On Monday evening, the doors to the Sidac social club in St Helens will be opened by Karl Holden, as they are every week so the St Helens Darts Academy can take place. But this week, and every week from now on, there may be a slight 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 much full as it is,” Holden says. “But during the world championship, I reckon I’ve had at least 20 or 30 kids come into my shop telling me they want to sign up and play.”
The reason why? “All they talk about is how they want to be the next Luke Littler.” The most famous 16-year-old in sport has dominated the headlines with his extraordinary run to the final of the PDC World Darts Championship.
With the tournament over, attention is turning to how Littler will fare in his first full season as a professional and how his exploits could have a seismic impact for a sport that has battled for mainstream attention since its initial boom period of the 1980s. All of a sudden, darts is everywhere you look thanks to Littler, but the possibility is that those operating at the grassroots level are set to prosper too.
Darts now has a thriving pathway for any aspiring young player, even if Littler did bypass some of the stages thanks to his unquestionable talent. Academies such as the one in St Helens where Littler honed his craft allow players to join from as young as nine or 10. But as Holden said during the world championship: “He was already playing senior county and winning men’s opens at the age of 13. I didn’t know what to do for him any more, so he went and played JDC. We told him to go look at the bigger picture.”
The JDC is the Junior Darts Corporation, in effect the breeding ground for the next batch of PDC professionals. Littler won its world title twice and subsequently moved to the PDC’s developmental tour for players under the age of 23. With those structures in place, any teenager inspired by Littler’s performances now has a clear route to the top – which sets things up nicely for the next generation.
One person who has seen the Littler effect first-hand is the former PDC major winner Paul Nicholson. Now a well-respected pundit and a private coach, Nicholson is fully aware of how Littler has helped influence a whole new group of players to pick up a set of darts. “I have never had as many parents contact me directly asking to coach their kid, because they want to be as good as Luke Littler,” he says. “It’s very much like young kids wanting to play golf, if you see as a parent they’ve got some talent you get them some guidance.
“Darts is now in a position where it can position itself alongside these sports because there’s opportunity. Luke has helped showcase that. When I was 11 or 12, I was stuck in my bedroom trying to emulate my heroes with nowhere to go. I’ve never felt so much of an impact as a coach now because of Luke Littler.”
But the Littler effect is likely to spark major changes at the very top, too. Darts is garnering more mainstream attention than ever before, with Sky Sports posting their biggest viewing figures for a non-football event during Wednesday’s final between Littler and Luke Humphries.
It has led many to question whether the sport has a new ceiling of potential and a chance to shift dated perceptions of the game. “I’ve worked on seven world championships for TalkSport and played in eight, so I’ve been there for 15 years,” Nicholson says. “The vibe around Fallon Sherrock was extremely special, seeing all those new media outlets turn up.
“But this is different. We’ve seen more kids asking their parents for dartboards and the same media outlets are coming back in droves to poster and position the sport differently. We’ve wrestled with a reputation for the last 40 years but we’ve now got a kid under the age of 18 who can’t drink, he’s a clean-living teenager who’s incredibly honest and just talks about wanting to play his Xbox: it’s refreshing to have a new outlook on what a darting superstar could look like. We have an opportunity to move this sport forward like never before.”
There is a sense more coverage leads directly to more benefits for everyone; the world No 12, Joe Cullen, said this past week that Littler’s inclusion in the Premier League will benefit all players because of the increased coverage he has helped create. That means potentially more sponsorships and endorsements – and more prize money on the bottom line. But perhaps the biggest boost is that its newest star does not fit the mould of those who have come before him, affording more opportunities for young aspiring players to get hooked.
“You think of Eric Bristow and Bobby George being celebrities in the 1980s as an example,” Nicholson says. “Phil Taylor transcended the sport in so many ways but he was expected to be a great darts player: he was a middle-aged man from Stoke who’d played the game for years. Now we’ve got this young kid, he’s a story and someone most people didn’t know about three weeks ago.
“We need to make sure darts’ future is different to the past to ensure the reputation can change. This enormous opportunity is right in front of the PDC’s noses, and I’ve no doubt they’ll capitalise on it. If they do, it won’t just benefit Luke Littler – it’ll benefit everyone.”
