The rat race for Gen Z and Gen Alpha eyeballs is currently dominating discourse across every major UK sport. A 2022 survey revealed more British 16- to 24-year-olds watch the NFL and the NBA than cricket and rugby.
This sheer terror of impending irrelevance is why the England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB) created the Hundred. Rugby acknowledges it has a serious problem, but can’t decide what to do to solve it or whether it cares enough to change. Formula 1’s popularity has soared thanks to Liberty Media and Drive to Survive, but the Max Verstappen era is averting those eyeballs through pure ennui.
Tennis’s innate sun-kissed glamour, constant attention-seeking action and young stars make it naturally attractive to teenagers. Tiger Woods made golf attractive to Gen X and Millennials, but both they and he have since grown old. Football will always be okay, but even the world’s most popular sport constantly seems to discuss possible adaptations to cater to its youngest viewers.
Darts has never even really earned its place in this conversation before 2024, before Luke Littler’s ascendance from prodigy to megastar.
The sport’s history can already be split into two distinct eras: BL (Before Littler) and AL (After Littler). It may only have been five months, but the 17-year-old’s impact is already seismic enough to verge on messianic.
Littler is not just making darts bigger than it ever dreamt of being, he’s making it cool. For all the comparisons to Woods in their nascent brilliance, Littler’s ability to attract new audiences and single-handedly break stereotypes of a sport traditionally geared at over-40s is the clearest parallel.
To the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC), Littler’s off-oche normalcy is as significant as his stage persona and relentless scoring. He is effortlessly relatable to young people in Britain in a way so few elite sportspeople usually are.
When he explained during his World Championship run that he planned on spending his ever-increasing winnings on video games and clothes, he was accused of being shy or obtuse. As is so often the case, we imagine sporting genius relates directly to some broader genius, or at least an innate understanding of greatness and ability to translate it to the masses.
But what has emerged in the months since those halcyon Alexandra Palace days is a more confident, more self-aware, sharper version of the same Fifa-obsessed yet relatively closed teen. He’s got some fresh clothes and an expensive watch, but he’s used his new-found fame to do what most teens would hope to do – hang out with YouTubers and streamers.
The significance of Littler’s foray into the weird world of streaming should not be underestimated. He now regularly turns out for “Girth N Turf”, an EAFC (the successor to Fifa) club set up by YouTuber Yung Filly (Andres Barrientos) and streamer Angry Ginge (Morgan Burtwistle), alongside rapper Aitch and Wayne Rooney.
Girth N Turf have played against Trent Alexander-Arnold, Tammy Abraham and Aaron Ramsdale in recent months and regularly bring in more than 100,000 viewers per stream.
Angry Ginge alone has nearly a million followers on streaming platform Twitch alone. Most sports desperately struggle to tap into this market, but Littler has waltzed in, dragging darts with him.
This is why every branch of “social darts” chain Flight Club is sold out weeks in advance.
It’s why darts only trails Premier League football for sporting viewership in recent months. It’s why every night of the Premier League darts sold out and Sky Sports use Littler’s walk-on song in their latest advertising campaign. He’s invaluable Gen Z catnip.
Eddie Hearn said recently some PDC board members expressed welfare concerns about throwing Littler into the Premier League immediately. “Yeah, absolutely, sling him in,” came the response. When you spot a wave coming, ride it all the way.
And Littler’s inclusion in the Premier League has turned out exactly as Hearn had hoped. He topped the league table heading into Thursday’s sold-out final at The O2, finishing four points above world champion Luke Humphries, whom he went on to beat in the final. A Premier League winner at 17, with a nine-darter to boot.
This competition, often framed as make-or-break for the cream of the darting crop, has simply extended the coronation of its new prince.
In Littler, the PDC has found the golden goose every sport is currently seeking, a peg to hang a glorious future upon. Given the sport’s previously unimaginable growth in 2024, it’s hard to judge where this 17-year-old can take darts from here. It’s not only mainstream now, it’s invaluably cool to the generations coolness matters to.
