Littler lights up Ally Pally opening night as prize money raises stakes
The PDC world darts championship is back, but could the new £1m winners’ cheque make this show too big?A team of assistant referees walks into the Twelve Pins in Finsbury Park carrying linesmen’s flags and whistles.It’s 3pm on a Thursday, you think, they’ve probably just been reffing a local game.Then, you think, there isn’t a football pitch around here.And why haven’t they changed and showered? Then more referees walk in, more linesmen, one of them in a comedy wig.And eventually the penny drops.
Yes, “the Darts” is back: an indispensable festive trimming that – much like Christmas itself – always seems to roll around a little sooner every year.Fire up all the old cliches: “the beauty of set play”, “bent the wire”, “pressure the shot”.Wheel John Part out of the attic.Fingers poised on the 180 zoom.You know it’s serious, because it’s two hours before his match and Luke Littler is already on the practice board.
Littler won on opening night, of course he did.Nobody will be too fussed about dwelling on the finer details of his 3-0 win over Darius Labanauskas, least of all Littler himself.But the Lithuanian can certainly be proud of the way he pushed the defending champion, averaging 95 and taking the first two sets to deciding legs.Certainly there was little here to disabuse anyone of the notion that Littler is the overwhelming favourite to claim the sport’s first ever £1m prize.It took 23 years for Phil Taylor – a 16-time winner – to accumulate that sum in world championship prize money.
This year’s winner could do it in the space of a few weeks.Even Labanauskas walked away with £15,000 for his first-round defeat.And in a way there has always been a kind of paradox at the heart of this championship: an event that somehow keeps getting bigger while also managing to stay exactly the same.This is the first year in which the field has expanded from 96 players to 128.Next year’s tournament will move from the West Hall to the larger Great Hall in an attempt to meet the voracious demand that led to all the tickets selling out in 12 minutes in July.
By any barometer the sums of money at stake here are genuinely life-changing, sums that have gently warped the gravity of the sport.The prize money on the lower rungs of the tour – the weekly tournaments in regional leisure centres where most pros spend most of their existence – is handy, but still not quite enough to make a viable living.By contrast, a single run at Alexandra Palace can make or break an entire year, an entire career.Take the delighted Arno Merk, an amateur from Germany who has barely played on television before, whose first-night win over Kim Huybrechts netted him a cheque of at least £25,000.“It’s a hefty sum of money,” he said.
“I’m definitely going to use it as a springboard and go full-throttle to become a professional,I’m not going to buy a car or anything,”And so in a sport still defined by fine margins, these few weeks take on a more feverish, desperate hue than ever before,The highs can be supreme; the lows crushing,In the first week of 2023 Michael Smith sat atop the world, having tasted perfection in the greatest leg of darts ever seen.
Two years later he lost his first match, at which point all the 2023 money also dropped off his ranking, instantly dumping him out of the top 16.Now, after a nightmarish few years in which his body has fallen apart and his ranking has collapsed, Smith is back.He comfortably saw off Lisa Ashton, the women’s world matchplay champion, 3-0 on opening night, offering hope of a happy coda to a year blighted by ankle injuries, shoulder injuries and chronic arthritis in a wrist that left him barely able to practise for more than half an hour.“The butterflies was bad this morning,” Smith admitted.“It’s hard coming the first night, especially if you get beat.
”Michael van Gerwen is just one of the many pros who have been grumbling at the potential for outsized world championship prize money to distort the sport.“I don’t think the distribution is fair,” he said recently.“The world champion soon hardly needs to play any other tournament.” All of which raises an interesting counter-question: in a 12-month sport, has this show now become too big?One to chew on for the darts hardcore and the tour stalwarts.But for all the strides this sport has made over the decades, this remains its one genuine showpiece, its one cut-through event, and to an extent its rewards are simply a reflection of its status.
