WORLD darts champion Phil Taylor will be playing in front of a sell-out audience in Kidderminster in April.

He will be joining six other top professionals at the Glades Arena for the seventh round of the 888.com Premier League Darts tournament, which is on a five-month nationwide tour.

The 550 tickets for the evening, on Thursday, April 28, sold out in just two hours, making it the fastest-selling event at the Kidderminster venue.

The sport has such a huge following across the country that there was massive interest once darts websites and Sky Sports, which is televising the evening, announced tickets were on sale.

People travelled hundreds of miles to make sure of a seat and one fan made the trip from Blackpool to buy 50.

The star-studded darts night, in association with the Shuttle/Times & News, will be staged little more than two months after world snooker champion Ronnie O'Sullivan and three other world-ranked players took centre stage.

The darts league brings seven of the world's top 10 players to Wyre Forest for a £150,000 league competition which started at Stoke in January and finishes at Bradford in May. Joining world champion Taylor on the oche at the Glades will be Colin Lloyd, Peter Manley, John Part and Roland Scholten, who are ranked two, three, four and five in the world. Wayne Mardle, ranked eighth and Mark Dudbridge, 10th, complete the line-up.

The league offers a prize of £50,000 to the eventual winner and £30,00 to the runner-up. The players will face each other in 12-game matches over 501 at Kidderminster.

Live television coverage of the action will be beamed across the world by Sky Sports between 7pm and 11pm.