongue‑in‑cheek comment but my socials blew up.”
That vitriol darkened when, after beating Kumar, he endured a shock third-round defeat against the then world No 63 James Hurrell. Raging gamblers piled in on Bunting, who had been seeded fourth. “We had death threats being inboxed,” he says. “It was horrendous. Still to this day, we can’t understand how it all came to that.”
The online attacks were also directed against his son, who looks so like him, and Bunting says: “It was very hurtful because people were saying so many nasty things about Toby. With me not doing so well he was also being bullied at school. So I ended up putting him in private school and he’s flourishing now. But I’ll never mention the people’s champion again.”
Bunting laughs ruefully but he still believes in the power of social media. “Toby takes things to heart but he’s a lovely kid. When I was playing in Australia a few weeks ago, people were saying: ‘Oh, have you brought your son with you? We’re big fans.’ I don’t think Toby realises how many fans he’s got for doing YouTube stuff with me. I tell him to be more social on socials, but obviously we keep an eye on the comments, or turn them off.”
Toby is showing considerable promise in darts and Bunting says: “I would like him to become [a professional] but I won’t push him. I’ll be a mentor.”
The threat of hostility remains. I ask Bunting how he will cope if online abuse spills over into the booing which often stalks Gerwyn Price. “There hasn’t been too much hostility,” Bunting replies, “but it’s not nice. I remember a match years ago in the Premier League in Glasgow against Peter Wright. He was wearing a Scotland shirt and I ended up drawing the game six-all after I’d been 6-1 up. I’ve never heard anything like it. My chest was literally beating with the boos and it was horrendous. I just wanted to get off the stage.”
Bunting feels confident that “everything has calmed down” since his people’s champion comment and he won’t ease off on his merchandising opportunities. “Most of my merchandise, like my darts and my shirt, is through Target. But we do little bits ourselves. Obviously I’ll be selling the book on my website, and then I’ve got cups and T-shirts and these little plushies.”
He and his manager, Mark Dean, show me the new Bunting toy which is, he says, “a plush little teddy whose face looks like mine”, adding: “I got 600 last year and we sold them so fast.”
Dean says “they went in an hour and crashed the website, adding: “This year we’re trying to use pre-orders to avoid that.”
Bunting adds: “The merchandise keeps the missus busy because we do everything from home. I’m also bringing a new channel out on YouTube for my football cards. Toby’s going to be involved with that as well. I’ve got quite a big collection of football cards and I think that channel will do well.”
Amid the hustling, Bunting maintains a relentless playing schedule. He is often away on the European Tour and spent the past two weekends playing in Budapest and Prague. But it’s rather endearing that, when he can, the world No 10 still plays local league darts on Tuesday nights. “I’ve not played a league game for at least a month-and-a-half,” Bunting concedes, “because at the end of the Premier League I’ve been so busy with the book, exhibitions and other commitments.”
The lowest moment of Bunting’s darts career happened in the humble surroundings of a local league match when he was so bereft of form and confidence that he lost 3-0 against an amateur. “It was five and a half years ago. I remember being in the pub and when I get nervous I get really cold hands. This particular night my hands were freezing. I couldn’t hit nothing and as soon as it was over I rang my manager at the time and said: ‘If I don’t get help I’m going to walk away from the sport.’”
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Bunting writes that, in despair, he would return from an event and: “I’d head straight up to my bedroom. I’d get into bed and lock the door. I felt completely useless. I was in my own dark world.”
He tells me how he also racked up £90,000 in gambling debts. “It was crazy. I was playing these online fruit machines and obviously you don’t realise what you’re doing. It’s only £1 a spin – but there were a lot of £1 spins. When [his partner] Keila received the bank statement I thought: ‘Oh no!’ But I didn’t realise how bad it was until she actually showed me. I was devastated. I’ve never, ever done that again.”
Bunting had plummeted to the point “where I seriously considered giving up darts and getting a proper job”. He says: “I was on the internet and looking in job centres. I could work in retail or go and work back at the council. I couldn’t cope any more.”
During his previous job at the council he had, in his early 20s, distributed incontinence pads to care homes. “I jokingly said it was a shit job but it was good. I was surrounded by nice people.”
Five years ago a sports psychologist and a hypnotherapist helped to rebuild Bunting’s shattered confidence and, slowly, he began to play well again. He still uses hypnotherapy – “sometimes twice a week if I’m going into a big tournament, or if things have not gone my way”.
Life is very different now but those past experiences help to ground Bunting. He also pays tribute to his best friend, Drew, who works in a morgue. “He’s been a real support but I don’t think I could do what he does. Being around dead people is not my idea of fun.”
Do they talk much about Drew’s work? “Very rarely. He’ll just say how cold it is in the room or how many dead people are in it.”
Littler is another good friend and, with Michael Owen, they own a racehorse together. It’s yet to make its debut but the name of the horse, Bunting Mental, prompts me to ask if he is just a little sick of his walk‑on routine to Titanium, that ubiquitous song by Sia and David Guetta? “I hear it at least 20 times a day because it’s my ringtone and my alarm. So it goes off a lot when I snooze in the morning. But it’s still one of my favourite songs. Sometimes, when you’re at the darts and you feel a bit flat, as soon as that music hits you’re straight up for the match. You get on stage, do your orchestrating and the crowd sing it back to you. There’s no better feeling in darts.”
Will he always walk out into the heaving throng with Titanium booming around him? “Oh, 100%.”
But, as Bunting admits: “Darts is getting harder now. The calibre of play is better every year. You’ve got young kids coming through these academies, averaging 100 already and they’re only 15. We’re going to see a wave of Luke Littlers and it’s going to be challenging.”
Bunting still feels hopeful that he can play elite-level darts for another 10 years. “People don’t want to just watch a load of robots with their back to the board. Obviously, everyone wants to see the big scores but it’s really important to have a bit of character and personality about you. I think that’s definitely why, over the last few years, I’ve gained so many fans.”
Bulletproof: From Pub to Palace, My Life in Darts by Stephen Bunting is published on 10 September (HarperNorth)
