Littler starts as favorite
With the PDC World Darts Championship getting underway in Alexandra Palace, London on Sunday, December 15, it’s time to look beyond the obvious and towards the slightly more obscure.
For the record, 17-year-old sensation Luke Littler starts as favorite (+200), just ahead of the 2023-24 champion Luke Humphries (+300), but we‘re not here just to give you a blow-by-blow preview of the runners and riders.
biggest and best fortnight of the season
Instead, we want to lift the lid on the PDC World Darts Championship and also offer an alternative take on some of the statistics and related bets around darts’ biggest and best fortnight of the season.
Most 180s
Nothing gets the collective pulse of a darts crowd racing more than the sight of a maximum – particularly the ‘Ally Pally’ crowd. The thud of that third dart hitting the red of the treble-twenty and the booming “ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY!!” that follows from the match announcer is one of the things that makes top-level darts so special.
It’s a feat achieved regularly by the top pros yet remains no less magical every time it occurs.
At the 2023-24 Championships, a record number of 180s were hit. No less than 914. Every single one of them cheered to the rafters, with the eventual champion Luke Humphries taking the inaugural Ballon d’Art trophy for hitting the most in the tournament – an astonishing 73.
But if 73 sounds a lot – and it is a lot! – it is worth noting that in the 2022 event, Michael ‘Bully Boy’ Smith hit a record-breaking 83 on his way to narrowly losing the final against Michael van Gerwen.
In terms of a single match, the record is jointly held by Peter Wright and Michael Smith, who both hit an incredible 24 maximums in the semifinal and final respectively of the 2022 tournament.
The favorite to hit the most in this year’s championship and win the 2024-25 Ballon d’Art trophy is, unsurprisingly, Luke Littler. The 17-year-old tournament-favorite is just +150 to hit the most 180s, and few would be surprised if he goes on to beat Smith’s record-breaking 83.
Nine-darters
But if a single 180 can bring the house down, imagine Ally Pally’s reaction to a nine-dart finish – the very pinnacle of darting perfection.
It has only happened 14 times since the championships started in 1994 – 14 times in 31 tournaments – so remains something of a rarity. But when it happens, it’s something those present and the millions watching will remember forever.
rattled off nine-darters in consecutive championships
It’s Dutchman Raymond van Barneveld who, in this particular category, is the undisputed King Of Alexandra Palace. ‘Barney’ rattled off nine-darters in consecutive championships – against Jelle Klaasen in the 2009 quarterfinal and Brendan Dolan in 2010’s second round – and to this day remains the only player to have done so twice in the World Championships.
Van Barneveld is back again in 2024-25 – his 18th appearance at the PDC World Championships – and while the Dutchman is a long shot to repeat the feat and make it a hat-trick (+3300), it almost goes without saying that Littler is favorite.
Nine-darter in 2024-25?
The relative rarity of this occurrence at Ally Pally is something of a mystery – statistically, it’s lower there than at any other tournament – but is likely down to the additional pressure that accompanies every game played on the sport’s greatest stage.
The perfection needed to pull off a nine-darter is hardly conducive to big, noisy, boisterous crowds and the intensity it brings, but is all part of what makes it so remarkable when it happens.
While ‘Barney’ is the only player to have achieved it twice in Wood Green, the award for the nine-darter thrown with the highest stakes goes to Smith, who pulled it off in the second leg of the 2022-23 final. He fittingly went on to win his first, and so far only, world title against the great Michael van Gerwen.
For the bettors, the +162.5 on offer for there being two or more nine darters in this year’s tournament looks tempting.
Reigning champions
One thing a reigning champion always wants to do is to get his or her title defense off to a flying start. And, by and large, world champions have been successful in doing so. Only on three occasions has a reigning champion suffered defeat in the opening phase of their title defence since the tournament began.
Dennis Priestley, the first winner of the PDC World Championship in 1994, suffered the ignominy of an exit at the then round-robin stage in 1995, but Canadian John Part – the winner in 2003 and 2008 – was unable to progress beyond his opening round in both years following his title triumph.
Most recently, Smith suffered a huge scare against Dutchman Kevin Doets on the opening night of the 2023-24 World Championship but managed to scrape through. Current champion Luke Humphries will be hoping to avoid any such scares on the opening night of his title defense.
Ally Pally debutants
At the opposite end of the spectrum, those making their World Championships debuts have found the going tough … at least they have historically. Few have made too much of an impression on their first appearance, although there have been successes for those moving across the British Darts Organization (BDO) to the PDC.
