by On Monday evening, Karl Holden will open the doors to the Sidac social club in St Helens, as they do every week so that the St Helens Darts Academy can be launched. But this week, and every week from now on, there could be a small logistical issue thanks to the academy’s most famous graduate.
“We have over 90 kids coming into the academy every Monday night, we’re pretty full as it is,” says Holden. “But during the world championship, I think at least 20 or 30 kids came into my shop telling me they wanted to sign up and play.”
The reason? “What they talk about is how they want to be the next Luke Littler.” The sport’s most famous 16-year-old dominated the headlines with his extraordinary run to the final of the PDC World Darts Championship.
With the tournament over, attention is focused on how Littler will fare in his first full season as a professional and how his exploits could have a seismic impact on a sport that has struggled for mainstream attention since the initial boom in the 1980s. Darts are suddenly everywhere you look thanks to Littler, but those operating at grassroots level also have the potential to succeed.
Darts now has a thriving pathway for any young player who wants it, even if Littler has managed to avoid some of the stages thanks to his undoubted talent. Academies like the one in St Helens where Littler plied his trade allow players to be as young as nine or 10 years old. But as Holden said during the world championships: “He was already playing senior and winning men’s open matches at 13. I didn’t know what to do with him anymore, so he went and played JDC. We told him to look at the bigger picture.”
The JDC is the Junior Darts Corporation, really the breeding ground for the next batch of PDC professionals. Littler won his world title twice and later moved to the PDC development tour for under-23 players. With those structures in place, any teenager inspired by Littler’s performances now has a clear path to the top – which sets things up nicely for the public. the next generation.
One person who has seen the Littler effect firsthand is former PDC winner Paul Nicholson. Now a well-respected private coach, Nicholson fully appreciates how Littler helped influence a whole new group of players to pick up a set of darts. “I’ve never had so many parents contact me directly wanting to coach their kids, because they want to be as good as Luke Littler,” he says. “It’s a lot like young kids wanting to play golf, if you as a parent see that they have talent you will guide them.
“Darts is now able to position itself alongside these sports because there is an opportunity. Luke helped show that. When I was 11 or 12, I was stuck in my bedroom trying to emulate my heroes with nowhere to go. I haven’t felt as much of an influence as a coach now because of Luke Littler.”
But the Littler effect is also likely to prompt big changes at the top. Darts is receiving more mainstream attention than ever, with Sky Sports posting their biggest ever viewing figures for a non-football event during Wednesday’s final between Littler and Luke Humphries.
It has made many question whether the sport has a new ceiling of possibility and the chance to change an outdated view of the game. “I’ve worked on seven world championships for TalkSport and played in eight, so I’ve been there for 15 years,” says Nicholson. “The focus around Fallon Sherrock was really special, when all the new media came along.
“But this is different. We’ve seen more kids asking their parents for dartboards and the same media is coming back in droves to posterize and position the sport in a different way. We’ve been famous for 40 years but now we’ve got a kid under 18 who can’t drink, he’s a very honest teenager who talks about wanting to play his Xbox: it’s a matter dare to have a new perspective on what a darting superstar might look like. We have an opportunity to take this sport forward like never before.”
There is a sense that more coverage directly benefits everyone; The world No. 12, Joe Cullen, last week that Littler’s inclusion in the Premier League will benefit every player because of the increased coverage he has helped create. That means there could be more sponsorships and endorsements – and more prizes on the bottom line. But perhaps the biggest boost is that his newest star doesn’t fit the mold of his predecessors, giving more opportunities to eager young players to tackle him.
“You think of Eric Bristow and Bobby George being celebrities in the 1980s, for example,” says Nicholson. “Phil Taylor conquered the sport in many ways but he was expected to be a world-class darts player: he was a middle-aged man from Stoke who had played the game for many years. Now we have this young kid, he’s a story and someone that most people didn’t know about three weeks ago.
“We need to make sure the future of darts is different from the past to make sure the reputation changes. This huge opportunity is right in front of the PDC’s nose, and I have no doubt that they will take advantage of it. If they do, it won’t just benefit Luke Littler – it will benefit everyone.”
