From £17m to £106.5m: Luke Littler sponsor Target reveals ambitious plans for darts’ next global growth phase

Luke Littler's rise has transformed more than the competitive landscape of darts. At Target Darts, the company that first signed him at the age of 12, revenues have climbed from £17 million to £106.5 million in just four years, according to figures reported by The Times.

The world number one signed a new 10-year deal with Target in January reportedly worth £20 million, with the manufacturer also acting as his management team. Littler has since continued to dominate on the oche, winning every PDC major staged so far in 2026 and successfully defending the World Matchplay last month.

That combination of sporting success and commercial growth comes against a wider boom for darts. Last year's World Championship generated 51.2 million viewing hours in the UK, the highest figure recorded by a non-football audience, while the tournament's total prize fund has climbed from £1 million in 2010 to £5 million in 2026.

Target is already looking beyond Littler. Beau Greaves, Charlie Manby and 15-year-old Scottish prospect Mitchell Lawrie are among the younger players under contract, while CEO James Tattersall believes the sport itself now has to match its rapid growth by becoming more professional, more technologically connected and more international.

Tattersall believes one of the biggest remaining gaps is the support available to elite players behind the scenes.

"Now is the time to professionalise the sport - a dedicated performance coach working directly with our players, a nutritionist supporting the physical demands of competition, a sports psychologist helping players perform consistently under the pressure of live crowds, television cameras, and major titles," Tattersall said to ESPN. "This isn't a traditional endorsement model; it's a support system that helps players perform at their best."

"I think darts needs to see it itself [that the sport is mainstream], and that aspiration for the sport needs to come in and needs to be driven," he said. "We've got to look at how players are treated, for example, like the same way as Roger Federer expects if he walks into Wimbledon. That's the challenge, we've got to believe it ourselves."

Littler is already operating at the kind of commercial scale Tattersall is describing. His reported £20 million Target contract followed two years in which he went from teenage prospect to world number one, while Target's own turnover increased more than sixfold.

The same ambition extends to how people play the game away from the professional circuit. Darts' pub roots remain central to its identity, but home setups, online play and automatic scoring have created a different route into the sport for younger and more casual players.

Target's Omni system is part of that push, with alternative games including 'Board is Lava', 'Battlesplash' and 'Alien Invasion' designed to sit alongside traditional 501.

"For us, the future of darts has always been about looking beyond the board," Tattersall told ESPN. "For decades, the shape of darts was fixed. You stood at the board, you threw, you scored by hand on the chalkboard next to the board, and you played alone or with whoever was in the room. While almost every other pastime has been transformed by technology, darts has remained largely disconnected. We believe that is about to change. In the same way Spotify connected music and Strava connected running, we believe a connected ecosystem will transform participation in darts."

Target has also partnered with Powerleague, placing dartboards inside five-a-side football venues as it looks for players and customers beyond traditional pubs and clubs.

"For us, the next chapter of darts isn't just played in pubs," Tattersall continued. "We're on a mission, not just to upgrade the pub game, but to bring darts to social environments that are designed around community and participation."

That expansion is already visible on the PDC calendar. Around 45 per cent of PDC events now take place outside the UK, compared with 27 per cent a decade ago, and Target sees Germany, North America and China as three of its biggest opportunities.

China is perhaps the least developed darts market of the three, but also one of the most intriguing. Target employs more than 300 people there, says sales have doubled year-on-year for the past three years and has opened an academy in Shanghai.

"In China, it's a completely new concept," Tattersall said. "So, there we have an academy in Shanghai, and they're crying out for someone to tell them how we teach the kids to play darts. They don't have that innate cultural understanding of how to throw it, and so you know they're looking for training programmes, and that's something that we feel we can provide. So yeah, China for me is another really interesting one."

North America presents a different challenge. Tattersall believes the market is underrepresented relative to its potential, but even the company's own name creates an unusual complication because of the American retail giant Target.

"I think at the end of the day, we are Target Darts," Tattersall said. "I think for us in America, it's being Target Darts a lot more than just Target."

The price of tungsten, the dense metal used in most high-end barrels, rose sharply this year and forced manufacturers to react quickly. Target has since adjusted prices again as raw-material costs eased, but Tattersall says the longer-term focus is on reducing waste and making production more efficient.

"Tungsten is a really unique material. It's brilliant for darts and the reason is because you know it's very, very dense, so you can create quite a lot of weight with quite a small area, which means you can get more darts in a very small area, i.e. a treble 20," Tattersall explained. "So that's where we are. But we're looking at new ways of manufacturing, how we can reduce waste, and how can we improve it to help try and protect the retail prices as much as possible, and that's our challenge."

For Target, the scale of the opportunity now stretches far beyond one player. Littler remains the clearest symbol of darts' current boom, but the company's investment in young talent, connected play and overseas markets shows how quickly the commercial race around the sport is developing with him.