Henry Coates wins PDC Development Tour Event 23, beats Owen Bates 5–1

The verified result: Coates is the Event 23 champion

Henry Coates won PDC Development Tour Event 23 on Sunday 4 October 2026, defeating Owen Bates 5–1 in the final. This is not a projected result or a live-score placeholder: DartConnect’s completed results page names Coates champion and Bates finalist, while its match centre displays the final as a 5–1 scoreline. The official PDC account also described Coates as the winner of the penultimate 2026 Winmau Development Tour event and named Bates as the beaten finalist.[1] [2] [3]

The final’s listed three-dart averages were 97.41 for Coates and 89.55 for Bates. Those figures describe the final match, not the event-long performance figure displayed elsewhere in DartConnect’s results table, so they should not be swapped or treated as tournament averages. Independent reports from Darts Report and DartsNews match the score, opponents and final averages, providing a useful cross-check on the official live-scoring record.[2] [6] [7]

The date and city are secure: DartConnect labels the competition “PDC Development Tour 23” and dates it Sunday 4 October, while the PDPA event listing says “Wigan, 4 October 2026”. The PDPA listing does not name a specific playing hall. Darts Report and DartsNews call the location Robin Park Leisure Centre, but that detail is independently attributed here rather than elevated to an organiser-confirmed venue statement.[1] [5] [6] [7]

Coates’ route through the completed draw

The bracket shows that Coates played nine matches on his way to the title. His opening recorded wins were 4–2 against Declan Mainwaring and Liam McNeil, followed by a 4–1 defeat of Finn Behrens. He then beat Leo Howard 4–0, Lewy Williams 4–1 and James Beeton 4–1. These are completed bracket entries, so they are a clearer record of the route than a recollection assembled from isolated score updates.[2]

From the quarter-finals, the margins were tighter. Coates beat Keanu van Velzen 5–3, then overcame Tyler Thorpe by the same 5–3 score in the semi-finals. Bates reached the other side of the final by beating Jamai van den Herik 5–2. That established a Coates–Bates decider; it does not justify rewriting earlier-round scores, naming unverified checkout sequences or assigning a reason for any player’s defeat.[2]

The 5–1 final was therefore Coates’ ninth win of the event. Readers checking the draw should note that a score is expressed in legs, not sets: Coates won five legs and Bates one in the final. The bracket and match centre agree on the final score, the two semi-final pairings and the quarter-final outcomes, which is why those are the specific match facts reported here.[2]

Why the final was first to five legs

The Event 23 format explains why the early rounds have 4–x scores while the decisive stages have 5–x scores. The PDPA’s event information says matches were best of seven legs until the last eight, then best of nine for the quarter-finals, semi-finals and final. In practical terms, players needed four legs before the quarter-finals and five legs from the quarter-finals onward.[5]

Coates’ 5–3 quarter-final against van Velzen and 5–3 semi-final against Thorpe were both played under that later, best-of-nine format. So was the 5–1 final against Bates. This matters for readers comparing the scorelines: a 4–1 win over Beeton in the last 16 ended when Coates reached four, whereas the final could not be won with four legs.[2] [5]

The final averages add useful context but should remain precisely what the record says. Coates’ 97.41 was higher than Bates’ 89.55 in that one match; it is evidence of that final’s scoring rate, not proof of every dart thrown during the day or a substitute for the 5–1 result. The verified headline remains simple: Coates won the tournament and the final score was 5–1.[2] [7]

Prize money and what Event 23 does — and does not — settle

The PDPA lists a £20,000 prize fund for Event 23, with £3,000 to the winner and £2,000 to the runner-up. Semi-finalists were allocated £1,000, quarter-finalists £750, last-16 players £350, last-32 players £250 and last-64 players £100. On that published event schedule, Coates’ title carries the winner’s £3,000 allocation and Bates’ final places him in the runner-up allocation.[5]

The PDC’s own post called Event 23 the penultimate Winmau Development Tour title of 2026. That is important context but not a licence to state an ultimate season table or qualification outcome from this one result alone. A contemporaneous independent account placed Coates 11th on £9,050 after Event 23, but that was a post-Event-23 snapshot and should not be presented as a final end-of-season ranking.[3] [6]

