Around a quarter of all tickets for the world championship were sold to visitors from Germany. How did a country with no world-class player get hooked?

They walk among us, sit among us, sing among us. They speak perfect English, hunt in packs, down industrial quantities of Amstel just like everyone else. And yet to the trained eye, to the seasoned Ally Pally veteran, there is just something different to them. A comportment and a vibe. Perhaps the fact they speak perfect English. You can even spot a subtle distinction in the choice of fancy dress; fewer jockeys and 118 118 runners, more woodland animals and flag suits, less postmodern ironic and more Euro-kitsch. They come, mostly, in love and peace. Even so, the divide is real. Enmity? Perhaps a bit strong. Either way: don’t tell them your name, Pike.

Slowly and by degrees, the Germans are coming. At first in small scattered groups and landing parties, then larger expeditions, and then finally the full-scale mass incursion. A battery of tour buses spills the latest recruits up the steps and into the Palace. Package excursions sell out months in advance. Around a quarter of all tickets for this year’s world championship have been sold in Germany, rising to as many as a third for some sessions. Why are they here? What do they want? And how did a country that has never produced a world-class player of its own get so thoroughly hooked on the darts?

Back at the PDC world championship for the first time since 2022, the women’s world champion means business, starting on Friday against the world No 22

“When I was younger, they thought I was a mute,” Beau Greaves says with a wry smile, thinking about all the ways darts has changed her. “Never said owt in school, really shy. Didn’t really know what to say half the time. I suppose playing darts just brought me out of my shell. When you get popular, people want to meet you and talk. It’s matured me.”

Greaves was 18 the first time she won the Lakeside women’s world championship, thrusting herself firmly into the crosshairs of public adulation. And even if she played like a natural-born star, with her beautiful fluid throwing arc, she didn’t always feel like one. Endless interviews, viral fame, global domination: this was never what she had craved from the sport. She was Beau, and she just wanted to throw.

Some monikers are a perfect fit for the audience and reflect a player’s style of play; others are just too hot for TV

It’s September 2017, and a humble Challenge Tour quarter-final at the Robin Park Leisure Centre in Wigan is about to change the course of darting history. Luke Humphries and Martin Lukeman are two promising young throwers making their way on the Professional Darts Corporation’s second-tier tour, dreaming of the big time. But there’s one problem.

Humphries has styled himself “Cool Hand”, based on the 1967 Paul Newman film that to date he has still never watched. Lukeman, meanwhile, has decided to call himself “Cool Man”: less catchy, doesn’t really scan, but still just about works. And though the pair are firm friends, when the draw in Wigan pits them against each other, they decide that this best-of-nine match will settle matters once and for all. Winner gets the nickname. Loser has to think of something else.

The Guardian's Jonathan Liew visits the World Darts Championships at Alexandra Palace to explore how the game went from the working men's clubs to the world stage, what the next 10 years looks like, and how it continues to have a ever-developing cultural impact around the world