The Littler Factor: What has his success done for darts?

Jonathan Victoria • 09 Oct 2024 Features

Darts’ newest star is at the forefront of the sport.

It’s coming up to a year since Luke ‘The Nuke’ Littler emerged onto the scene; the young 16-year-old sensationally beating many top talents in the darts world, most of which double his age, on the way to an unprecedented finals appearance during the 2024 World Darts Championship (WDC).

During those two and a half weeks of action, everyone seemed to keep up with his success story, stunning the nation in a way no other player has ever done.

Sure, there have been some incredible players; Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor was always a draw due to his insane penchant for winning, but he wasn’t doing it while still at school - or supposed to be, in Littler’s case.

Since his sensational run last December, Littler has continued to dazzle, becoming a serial winner and even coming away as the champion in his debut Premier League Darts campaign.

With all his success, we wanted to take a closer look at what he has done for the sport as a whole, exploring not just the rise in popularity and viewership numbers, but also the challenges and opportunities that he will face as he continues on his rise as one of Britain’s brightest sporting talents.

Popularity and Viewership

There’s no doubting that Luke Littler’s success story has been a key factor in darts' overal rise in popularity in the last 12 months.

Don’t be mistaken into thinking it has come out of nowhere, though. There had to be a platform for the sport in the first place for it to experience the boom in viewers like it has experienced recently.

Darts has been a popular pastime for many, not just in the UK but around Europe mainly but even across the globe. In every pub, you are likely to find a darts board in one corner, but in terms of the professional game, there are players from all over.

We also mentioned a name earlier, Phil Taylor, who could be seen as the originator of darts’ popularity. The legend won 214 professional tournaments over his career, including a record 85 major titles and 16 World Championships. He was a delight to watch and although almost every match with him was a foregone conclusion, it was still entertaining to witness.

But Littler is the modern-day star, the draw the sport needed in its efforts to bring it towards the forefront of the sporting world.

World Darts Championship viewing figures

The 2020/21 World Darts Championship was a major success for the competition and the sport as a whole, breaking records across the globe for viewing figures.

Here in the UK, Sky Sports is the broadcaster with the rights to the competition, and across the 16 days of play that year, they saw their best viewing figures ever, including a 1.25 million peak and an average of one million viewers for the final - solid numbers for the competition that saw some thrilling contests throughout, warranting its attention.

Two years later comes little old Littler, 16 years old and competing in his first World Darts Championship.

Credit: Luke Littler | Route to the Final | 2023/24 World Darts Championship (Professional Darts Corporation, YouTube)

Throughout his tournament, he was matched up against many top players, including former champions. That didn’t matter, though, as he eased past each opponent on the way to the finals, setting records that may never be beaten. 

And not just records due to his age, but viewing records. His quarter-final match against Brendan Dolan had a peak of 1.4 million viewers, making it the most-watched quarter-final ever in the PDC World Darts Championship on Sky Sports. Bear in mind, that’s a quarter-final match beating the viewing numbers for the final just two years prior.

The same went for his semi-final victory over former champion Rob Cross, which averaged 1.79 million viewers and a peak of 2.32 million.

For comparison, that viewing peak was up 165% compared to the most-watched 2023 semi-final, as well as 106% on the previous semi-final record, which came in 2017, and 40% up on the previous overal record, which was seen in the 2015 final with 1.65 million.

When he reached the final, it seemed like everyone was tuning in - and it kind of was like that. With a peak audience of 3.71 million viewers, the PDC World Darts Championship 2024 final became the most-watched non-soccer event in Sky Sports history.

For more comparison, that peak was a 143% increase on the final’s peak the year prior, which saw Michael Smith hoist the championship trophy aloft after beating Michael van Gerwen.

Over the course of the 2023/24 tournament, Sky Sports witnessed unrivalled audience numbers, bringing in a total audience of 4.8 million people, making it the most-watched darts event ever on Sky.

Social media figures

Of course, in the modern era, it's not just TV viewing numbers that matter, but engagement and viewership on social media is equally as important, maybe even more so in order to reach an even wider and new audience.

Sky Sports saw a massive uptake in viewers to their account and content, with their video of the final clocking up 27.6 million views across their social channels just on the night of the event.

The Sky Sports Darts Twitter/X account saw record numbers as well, experiencing 149.1 million impressions across the tournament and 9.9 million video views of content around the final alone.

To give context for how many more views that was, in 2023 there were 16.5 million views for the entire tournament.

Instagram also got in on the high views, racking up 11.8 million video views. Facebook saw a total reach of 10.2 million accounts, while the Sky Sports website and app saw 2.44 million following the live blog - the year prior saw 648,000 people following, so an increase of 307% in 2024.

With all that said, it should be fair to say that Littler was the driving force behind these numbers, with the vast majority of these social posts plus the matches on TV’s viewing figures showing the young star and his improbable journey to the final.

Impact on the Sport

Darts has always been a fairly popular sport, so it wouldn’t be fair to say that Littler is the sole reason why people are watching. As the numbers prior to the 2023/24 World Darts Championship in the above section show, people have always tuned in for the tournament, and the same goes for any of the major darts competitions.

But it may be fair to say Littler has changed people's general thoughts on darts culture. What was seen previously as a simple pub game is now so popular that it was reported shortly after the WDC 2024 final that boards, darts and flights were selling out at retailers such as Amazon and Argos.

History & heritage

Iconic darts figures such as Eric Bristow and Jacky Wilson were the top standard in their days, performing at the highest level during the 1980s. They’d dominate a tournament, playing each match to perfection all while chugging beer and chuffing cigarettes.

This became the perception of darts players; because the top players were winning so casually as if they were hustling patrons at their local, people from the outside decided that was how all darts players must be.

