Michael van Gerwen still holds this staggering tournament average nearly ten years on as change in standard question asked

The level at darts tournaments is often said to be improving, but is that true? Christopher Kempf, responsible for all kinds of data and statistics at the PDC, found out.

Almost a decade ago, history was made in terms of TV tournaments. Not only did Michael van Gerwen win the Dubai Duty Free Darts Masters for the third year in a row, the tournament also ended with an overall average of over one hundred.

In 123 legs, the eight best players in the world (all of whom, except Phil Taylor, still have a Tour Card) combined to win 100 legs in 15 darts or less.

So far only five other broadcast PDC tournaments have managed to exceed an average of 98, however, no tournament came close to that magic hundred. The record is so hard to beat because the eight-man field of participants consisted only of top players, nowadays qualifiers also get their chance at such tournaments.

But such a high average is rather rare even for a collection of eight of the world's best players. Consider that in the 2024 Premier League Darts so far, only 40 percent of match winners have surpassed that record tournament average from nine years earlier.

With an average of 99.55, the 2017 Masters - won by Van Gerwen with an average of 106 over his four matches - remains the highest level for any tournament with at least 16 players. The 2015 Premier League Darts included a whopping 1,658 legs played with a combined average of 99.01, a high point in the history of this major.

The highest mark for a ranking tournament also dates back to this golden age of high averages: the 2015 European Championships ended with a tournament average of 97.09.

The main driving force behind the high tournament averages of the mid-2010s was Van Gerwen, who recorded as many as 21 110+ averages at TV tournaments in the three years between 2015 and 2017.

On the European Tour, we are also seeing remarkable things. It was once rare to see an average of 100+ in a Friday match in the first round; the 19 tournaments held in 2015 and 2016 produced only 16. The first six tournaments held in 2024 produced 21 100+ averages.

Although Luke Humphries achieved an average of 107.51 in his winning campaign this year in Munich, tournament winners' averages have nevertheless increased only slightly over the years. The big improvements are due to the depth of the field of participants, whose Friday victories and eventual defeats make up the bulk of the legs played in these events.

Unlike the European Tour, however, the high Players Championship average of 93.79 has held up for four years. The event, held in July 2020 during the first series of COVID-19 lockdown tournaments, saw the participation of all past, present and future world champions active at the time, as well as all other Tour Card holders desperate to resume their careers.

But while tournament averages fell from 2023 to 2024, first-round loser averages rose, indicating that even if players don't win as much as they used to, they find it harder to get through the first round each year, regardless of setting or prize money.