Luke Littler stood at the top of the walk-on alley at the Alexander Palace, a stocky 16-year-old with five o’clock stubble and his hands in his pockets. By the look on his face, you couldn’t tell if he was about to make his debut at the World Championships or was waiting for a bag of chips. On stage, John McDonald was reaching the climax of his carnival barker’s routine. “It’s the sensational, Luke Littler,” he bellowed, introducing darts’ new rainmaker in language that would soon be hackneyed and washed-out.
Most of the party crowd at the Ally Pally are agnostic about darts. Many of them would have had no idea about the path Littler had scorched to reach the World Championships in such a hurry. They had never seen him before. His first opponent was Christian Kist, a veteran of the PDC circuit and a former world champion on the other main professional tour. Littler skittled him.
“That is astonishing,” roared Mark Webster on commentary. “Luke Littler has strolled up on stage and won his first ever set at the World Championships, averaging 110. Now you know his name!”
Shortly after nine o’clock this evening Littler will begin his second World Championships as the most famous darts player in the world. For the last year he has carried the sport on his shoulders, exciting new audiences and reaching out to a younger demographic, without meaning to do any of those things. He is the Roy of the Rovers of darts, and the Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Lionel Messi and Tom Brady.
Darts loves hyperbole. Littler will change that game too.
What he has accomplished this year, though, doesn’t need a lick of spin. He became the youngest player to win a PDC event and only the fourth player in the history of professional darts to win 10 trophies in one season. In the process, his earnings from prize money exceeded £1 million.
His World Championship final against Luke Humphries last January attracted an audience of 3.7 million, an extraordinary number for a subscription channel, and the most watched sports event on Sky – outside of football – in the broadcaster’s history.
Ticket sales for PDC events increased by 204 per cent. Tickets for the World Championships went on sale in midsummer and were sold out in 15 minutes. Over the course of the tournament, the Ally Pally can only hold 90,000 punters; Matchroom, who own the PDC, claim they could have sold 300,000 tickets.
How much of that is to do with Littler? Barry Hearn, one of sport’s most prolific hawkers and the president of Matchroom, would say: all of it. On Talksport recently he made the back-of-a-cigarette-box prediction that Littler can take darts to “another level in the stratosphere. I have broadcasters around the world queuing up, sponsors waiting to see what’s available. Rather than peter out, it is gaining momentum. I call it the Luke Littler Effect. The gift that keeps on giving.” Every word of that might be true.
Littler’s crossover appeal has been extraordinary. In the UK, he was the third most searched person on Google in 2024, behind only Kate Middleton and Donald Trump, but ahead of King Charles, and Keir Starmer, the monarch and the prime minister. His Instagram following grew from 4,000 to 1.2 million and he became a citizen of the TV chatshow circuit. On the Jonathan Ross Show a dart board was wheeled into the studio and all the other guests had a go after Littler.
On Tuesday night he was named the BBC’s Young Sports Personality of the Year, having also appeared on the shortlist for the main award. Phil Taylor, the greatest darts player of all-time, was nominated for the award twice, but he didn’t receive his first nomination until he had won 10 world titles. Littler hasn’t been world champion yet.
The Observer, another august institution of the British media, devoted an editorial to Littler last Sunday. “In a puritanical age of wellness, non-alcoholic drinks and going to the gym, an unlikely sport is thriving: darts,” wrote the Observer. “And at the very centre of this culture stands a kebab-loving hero for our times – Luke ‘The Nuke’ Littler.”
Forbes, the global business magazine, named Littler in their 30 under 30 for 2025. They zoomed in on his sponsorship deals with Skoda, Boohooman, Target Darts and Prestige Building Supplies. Paddy Power, who sponsor the World Championships and whose livery is plastered all over the Ally Pally, would no doubt love to have used Littler in their ad campaigns, but because he is still under 18, they are forbidden from doing so. That will change on January 21st.
“The world’s gone mad [for darts],” Littler was quoted as saying in Forbes. “It’s one of them sports where you’re standing there throwing some tungsten into a board and you’re winning yourself some money and you’re creating yourself some legacy.”
