The Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) World Champion now earns £1 million, which is double the previous record prize in 2025. The tour itself pays out more than £25 million across 2026.
ADVERTISEMENT
Why has the prize money exploded in recent years? There are several reasons. The money comes from three traceable sources, but there's also a fourth source that is much harder to track.
What does the PDC pay in 2026 and who collects it?
Each tournament pays a fixed sum for every round a player reaches, and the PDC ranks players by what they have won over the past two years. That ranking decides who qualifies for the televised events.
| Event | 2025 | 2026 |
| World Championship (total / winner) | £2.5m / £500,000 | £5m / £1m |
| Premier League (total / winner) | £1m / £275,000 | £1.25m / £350,000 |
| World Matchplay (total / winner) | £800,000 / £200,000 | £1m / £225,000 |
| UK Open, World Grand Prix, European Championship, Players Championship Finals (each) | £600,000 | £750,000 |
| European Tour event (each) | £175,000 | £230,000 |
| Players Championship event (each) | not confirmed | £150,000 |
| Whole tour | about £18m | over £25m |
The World Championship doubled its total fund to £5 million, including prizes for the winner, runner-up, semi-finalists and quarter-finalists. The field grew from 96 to 128 players, and every player knocked out in the first round now earns £15,000. That means 64 players share £960,000 before the second round begins.
The largest totals went to events that rarely appear on TV. A tour card is a two-year membership that lets a player enter the PDC's ranking events. Tour card holders play 34 Players Championships, one-day tournaments now worth £150,000 each, or £5.1 million a season.
Source 1: TV and streaming
ADVERTISEMENT
A rights fee is what a broadcaster pays a sport for permission to show its events, usually exclusively, so rival channels can't air them.
Sky Sports' new deal is reported at roughly £25 million a year, a little more than double the old annual fee. That one payment is close to the size of the tour's entire 2026 prize pot. The first event under the new contract was the December 2025 World Championship, the same tournament that paid the first £1 million prize.
Two things pushed Sky's price up:
- The first is audience growth. Sky's World Championship viewing more than doubled compared with the tournament four years earlier, the last before Luke Littler's debut.
- The second is competition from Netflix and Amazon Prime. These platforms were reported to be bidding for the rights, so Sky had to outbid global streaming companies.
Outside Britain, the PDC sells rights country by country and directly to fans. In the US, NBC Sports and its streaming service Peacock show events. In April 2026, the PDC relaunched PDCTV, its own subscription service, with Cleeng, a platform that handles subscription sales, local taxes and currencies in each country.
Source 2: Sponsors
ADVERTISEMENT
A title sponsor pays to put its brand in a tournament's official name, as in the "Paddy Power World Darts Championship."
In darts, those brands are mostly bookmakers. The reason is simple: every match produces a steady supply of things to bet on.
Paddy Power sponsors the World Championship, BetMGM the Premier League, Betfred the World Matchplay, Ladbrokes the UK Open, bet365 the US Darts Masters and Winamax the European Tour.
Yes, there are exceptions. For example, the World Masters is sponsored by the darts equipment maker Winmau.
Sponsors also pay for the moments viewers remember. BetMGM gives any Premier League player who hits a nine-dart finish a set of 18-carat gold darts worth £30,000. A nine-dart finish is the fewest darts a player can use to get from 501 to zero, the darts equivalent of a perfect game.
ADVERTISEMENT
Longer contracts give the PDC income it can plan around. Paddy Power took over the World Championship after the car retailer Cazoo pulled out in July 2023, and it has since extended its deal through 2031. BetMGM renewed its Premier League deal for several more years in May 2026, days after the season ended with Luke Littler's win at the O2.
Source 3: Venues and hosts
From December 2026, the World Championship moves from Alexandra Palace's West Hall to its Great Hall. Each of the 36 sessions will hold more than 5,000 fans, up from about 3,200 in the old hall, and the total rises to 180,000 tickets, more than 40% above previous years.
The PDC and Alexandra Palace have also agreed to keep the tournament there until at least 2031, so the extra capacity is locked in for years.
Fans pay according to where they sit. Tiered seats, in raised rows facing the stage, start at £55. Table seats, where groups sit at tables on the hall floor, start at £75. The 501 Club, a hospitality package, starts at £399.
ADVERTISEMENT
Tickets go through a ballot, a random draw among everyone who applies, and the ballot also sells streaming subscriptions. Fans with a PDCTV Annual membership, a subscription to the PDC's own streaming service, got an early ballot window before the general ballot opened. A fan who wants tickets has a reason to subscribe to PDCTV, so ticket demand also brings in subscription revenue.
Source 4: Crypto
Crypto money sits outside darts' official deals because of how Britain licenses betting. A licensed bookmaker holds a Gambling Commission licence and must license each customer's age, identity, and where their money comes from. UK law doesn't ban crypto in licensed betting, but those money checks have made crypto too difficult for most licensed bookmakers to accept.
