Changing of the guard occurs between Van Gerwen and Price with end of seven year World Number One reign

Last week, Gerwyn Price took over the World Number One spot in the world rankings from Michael van Gerwen after winning the world title hence signalling a changing of the guard.

This brought an end to a period of seven years, in which Van Gerwen led the PDC Order of Merit with twice as much prize money as the World Number Two.

At its peak, at the end of 2016, Van Gerwen had more than £ 1.8 million in prize money in the world rankings. The then number two Gary Anderson was then at £900,000.

For a long time, he stuck around 1.5 million, but Van Gerwen had to defend his two-year winnings during the last World Championship. A sum of £ 500,000 was at stake. Mighty Mike lost in the quarterfinals to be 450,000 down on the PDC Order of Merit.

In the meantime, Price had already made quite a splash by winning the Grand Slam of Darts in 2019 and the World Grand Prix in 2020. Adding the world title sees that increasing to 1.3 million pounds in the Order of Merit and thus taking the first place.