It took Barry Hearn, the renowned promoter of snooker and boxing and father of Eddie Hearn, to lead a breakaway from the British Darts Organisation, the leading governing body in the UK, and form the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) which still presides over the sport to this day.

The PDC brought true competition to the sport, allowing players to compete throughout the year and make a living from the sport.

It could be said that Phil Taylor legitimised PDC darts, along with the other players who joined the breakaway organisation. Taylor though was at the forefront due in large part to being the best, winning a record amount of events and showing that darts is a sport to take seriously.

It also moved away from the perception of being a pub game, even on the highest level. These top-level pros were proper sports stars with incredible skill, even if they didn’t look like your typical athlete.

Present day icons

Darts did go through something of a lull for a bit during the 2010s, though. The audience was there and enjoying the spectacle, but outside of those already watching, there didn’t seem to be any reason to tune in.

That began to change around 2020 though when another name was making history. The “Queen of the Palace” Fallon Sherrock began peaking people's interest when she became the first female player to win a match during the 2019 PDC World Championships. 

Her victory in the first round, and her subsequent victory in the second round (also a first), made people take notice. Following her third-round exit, Barry Hearn commented saying that the match saw the highest TV audience ever for an afternoon session [during the PDC World Championships].

Her influence during the tournament continued, as that was the year that first broke Sky Sports audience records for the competition, mainly the biggest audience during the semi-finals in the history of darts.

This whole piece very well could’ve been the Fallon effect as she continued breaking boundaries for women in darts and piquing people’s interest in the sport once again. But while she gained some solid interest back, Littler brought the boom.

The level of competition over the past few years has also helped create a highly competitive space at the top. While it typically is the same names you see winning, the matches between each of them are more often than not special.

That includes Littler, who has come in at 16 years old and is just as competitive as the lot of them. Never mind he’s only been a pro for just under two years, he has been good enough to take on all of the best and even beat them on multiple occasions.

Never before has a player so young been so successful. While it simply could be seen that Littler is nothing short of a prodigy, him being able to compete against those twice his age will no doubt breed other young players to train harder and be that next young star.

Following The Nuke’s sensational WDC run last year, stories from all across the nation came out stating a big rise in the number of young people wanting to play darts, with many kids and teenagers said to be signing up for their local darts classes for younger players wherever possible.

Challenges and Opportunities

Littler will have many chances over the years to win multiple top-flight titles. He’s already got a couple under his belt, but his first chance at a proper major title will come when he returns to Alexandra Palace in London this December for the 2024/25 World Darts Championship.

At 17 years old, he could be set to make history as the youngest world champion in darts history, beating one of his biggest foes, Micahel van Gerwen’s record by seven years.

He’ll likely head into the tournament as the favourite, and maybe rightfully so, but of course, that will come with three big challenges.

Pressure, Expectations, and a Target

Last year, everyone was tuning in and rooting for him because it was a true Cinderella story. It was unheard of that a player so young could potentially go on and win the title, so no one expected him to do so. People were tuning in because they wanted to keep up but maybe didn’t necessarily believe he could keep going.

This year, he won’t have that luxury. He’s proven himself over the course of the season, and now people will be expecting it from him. He is no longer looked at as the kid with no fear. He is the one to beat now. 

He may not be world number one, but he has beaten the top-ranked players, as well as all the others, multiple times, even. The expectation this year from fans will be the title. Anything less may be deemed unacceptable.

While his meteoric and historic rise has been incredible to witness, it does mean he will forever have the expectation from everyone to be winning all the time for the rest fo his career.

There is some leeway to that, with true darts fans knowing some evenings, things just happen. Early rounds in tournaments are long affairs, so if a player finds themselves just a bit down while their opponent is hitting everything, it's easy to get an early exit.

In fact, Littler has just experienced that. At the time of writing, the 2024 World Grand Prix darts competition, one of the PDC’s premier competitions, is ongoing.

Credit: Rob Cross knocks out Luke Littler with bullseye 🎯 | World Grand Prix (Sky Sports Darts, YouTube)

Luke went into it as one, or even for some the favourite to win it, despite this being his debut in the tournament, and he ended up losing in the first round to Rob Cross, a player he has beaten multiple times before.

The World Grand Prix does take a slightly different format to standard competitions as well so you give Littler the benefit of the doubt for this one. But it does show that he’s not inevitable, no matter what stage in the competition it is. 

That is somewhat the beauty of darts, but potentially for some viewers who are likely more casual fans, they’ll simply look at the result and write him off.

Balancing hype and reality

For the most part, there is nothing Luke can do about that. All he can do is show up on the night and play his game. People will think and say what they want, but he can’t get bogged down with the noise.

He’s done a really good job of that so far, too. Since propelling himself into the limelight, he has been on some of the UK’s biggest talk shows and has had hundreds of features written about him in every publication.

He’s also just been a typical 17-year-old lad. The Nuke has been featured in videos with some top British content creators, having fun as any teenager would. The kid even had a suspicious early exit from a tournament back in mid-November, the same day the new EA Sports FC game came out, a series that he is known to love and frequent.

Luke Littler may be a major star and incredible talent on the board, but he is also still really just a kid. A kid who is earning roughly £5000 in prize money per day on average so far this year, but a kid in an adults game nonetheless.

For now, he just has to keep playing his game and not worry about the outside thoughts, opinions and conversations. 

While more and more expectations are being piled on him as he continues to win, he is still likely years away from reaching his true prime, the peak of his abilities.

There may be times down the line when he has to prove himself, show that he can step up and be the face of darts by being the undeniable best just like Phil Taylor. 

But for now, what he’s doing is perfect. He is the young star everyone wants to root for, and with how grounded he seems to be, there seems to be no limit as to how far he can go.