Raymond van Barneveld was one who made an instant impact from taking that route … making it to the 2007 PDC final at the first time of asking and beating the mighty Phil Taylor in one of the greatest finals of all time.
rounded off the tournament of his life with the match of his life
But for a real fairytale, look no further than 2018. In his first World Championship, Rob Cross made it to the final where he came up against Taylor, who was after his record-breaking 15th title. Despite ‘The Power’ being heavily fancied and backed, Cross rounded off the tournament of his life with the match of his life, winning 7-2 in sets.
And then there was Littler…
While he arrived at the 2023-24 Championships with a burgeoning reputation thanks to his performances on the junior circuit, few expected him to take Ally Pally by storm in the way he did.
Not until coming up against Humphries in the final did Littler take a backward step, and even then the 7-4 scoreline told the story of a final that swung on fine margins. Off the back of that awesome performance, and now being one year wiser, it is no surprise that Littler is favorite to lift the trophy on January 3, 2025.
Other Ally Pally debutants worth looking out for next week are Dutchman Wesley Plaisier (+20000), who has picked up a couple of Challenge Tour titles in 2024 and has finished second in the order of merit, and Englishman Connor Scutt (+15000).
Tournament averages
While darts is all about hitting a double to finish, a player’s average score in a match, and the tournament as a whole, is a useful guide to a player’s form and likelihood of success.
Interestingly, the World Championship averages don’t compare favorably to those at other top-level tournaments, perhaps due to the format and game length at Ally Pally but also because of the pressure and intensity that accompanies every match on that stage.
Of the top 38 highest averages ever recorded in televised tournaments, only one occurred in the World Championships – the 114.05 averaged by Michael van Gerwen when beating Raymond van Barneveld in the 2017 semi-final.
Unsurprisingly, Phil Taylor appears four times in the top ten World Championship averages, with his most impressive being the 110.94 he averaged in beating Van Barneveld 7-1 in the white heat of the 2009 final.
The highest average in last season’s tournament was the 108.74 hit by Humphries in his 6-0 demolition of Scott Williams.
Past winners
Littler may be considered the sport’s next superstar-in-waiting but has a long way to go before he can get close to being considered one of the sport’s greats.
As mentioned earlier, the mighty Taylor won the title no less than 14 times between his PDC debut in 1994 and his final appearance in 2018. That included a run of eight consecutive titles between 1995 and 2002. As a result, ‘The Power’ is quite rightly considered the greatest dart player of all time.
But there have been other multiple winners. We have already mentioned John Part – who failed at the first hurdle when he returned as champion – but Adrian Lewis, Gary Anderson, Michael van Gerwen, and Peter Wright have also all won the title more than once. Luke Humphries, now the world number one, will fancy adding his name to that list.
Taylor’s stranglehold of the sport
In total, there have been 12 different winners of the Sid Waddell Trophy from the 31 times the tournament has been played, with Taylor’s stranglehold of the sport making it almost impossible for others to make their mark at the very top level until his retirement.
The van Gerwen era…
For a while, Dutchman Michael van Gerwen threatened to fill the void left by Taylor and his wins in 2014, 2017, and 2019 had an air of swagger and superiority But he has since been made to work hard. The arrival of Welshman Gerwin Price on the scene has stirred the pot in more ways than one, and his 2021 final win over Gary Anderson goes down in history as one of Ally Pally’s finest and feistiest.
Amid the Dutchman’s era of dominance, Scotland’s Anderson managed to squeeze in two titles (2015 and 2016), with fellow Scot Peter Wright also winning in 2020 and 2022.
The only other player with two World Championship wins to his name on the Alexandra Palace stage, is Englishman Adrian Lewis – once the prodigy of Phil Taylor – who achieved back-to-back wins in 2011 and 2012.
Who will win in 2024-25?
We have already mentioned Littler heading into the tournament as +200 favorite and being closely followed by Humphries (+300) in the betting, but who else is in with a shout? And where is the value?
For me, Van Gerwen always has a chance. His explosive style and never-say-die attitude make him a dangerous opponent for anyone on any given day. At +1200 to land the big prize he is arguably the value bet.
His fellow Dutchman, Wessel Nijman is another whose bid to land the Ally Pally title has to be taken seriously. At just 24 years old, Nijman has crammed a lot into his relatively short darting life, including a two-and-a-half ban imposed in October 2020 for match-fixing.
But since rejoining the tour in 2023, the Dutchman has shone and he picked up his first Players Championship title in October thanks to an 8-5 final victory over Stephen Bunting. At +2800, he is well worth a second look.