Interactive Dartboard Hire From £785 ex VAT. Package prices available.

Manufacturer: FidoDarts.

Interactive dartboard hire - also called interactive darts hire, digital dartboard hire or auto-scoring darts - keeps the familiar bristle board but adds a screen that records the score. Players can get on with throwing, and the screen does the adding up that paper scoresheets used to slow down.

The units are FidoDarts machines: the automatic-scoring steel-tip system built for darts venues and competitions. A camera system reads where each dart lands, so the scoring is automatic and honest, and each freestanding unit has a Winmau Blade dartboard in an illuminated numbered surround, with a monitor and controls below it. The cabinets are black on some sets and white on others, so the boards you get may not match the photos here exactly. The menu includes several game modes, with 301 and 501 among those shown on the machines. We can run individual or team rounds, keep a leaderboard or organise a small tournament, depending on how much time you have and how many people need a go.

How the hire works

Our own crew delivers the dartboards and sets them up, and we can supply an operator for the session if you want the scoring and the competition format run for you. The score updates on screen after each throw, and the different modes give us room to fit the format around the event, so we're not stuck running the same competition all day.

One board is from £785 plus VAT, and two boards at the same event go out for £1,495, which is the cheaper way to run head-to-head games or keep a bigger rotation moving.

For exhibitions and brand activations, we can add a logo, colours, campaign artwork or an event message to the board and screen. If you want the boards branded, include that in the enquiry and tell us what artwork you have - the branding page lists the other pieces in the fleet that take a print.

Where interactive darts work

Darts doesn't take a long briefing, and the score is visible to the player and anyone watching. That makes these boards a useful fit for corporate events and team building, office parties, exhibition stands, weddings and private parties, festivals, college and university events and freshers fairs. They can run as a casual game alongside the rest of the room or as a competition with a leaderboard. For a company induction for over 500 delegates in Kensington the boards ran alongside air hockey, shuffleboard, table tennis and crazy golf, laid out so people could drift between the stations.

If you're putting together a larger games area, Under Pressure gives you a reaction challenge and the Digital Wheel of Fortune works for prize rounds. The interactive darts page gathers the boards with the scoring leaderboards that run alongside them, the full electronic games range has the other scored and screen-based games, and our exhibition games and college and university event hire pages cover the usual event formats.

Planning the setup

Each cabinet measures 8ft by 8.5ft and stands 7.2ft tall, and each one needs a floor space of 8.2ft by 7.9ft with 7.3ft of headroom. The board needs a clear throwing lane in front of the cabinet as well as access to power. Send us the room or stand measurements, access route, socket positions, timings and expected numbers, and tell us whether you want a casual game, a leaderboard or a branded competition. We'll confirm the number of boards, operating space and final arrangement on the quote.

We have run Monster Event Hire since 2002 and operate from a commercial unit in Havant. The equipment is ours, the electrics are PAT-tested annually, and we carry £10 million public liability insurance, with risk assessments and method statements available. We deliver across Hampshire, Surrey, West Sussex and London. Send us the venue and date through the enquiry form and we'll check what is available.