"I think that the youth is going to take over" - Darts is evolving in a way we have never seen before

“There would be a time if Luke didn't come about where we feared for the leagues.”

For Arran Mattinson, and other leaders of darts academies across the country, Luke Littler’s impact on the sport is set to shake up the landscape of it for the future.

For years darts has always been known as a pub sport for the working class, but suddenly that’s all changing. The entire balance of the sport shifted when a 16-year-old darts player came out of nowhere and took the whole world by storm and now the kids who asked Santa for football boots, are asking for a dart board and the newest set of darts.

Darts is evolving and it’s happening right in front of our eyes -the sport is set for one of the biggest culture shifts that the sporting world has ever seen.

Before looking at the future of the sport, or even the present, it’s important to understand the history of darts.

Darts is at the peak of its popularity, but experts claim that this is not the first time a successful Brit has incited darts fever.

The world’s leading darts historian, Dr Patrick Chaplin (or Dr Darts), believes darts had peaked twice in the 20th century before reaching the levels it has today.

Darts historian Patrick Chaplin. [Credit: patrickchaplin.com]

The first notable surge in interest for darts came around in the 1930s, when King George VI and Queen Elizabeth threw some darts at a community centre during a visit to Slough.

The second boom of popularity came around the 70s, when the sport was first televised and made available in homes across the nation.

Dr Chaplin said: “It was fascinating to watch darts on TV. It was absolutely brilliant. It was talked about in the pubs.

“But it only got as far as it could, given the length, the type of media that was available at that time. It became a worldwide sport or game or pastime, but we didn't have the mass media that you have now. We had no internet.”

This is where darts started to develop characters and some would argue that the popularity of the game was speared by these figureheads of the sport.

Chaplin explained: “During that time, there were people becoming extremely well known through their appearances on TV - Eric Bristow, John Lowe, Jocky Wilson.

“Bristow was the man. He was the one. He was a very good darts player, but he was also an entertainer. And he was also a naughty boy.

"He'd get in fights occasionally. He'd speak out of turn. Anything really to get himself in newspapers.”

According to Chaplin, darts players were now seen as stars to an extent. And after Eric Bristow, came Phil Taylor – a man who dominated the sport for decades.

Taylor is widely regarded as the greatest darts player of all time. He won a record 87 major titles and a record 16 world titles. He was even the first person to hit two nine-dart finishes in one match - an incredible feat considering the rare nine-darter has only ever been hit 96 times on television since 1984.

This was until 2023, when the arrival of a 16-year-old schoolboy from Warrington into the PDC Championship threw darts into the spotlight and caused a surge in interest with a record number of four million viewers tuning into his 2023/24 final appearance with Luke Humphries.

Some experts argue that Luke Littler has ‘saved’ the sport and brought it to the younger generations, generating interest that has not previously been paralleled.

After failing to secure a monumental win over Luke Humphries in the 2023 World Championship Final, Littler spent the year winning competitions, from the Premier League to the UK Open, before finally grasping victory in 2024, snatching the title from MVG and making history as the youngest ever winner.

Now, the youngest generation were fascinated by the game and Luke Littler had every young person wanting to play darts.

This was the third and biggest boom in popularity.

Chaplin explained what he described as the ‘Littler effect’: “The youngsters suddenly realise, oh, there's somebody a bit young now, there's not all these old boys that there used to be in the 70s and 80s.

“And so the interest of youngsters in darts have gained from the Littler effect.”

To accommodate the growing demands for young people wanting to play the sport, darts academies started becoming a more regular sight across the UK.

Chaplin said: “There was a good number of them in the country, but now the ones that existed have expanded, and others have been set up for no other reason than to accommodate the people who want to be Luke Littler.”

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Speaking to Arran Mattinson, co-founder of Swan Darts Academy in Walkden, he spoke about the demand for their newly formed academy, with a massive waiting list and plenty already on their books.

He believes Luke Littler getting young people into darts is really important for the sport.

Mattinson said: “Our local leagues, it's a lot of the older generation, there would be a time if Luke didn't come about where we feared for the leagues.

“My phone's linked to the academy and literally every day, every night we get messages after messages, every time Luke wins a game, I can guarantee I'll turn my phone over and there'll be four or five messages in the morning to come back to read.”

This shift in demographics for the sport and the growth of academies is likely going to lead to an enormous influx of talent for the sport, with the ceiling only getting higher for the players.

Arran’s fellow owner, Stuart Musgrave, 37, believes that the younger generation are going to ‘take over’ the sport.

He said: “I think that the youth is going to take over to be honest. Back in the day with darts, if you were any good in a pub, you might play for Lancashire, you might play Super League and then you'd play in some bigger tournaments.

“These days there's weekly tournaments for under 18s. Some are really really good now and I can only see in the next 10 years this wave that we're involved with, when these kids who are 12-year-old now are 18-22. I think they'll be the new crop that takes over.”

And Dr Chaplin agrees: “I'm sure if you look at the top 20 young players in the PDC, you'll probably find that a number of them grew up through the academies. And the thing is that's going to increase now because of the Littler effect”.

With thousands of kids now trading their football boots in for a set of darts, the talent we will see in the sport has unlimited potential and it won’t be long until we see the next Luke Littler.