And from the happy costumed throngs making their annual pilgrimage up the hill, you will hear few complaints,After all, if darts has taught us anything, it’s the value of giving people exactly what they want,
Littler lights up Ally Pally opening night as prize money raises stakes
The PDC world darts championship is back, but could the new £1m winners’ cheque make this show too big?A team of assistant referees walks into the Twelve Pins in Finsbury Park carrying linesmen’s flags and whistles. It’s 3pm on a Thursday, you think, they’ve probably just been reffing a local game. Then, you think, there isn’t a football pitch around here. And why haven’t they changed and showered? Then more referees walk in, more linesmen, one of them in a comedy wig. And eventually the penny drops
Leinster’s Leo Cullen will use lessons learned at Leicester in bid to tame Tigers
Leicester v Leinster fixtures have become common recently – the fifth since 2022 takes place on Friday night – but the history between the sides runs far deeper. Leo Cullen, head coach of the Dublin-based province, spent a couple of seasons at Welford Road in the mid-2000s, winning the Premiership in 2006-07 and losing a Heineken Cup final against Wasps in the same season.Since 2022 the former second‑row has overseen four Champions Cup victories against his former club, including two in 2023-24. Three and a half years ago, there was a masterful quarter-final dismantling of what was then Steve Borthwick’s side. Leinster will now shoot for a hat-trick of Welford Road victories this decade, and the presence of the New Zealand international Rieko Ioane, on full debut, is sure to help
Can a nepo baby be an underdog? The remarkable rise of Shedeur Sanders
The quarterback was seen as living off his father’s name when he entered the NFL. But he has slowly started to prove himself at the Cleveland BrownsIt seems the goalposts are always moving on Shedeur Sanders, the Cleveland Browns’ rookie quarterback who keeps throwing people off.He excelled at two colleges to establish himself as a top NFL prospect, only to wind up getting picked in the fifth round of this year’s NFL draft in one of the most dramatic stock crashes in league history. He then distinguished himself in training camp, only to wind up as the back-up to the back-up. When Sanders was finally pressed into injury relief duty last month and led the Browns to just their third win of the season, the caveat was that his breakthrough had come at the expense of the even-worse Las Vegas Raiders
‘The netball mum community has been insane’: England captain Nat Metcalf on her return to action
Receiving her first centre pass at London’s Copper Box Arena will be an unforgettable moment for the skipperA gurgle turns into a squawk, and the early throes of a weary cry – sure-fire signs that an afternoon nap is required. For much of her life, since her dramatic arrival in the pre-dawn hours of a May morning, the seven-month-old Miller has been a regular presence at England netball camps.Sometimes she sleeps courtside, other times watches from a balcony, or is passed between arms of players and staff members eagerly seeking a cuddle during team meetings. Whatever it takes for her mother, the England netball captain, Nat Metcalf, to get back on court.When Metcalf pulls on her England dress against Jamaica on Saturday, returning to competition for the first time since giving birth, Miller will be there, just as she always is
Sports Personality of the Year 2025: Lionesses square off on six-strong shortlist
Three world champions, two European champions and the holder of a grand slam will face off next Thursday for the title of BBC Sports Personality of the Year, in a shortlist that provides a high-powered boost to the venerable prize show.Following a triumphant summer for England’s women in both football and rugby, Chloe Kelly and Hannah Hampton of the Lionesses are nominated, as is the Red Roses’ Ellie Kildunne. They are joined in the six-person shortlist by Formula One champion Lando Norris, darts world champion Luke Littler and Masters champion Rory McIlroy, the bookies’ favourite.Kelly and Hampton were at the centre of England’s penalty shootout win over Spain in the Euro 2025 final, with Kelly scoring the winning spot-kick after Hampton had made two critical saves. For their club sides, Kelly was part of Arsenal’s Champions League winning team, while Hampton won a domestic treble with Chelsea
‘It can be brutal’: Gian van Veen learns to fly with the stars after dartitis
Dutch rising star has gone from not knowing ‘how to grip the dart’ to a dark horse for the PDC world championshipIt’s the deciding leg of the European Championship final. Gian van Veen, the 23-year-old from the Netherlands chasing his first major title, has just missed two match darts to win 11-9. Luke Humphries, world No 1 at the time, starts the final leg with a 140.“Oh, you’ve blown it here,” Van Veen replies when asked to describe his internal monologue during that moment in October. “Luke Humphries is not going to crumble under this pressure
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