Darts season is almost upon us as we are just days away from the first arrow being thrown in the 2025 PDC Darts World Championship.

Ahead of the tournament starting, Joe Streeter was joined by the show’s darts expert and Senior Journalist for SBC News, Jessie Sale, as well as Christian Lee, Business Journalist for GamblingTV, to discuss the meteoric rise of the sport following the then 16-year-old Luke Littler’s run to the final last year.

The 2024 final, between Littler and eventual champion Luke Humphries, brought in a record 4.8 million total views, making it the most-watched non-football event on Sky Sports.

As a mark of the growth of the sport, Littler was recently announced on the shortlist for both the BBC Sports Personality of the Year and Young Personality of the Year.

On the growing popularity of darts, Jessie said: “[Luke Littler] himself, he’s got so many fans. People who are not even into darts really like him and I think people are going to watch him. 

“Last year people were starting to watch him and it was slowly [building] and then everyone was watching him at the end. But this year, it’s going to be at the very start so I think there’s going to be more views than ever as people just want to watch him straight away to see how he does.”

Paddy Power sponsorship

Another party hoping to see an even bigger championship this year is the event’s title sponsor Paddy Power.

Last year, the Flutter-owned brand gained positive publicity through its big 180 campaign which saw the operator donate £1,000 to Prostate Cancer UK for every 180 throw.

This year they’ve gone even bigger, pledging £60,000 to the same charity for every nine-darter hit, with a further £60,000 given to a fan in the ‘ally-pally’ crowd and £60,000 to the player that achieves perfection.

“There’s a lot of talk in sport around the efficacy of sports betting sponsorships and what is being done with those sponsorships,” said Christian.

“This just shows that you can get a sponsorship when you buy into the sport and use it in the right way in terms of giving back to the community and using your reach to help others as well.”

Christian also spoke about the overall popularity of darts as a betting product, especially the world championships which take place over Christmas and sit beside a fully-packed fixture list of domestic football.

He said: “I think for betting operators, this must be the perfect scenario because over Christmas there is so much sport and [darts] is just another one to add into the mix and give more options for punters. You’ve got football [in the afternoon] and then you’ve got darts [in the evening].

“The good thing with darts from an operator’s point of view is that it’s fast-paced and legs are both won and lost in a matter of minutes. There are also a lot of different options, for example, the amount of checkouts over 100 or a player to hit 180’s in consecutive legs.

“There’s a lot of things going on in each leg and match, similar to football, and a lot of options for operators to use and put into bet builders.”

Darts’ demographic shift

The rise of Luke Littler has also seen a shift in the demographic of the sport. Through his friendship with influencers such as ‘Angry Ginge’ and ‘Jaackmaate’, he has helped to bring the sport to a younger audience.

Jessie said: “There has been a massive shift this year. [The darts organisation] Modus are doing great, they just had their influencer event and it is bringing so many of their fans in and opening the door for fans of them to maybe like darts as well.

“So they’ve done really well in capitalising on that and people who don’t know anything about darts are watching JaackMaate play on stage because they’ve watched him on YouTube for ten years.”

Jessie is also part of the rise of darts influencers through her own TikTok and she added that she has also seen a change in the demographic of her videos, with her audience split going from just 7% female at the start of this year to 20% female currently.

“That is quite a big difference,” explained Jessie. “Also you don’t have to be a darts fan to darts influencer videos on your page, they can just come even if you don’t know anything about darts. 

“I do a lot of crowd interviews and you don’t have to know anything about darts in order to enjoy that video. But again, it’s opening the door to [people thinking] that it looks like a fun event, maybe I’d quite like to go to a darts event.”