You do not expect a Players Championship final to be derailed by a basketball team. That is exactly what happened in Den Bosch on Tuesday, and Gian van Veen was not having it.
The Dutch world No.3 was already fighting an uphill battle against Cameron Menzies in the Players Championship 29 final at the Maaspoort. Then the noise started leaking through from the next room. Van Veen got visibly annoyed. He asked referee Franz Engerer to stop the match and do something about it.
PDC commentator Dan Dawson spelled out what was going on. “I am told it’s a game of basketball. This is a different venue that we are playing in from previous visits. There is a basketball team and they are playing in the next room. That has evidently annoyed Gian.”
That is a sentence you do not hear every week on the ProTour. Darts halls are usually quiet enough that you can hear a flight scrape the board. Here, a basketball game was bouncing along next door while two professionals were trying to finish a final for £15,000.
Menzies still won 8-4. He raced into a 5-0 lead and never really let Van Veen settle. The Scot averaged about 96.77. Van Veen managed only 89.16. Those numbers tell you the basketball was not the only problem. But it was the problem that made the night feel ridiculous.
Van Veen had earned that final the hard way. He came through Tommy Morris, Daniel Klose, Darius Labanauskas, Nathan Aspinall, Chris Dobey and William O’Connor. That is a proper day’s work. Against O’Connor in the semi-final he was clinical enough on the doubles to get over the line 7-5. Then he walked into a final that started badly and got noisier.
This was his first ProTour final in a while and a chance at a first ranking title since March 2025. He left with £10,000 and another reminder that reaching the last two is not the same as winning it. Menzies collected his second Players Championship of the year and the fourth of his career. Fair play to him. He played like a man who did not care what was happening in the next hall.
The Maaspoort is hosting a midweek double-header. Players Championship 30 is on today in the same building. Van Veen has already withdrawn after Tuesday’s long run. You can understand why. Eight matches in a day, a 5-0 hole in the final, and a basketball soundtrack is enough for anyone.
This is the part that matters more than the punchline. Van Veen is 24, already a European champion, already a World Championship runner-up, already the Dutch No.1. He is good enough to win these events. He is also good enough to get distracted when the conditions are wrong. Asking the referee to stop play was not a tantrum. It was a player saying the job cannot be done properly if the room next door sounds like a gym.
Darts people will split on this. Some will say get on with it. Floor events have always had odd acoustics, thin walls, chatter from other boards. Others will say a final deserves better than sharing a venue with a basketball team. Dawson noting it was a different setup from previous visits suggests the PDC and the hall did not quite have the sound under control.
Engerer was in a no-win spot. He cannot walk next door and tell a basketball team to keep it down forever. He also cannot pretend a player of Van Veen’s level is imagining the noise. Stopping play, even briefly, at least showed the complaint had been heard.
Menzies deserves the last word on the darts. He has had a rough stretch in his career, including a moment earlier this year when he damaged his hand after punching a table following a World Championship exit. He talked afterwards about putting more effort in because he nearly lost it all. Winning this title in someone else’s building, against the home favourite, with a basketball game rumbling through the wall, fits that story.
Van Veen now turns towards the World Grand Prix next week, where he is third seed and opens against Dirk van Duijvenbode in the double-in, double-out format. That event will be on a proper stage with a proper crowd. No basketball. If he is still thinking about Tuesday, that is the wrong movie.
The wider picture is familiar. Van Veen keeps getting close without landing the weekly titles that would make 2026 look like the year he confirmed himself as Littler’s main rival. A World Championship final in January raised the bar. Nights like Tuesday keep moving the bar just out of reach.
Should a Players Championship final be stopped because of noise from another sport? In a perfect world the venues would be sealed off and nobody would have to ask. In the real world, players have a right to throw without a bounce-pass soundtrack. Van Veen was right to speak up. He was also right that speaking up does not put darts in the treble 20.
The story will live as a clip and a joke. That is fine. Just do not miss the actual point. A top player in a final asked an official to halt play because the building was being used for two sports at once. That is a logistics problem, not a character one.
If you were on the oche, would you have kept throwing? Or would you have done what Van Veen did and told the referee the noise had to stop? That is the argument worth having, because the next time a ProTour final shares a wall with another event, someone else will face the same choice.