“My nightmare? We’ll end up with a young Chinese player who has a nine-darter every time he throws” - Barry Hearn sees the darting world exploding outside Europe

Barry Hearn is 77, but his ambitions for darts are growing faster than ticket sales at Alexandra Palace. As London gears up for a sold-out edition of the World Darts Championship, the PDC president looks ahead to a future in which the limits of the game are pushed even further.

With the Worlds expanding to 128 players this year and 20 match days, the PDC will pump around 25 million pounds into prize money in 2026. The winner will receive 1 million pounds, double last year’s amount.

Hearn smiles at the thought that this is only the beginning. “I’ll get that prize money up to £100million if I live long enough, he tells The Times. “And that’s a legacy that selfishly I will enjoy remembering when I’m laying up there and I’ll say, ‘All right, bad enough mate."

On the wall at the Matchroom headquarters hangs the scoreboard from Michael Smith’s historic nine-darter in the 2023 final. An iconic darts moment—until Luke Littler then took the sport to a completely new level.

Littler, still only 18, has won nine majors since his breakthrough, pocketed nearly two million pounds in prize money, and has become the youngest world number one ever. Hearn sees him as the perfect game-changer. “He’s a different animal from when he stepped on stage at sixteen. He oozes confidence.”

Littler’s world has changed off stage as well. “He can’t just grab a beer with friends without everyone coming up to him. But his performances don’t suffer. He keeps his feet on the ground.”

And then there’s that playful element that makes him so unique. "He’s bought his mum and dad a five-bedroom house in the country, but last time I spoke to him he still gets 50 quid a week pocket money."

“He’s got a sense of humour too. He checks out different things just to f*** people’s minds up, I’ve seen him have three darts at 50 and take out the bull first time. There’s a school of thought that takes you to the car park and you get bashed up for that because it’s called taking the piss, but he just thinks it’s funny.

Littler’s success translates directly into commercial power. Last year’s final against Luke Humphries drew 4.8 million viewers, the highest non-football broadcast ever on Sky Sports.

The venue can barely meet demand either.“ I could have quadrupled the price of tickets this year and sold out in 24 minutes instead,” Hearn says. “Ally Pally is just this monster that sits there in the room, says, ‘Feed me’, and just goes, ‘Gulp, that’s done.’” Even so, the Worlds will remain at Alexandra Palace until 2031. From 2026 the tournament will move to the Great Hall to increase capacity.

The PDC is expanding into the Middle East: Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh. Hearn is realistic about where it’s going. “Are we in a sense prostitutes who do what’s asked as long as the price is right? Yes, OK.”

And then there’s the interest from Saudi Arabia. “We’re getting the Saudis coming along and they could say, ‘OK, we want the World Championship.’ How much? I think I could get £20million out of them. But it’s not going to be a good event. They aren’t ready yet.”

Yet he sees huge opportunities. One of his favorite anecdotes is about the Prince of Bahrain: “I’m mates with the crown prince of Bahrain,” Hearn says. “He said to me when we took darts there that he had to smuggle himself in with a white T-shirt on, and he loved it so much that he’s added darts to the school curriculum."

“People say, ‘Are we prostitutes here, doing whatever these people say provided they pay the right amount of money?’ And I’m like, ‘Yep, OK.’ They say to me, ‘You’re taking darts to Saudi Arabia?’ I say, ‘Yes’, but that narrative is being built already, even if it is about the event rather than the people.

“As for the players, they’re just thinking: two days’ work in Saudi, a couple of days in Bahrain, Abu Dhabi — ‘I’m going to earn a fortune.’”

With new Premier Leagues in Australia, China and the US, growth continues. But one thought keeps him up at night. “I must say, though, my recurring nightmare is that we’ll end up with a young Chinese player who has a nine-darter every time he throws and it just kills the game stone dead. It does get me thinking sometimes if I’ve taken things too far.”

For Hearn, darts is more than entertainment. It’s a sport for the common man that breaks down barriers. “I view the darts as an eco-social statement of where the world’s gone,” he says. “That sounds a bit grandiose, but I’m very working class and I have always wanted a level playing field for working-class people.

His success stories stick with him. Like Nathan Aspinall’s reaction after his first big check. “I said to him, ‘Well done son, don’t be too disappointed, you know 100 grand is a lot of money.’ He goes, ‘Disappointed? I just paid 60 grand for my house and I’ve just earned 100 grand.’”

It makes clear why Hearn remains so driven. “In darts, we’ve defeated the snobbery in sport. People who used to scoff at me, ‘Darts? Fat blokes? Smoking? Drinking? Couldn’t run around a table’. Now we’re getting the ultimate revenge.