That's why crypto betting on darts happens on sites based outside the UK. Offshore sportsbooks let darts fans bet with USDT on the same matches British bookmakers cover.
Some of these sites accept stablecoins, cryptocurrencies designed to stay worth one US dollar. Tether's USDT and Circle's USDC are the two largest.
ADVERTISEMENT
Crypto-first betting brands already sponsor British sport. Stake became Everton's front-of-shirt sponsor for the 2022/23 Premier League season, and BC. Game has sponsored Leicester City's shirt. No crypto brand holds a PDC title yet.
Britain's gambling regulator has begun exploring a legal route for crypto payments. In February 2026, the Gambling Commission asked its Industry Forum, a working group it uses to consult the gambling industry, to set out a "sensible" way for licensed operators to accept crypto.
Stablecoins look like the likely starting point. In May 2026, John Pierce, the Commission's director of enforcement, suggested they could be the first way crypto enters licensed betting. A coin fixed at one dollar is easier for a bookmaker to check than Bitcoin, whose price can swing widely in a day.
What to expect in 2027
Most of the PDC's income is secured for years, with contracts running to at least 2030. The pressure points arrive in 2027. In April, the UK tax on online betting rises from 15% to 25%, and it lands on the bookmakers whose names sit on almost every major title. The industry has warned it will make licensed firms less competitive against offshore sites.
ADVERTISEMENT
If British regulators open a route for crypto payments, the next World Championship title deal after 2031 could attract a kind of bidder darts has never had: a licensed bookmaker that takes crypto. If they don't, prize money can only keep rising if audiences hold up and the stars keep turning up.
Samuel GillChief Content Officer
Samuel Gill is the Chief Content Officer (CCO) of DartsNews.com, a role he has held since 2020. He is responsible for editorial governance across the platform, including setting content standards, overseeing accuracy and consistency, and guiding long-term editorial strategy across professional darts coverage. Since joining, he has contributed more than 10,000 articles and editorial pieces, playing a central role in the development and daily operation of the site.
Based in Leicester, Samuel has extensive experience in darts media and has been closely involved in coverage of the professional darts circuit for several years. Within the UK darts community, he is a recognised figure known for his consistent editorial output and ongoing reporting on major tournaments and developments across the PDC calendar.
In his current role, Samuel works closely with editors and writers to ensure content meets clear journalistic standards, with a focus on source verification, editorial consistency, and timely updates when new, confirmed information becomes available.
claps 0visitors 0
Just in
Popular news
Latest comments
- Joking aside, it is the second most watched sport on sky (more than golf, F1 etc) behind football only, and in participation is second to only football and swimming. It doesn't get the attention or sponsorship of "bigger" sports because it's not as sexy, but it's right up there.BandB13-10-2026
- i love darts but you can't seriously believe it's the second most popular sport in the uk. even top five is pushing it. it may be the fastest growing, though.colt13-10-2026
- I'm a big Clayton fan, but he's got this completely wrong. Qualification criteria exists for a reason - so just as failing to make the top 32/64 for the Euro championships/PT Finals means you miss out, so does not lifting a title for this one.26sForFun12-10-2026
- The players who deliberately slow the game down are usually boring and win very little in the way of silverware. Horrible to watch.MrYnyslas197112-10-2026
- [“The Gentle” then used a sweeping and questionable phrase...] You anglocucks are hilariously finished in every sense of the word.Critical99911-10-2026
- I love Jonny but I disagree. The Grand Slam was always supposed to be "champion of champions" type competition. If the top 16 are guaranteed participation in everything there will be so much less jeopardy involved in qualifying and each major tournament will lose its unique flavour which the PDC has worked hard trying to develop. I enjoy following the qualification races towards the end of the year, and while consistency should have its rewards, the truth is Jonny hasn't reached a major final all year or won a single event on the Pro Tour. Being consistent is one thing, but that alone should have consequences as the sport's elite should not be prepared to accept consistently strong performances, their foremost motivation should be to win and this should be what separates them from the rest, not the consistency of their performances. Jonny is expecting that losing should be enough; it shouldn't be, at least not as far as the Grand Slam is concerned.Deduce635811-10-2026
- Well being honest,it doesn't matter what level you play at, there's always someone who slows it down to suit themselves,and extra swig of water, replacing flights, asking the ref what the score is. It happens wherever. I'm not saying it's professional,but I'm sure we've all seen it beforerick6711-10-2026
- Agree completely. Not sure how a ranking event can have a criteria not based on rankings. And he right on popularity. In the UK second only to football.BandB11-10-2026
- Doesn't matter who's in it,it's boringrick6710-10-2026
- Assuming you qualify as one of the "muppets" in question. Classist too. And since you're so clearly interested in academia, look up "linguistic descriptivism" while you're at it. Oh, and better stay away from the working class sport of darts and maybe offer your insightful analysis to, let's say, croquet instead?Deduce635806-10-2026
Loading