For readers following the broader race, the sensible next check is the latest official PDC or DartConnect standings rather than a social-media graphic or a stale article table. This report establishes the Event 23 result, the final score and the stated prize allocation. It does not claim a final 2026 Development Tour Order of Merit, Tour Card status or World Championship qualification for Coates or any other player.[1] [5]

Where to check the result and the original records

The quickest primary check is DartConnect’s Event 23 results page: it identifies Coates as champion and Bates as finalist. Its separate match-centre page provides the final score, averages and the completed late-stage match list. The brackets page is particularly helpful for tracing Coates’ nine-match route because it preserves each head-to-head score across the draw.[1] [2]

The official PDC account corroborates the basic news line — Coates, Event 23, Wigan, Bates and 5–1 — but DartConnect remains the more detailed source for the match-by-match record used here. Darts Report and DartsNews provide independent confirmation of the final result, averages, event calendar and venue attribution. Agreement across those records supports the conclusion; it does not add unrecorded leg-by-leg drama.[2] [3] [6] [7]

The PDC’s Winmau Development Tour page was also checked because DartConnect links to it as Event Info. During this research session, its accessible response was dominated by a cookie-consent layer and did not yield a readable post-event result, so no score, venue or ranking claim in this article relies on that page. That limitation is disclosed rather than filled with inference.[4]

Date and time-zone clarity for readers in India

Event 23 took place on Sunday 4 October in Wigan. The United Kingdom was still on British Summer Time that day: GOV.UK lists the 2026 clock change back to Greenwich Mean Time on 25 October, not on the event weekend. British Summer Time is one hour ahead of UTC, so Wigan was operating at UTC+1 on 4 October.[5] [8]

India uses IST, UTC+5:30, throughout the year and does not observe daylight saving time. That made India four hours and 30 minutes ahead of Wigan on the date of the final. As a conversion example only, 18:00 BST would be 22:30 IST; it is not a claim that the final started or ended at either of those times.[8] [9]

Neither the DartConnect event header nor the records used for this report publishes a verified start or finish time for the Coates–Bates final. Accordingly, there is no precise Indian broadcast-time conversion to report after the fact. The reliable date remains 4 October in Wigan, while an India-based reader should use the four-and-a-half-hour difference only when interpreting a separately verified UK-local timestamp.[1] [2] [8] [9]

What is known, and what remains unreported

Known: Coates won Event 23, Bates was runner-up, the final was 5–1 and the final averages were 97.41 and 89.55 respectively. Known as well are Coates’ 5–3 wins over van Velzen and Thorpe in the last two rounds before the final, Bates’ 5–2 semi-final victory over van den Herik, the Wigan date and the published event prize fund. These are the facts anchored in the official scoring and organiser-side records.[1] [2] [5]

Not independently verified for this article are individual-leg checkout details, 180 totals, throw-by-throw momentum, exact final start and finish times, a named organiser-confirmed playing hall, and any claim that the result decided a final season ranking. Those omissions are deliberate. The final score and averages are enough to report the result accurately without adding colourful but unsupported statistics or retrospective qualification claims.[1] [2] [5]

For the reader who only needs the answer, it is Coates 5–1 Bates. For someone retracing the day, begin with the DartConnect results and match centre, then use the bracket for the route. For a wider 2026 Development Tour picture, check the latest official standings after all relevant events have been processed. That sequence keeps a verified result separate from details that can change or have not been publicly documented.[1] [2] [3]

For readers revisiting the result later, there is an important distinction between the final match record and the event-wide results list. The final match centre supplies the 5–1 score and two three-dart averages, while the event results page identifies the winner and runner-up across the whole competition. The bracket is the place to check the order of rounds and opponents. None of those sources establishes a detailed throw-by-throw account of every leg; reporting only what each record actually contains avoids turning a reliable scoreline into an unsupported narrative. If a later event changes the season-long Order of Merit, that would be a separate official standings update, not a correction to Coates’ Event 23 victory. [1] [2] [3]