Fame and fortune on this scale, of this suddenness, is bound to wreak change. Littler has a small team to act as a filter against the demands on his time and a buffer for everything else: it consists of a manager, a media manager, and a security guard. His earnings land in a bank account to which he has no ready access, and he is given a monthly allowance. Martin Foulds, his manager, told The Times that if Littler wants to buy “an extravagance” he only has to ask.
Littler still lives with his parents. After he hit the headlines, and the jackpot, there was an attempted break-in at their council house in Warrington, so they moved to a five-bedroom pad with an indoor pool and enhanced security. This story reached the papers, just as his relationship break-up with Eloise Milburn was bounced around social media and news websites in July. For a 17-year-old it was another tax on his fame and fortune.
In darts, there has never been anyone like him, but there was also no other time when darts could have supported the possibility. In the first golden age of darts, 30 or 40 years ago, all the players were required to wear black trousers. Nicknames were optional. There was no music. Crowds of men sat at beer-filled tables and clapped. Cigarette smoke filled the venues like a Dickensian fog. There was scarcely a woman in sight.
And yet, a UK television audience of eight million watched Eric Bristow win his first world title in 1980; 10 million watched when he lost the final to the unheralded qualifier Keith Deller three years later, in one of darts’ great fairytales.
“It was a magnificent subculture,” said the late Sid Waddell, the poet laureate of darts commentary. “Keith Deller’s mum used to fry chips with one hand and throw darts with the other. Jockey Wilson would bring his own optic to tournaments and a bottle of vodka with his name on it. He’d win darts matches when he should have been in intensive care.”
Terrestrial TV had sidelined darts when Hearn took over the PDC in 2001 and turned it into a travelling circus. About 10 years later, William O’Connor from Limerick, started showing up at PDC events. “There wasn’t as much money in it when I started,” says O’Connor. “To be honest with you, I don’t know why I even played. It wasn’t really worth it. I don’t know – it was a dose of madness. But look, a few pound has gone into it since.”
O’Connor is inside the world’s top 50 and has been a good player for a long time. But he has never quite broken into the world’s top 32 and that is where the riches lie. Those players are guaranteed a spot at the World Championships, and the glamorous, big money events that increasingly populate Sky’s schedule throughout the year. Everybody else must scrap for one of the qualifying spots.
Away from the TV tournaments, though, the bread and butter of the pro circuit are the Players’ Championships, where 64 players chase a first prize of £15,000 and crucial world ranking points. Over the course of the season 30 of these events are held with nobody watching. First-round losers go home empty-handed.
“Every time you go to a tournament it costs about 1,500 or 1,800 quid,” says O’Connor. “If you don’t win a minimum of three games you’re losing money every time. It would cost you about 20 grand a year just to go and play tournaments.
“Just because you’re working your nuts off doesn’t mean you’re earning anything. You have to win. And when you’re putting in that kind of effort [practising and travelling] and you’re not winning, you say, ‘Why am I doing this? What’s it for?’
“Then comes the psychological side of it. Your mind starts playing tricks on you and it becomes a bit soul-destroying. There were several times [over the years] that I was leaving the game only for Robert Mulcahy and other lads kept me going.”
For Hearn, and the players at the top of the game, though, this is a boom-time. The Telegraph reported last month that Neflix and Amazon were both trying to leverage darts away from Sky. Hearn says that Saudi Arabia approached him about relocating the world championships to Riyadh. He asked them if the punters could drink alcohol. They said no. “I said, ‘Well then, you can’t have darts.’” Hearn said.
The cramped 3,500 capacity of Ally Pally, though, is costing them money and Hearn is clearly agitated. Next year’s tournament has been expanded to 128 players so that they can add four extra days of play, which amounts to eight sessions and 25,000 more tickets. There is another hall at the venue that can hold 6,000 people but “it needs a lot of work,” says Hearn. Sooner or later, they will move somewhere bigger.
In the meantime, Littler returns to the place where his rocket launched. All the players have a walk-on song; Littler’s is Green Light by Pitbull, featuring Flo Rida. “You’ve only got one life and we’re going to live it up,” the chorus goes. “So, give me the green light and I’m ready to go.”
Every light has been green.
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