Nine floor titles, not translating to TV: Why Chris Dobey is still waiting

Chris Dobey won Players Championship 32, beating Tommy Morris 8-4, taking his tally to three Players Championship titles of 2026 and the third year in a row where Dobey has achieved this feat.

Nine floor titles from 13 floor finals since 2024, the Geordie has failed to convert this clinical winning mentality into stage events and further TV majors, not winning a single European Tour in his career, and in the last three years, reaching just a semi-final at the World Championships as his best result on TV.

Although his £100,000 from the 2025 World Championship semi-final was the second largest of his career, it doesn’t cover up the fact that Dobey has only one televised title, the 2023 Masters, nearly four years ago. How can this gap be explained? As currently the World Number 16 is by prize money earned the fifth best player on the floor, but on the stage he crumbles. Is it just missed match darts requiring precision for these moments, or is there something deeper; a continuous allergy to stages and important titles, preferring to be under the radar and an underdog rather than the favourite in matches under the limelight?

2026 has carried on the same Dobey form, with three titles and a strong 68% win rate headed by strong power scoring of a first nine of 108.27. The Geordie picked up titles at Players Championship events 3, 9 and 32. As it stands and how it has been standing since 2023, Dobey is completely reliant on Players Championship events for his ranking, with Players Championship events accounting for 38.1% of his money, comparable to players around him such as Gary Anderson, where Players Championship events account for just over a third of Dobey’s figure.

Consistency has been the key to his Players Championship success, with a running average of 98.11 in 2024, 97.98 in 2025 and 98.99 in 2026 across Players Championship events; a small range of 1.01 points is minimal. Dobey is completely comfortable under the quiet, inclusive and isolated Players Championship events. Not televised, under the radar, he can perform without constant scrutiny. The win percentage in Players Championship events is 7.9% larger than across the whole year, showing again that Dobey is just a different player in these events.

But the conditions a Players Championship and floor event present are favourable for players like Dobey: top players like Littler rarely enter, meaning in every room he enters of the Players Championship building, he’s one of the best dart players in that room. This confidence doesn’t translate to major stages, where the expectation to lose for Dobey when facing elite players can feed into his game, meaning the predicted outcome actually dictates the level he plays.

This is seen with the margin and quality of players Dobey beats in finals. Beating a below-par Bunting 8-1 at Players Championship 3, World Number 38 Justin Hood 8-4 at Players Championship 9 and World Number 90 Tommy Morris 8-4. These games were never close, and they weren’t because Dobey in that environment knows he’s better than these players, but on an unpredictable stage following two Premier League exits where he was well-beaten and inconsistent TV form, even Dobey doesn’t know what version will turn up. Consistency can only take players so far, and when repeated in the same environment, Dobey’s consistency almost comes as a result of repeated environments and profound and sustained confidence, something that can’t be found on a warm and sweaty Winter Gardens stage or when equalised 4-4 against Rob Cross in London.

Many elite players also don’t show up to European Tours, with the average ranking of a player in a European Tour event being below the low 40s, which would suggest Dobey would produce the same success, as he has the same confidence from Players Championship events. But Dobey has never won a European Tour. This year, he has lost more games than he has won, winning 12 and losing 14, and in 2025, he won 10 and lost 13. This repetition isn’t the same consistency as his 98 average; it is a pattern of losing to players ranked below you.

Many players around him have used the European Tour to build their stage presence and confidence on these stages, allowing for smooth transition onto the major TV stage: the most topical example currently is Ross Smith, with Smudger winning two TV titles following two European Tour wins in 2026. Smith sits fifth due to this. There’s no reason why Dobey can’t replicate this; in 2025 Dobey lost 13 games but had the highest average of any event that year, averaging 99.08 on the European tour. He produces quality darts and just gets unlucky and, far too many times, loses his composure, losing five matches this year in 2026 in decisive legs.

The European Tour is on stage, and in simplistic terms, Dobey struggles on stages and is losing composure. But the darts world knew this, and it is too simple an explanation with a blinding 2023 Masters and strong major results surrounding it. Therefore, what could have sparked this post-2025 drought in stages?

In 2025, Dobey was given a second chance in the Premier League after a disappointing 2023 debut, giving him a free first shot at something he’d loved but not succeeded in. Finishing seventh in 2023, Dobey’s later 6th place finish is just so far distant to what he’d been describing himself as in January. Dobey’s 2025 World Championship run included wins over Josh Rock and Gerwyn Price, securing an impressive semi-final that proved he belonged on stages, boosting his Premier League selection chances. This new, composed Dobey described himself in January 2025 as someone who belonged on that stage, telling BBC Radio Newcastle, “The first time I did it, I loved it, and I felt like I belonged there. ”.

The glaring issue is that he belonged there and finished seventh, never quite getting into the top four, meaning this distance between belonging and performing well could be the explanation for his TV troubles. Although his 2025 Premier League season wasn’t disastrous, winning 6 quarter-final games and winning in Rotterdam with a 101.84 average in the final, he never really looked like sneaking into the playoffs, despite stating, “I believe I can still get into the top four if I can keep this performance up," to Sky Sports in April. Again, this gap of what he’s saying and what he’s doing is a dangerous slide, as he finished seven points short of the playoffs. Therefore, if Dobey felt he could get playoffs, felt he belonged and was targeting for playoffs and then didn’t get it, what were the implications on his confidence following not living up to his word?

The implications are explicitly a TV stage drop, but even his floor form has struggled. From the active Premier League months of February to May 2025, Dobey had a really poor win percentage of 54.8% despite a 98.05 average. In the same months outside the Premier League, he won 62.5% of his games, showing in this four-month period his game suffered. Long-term implications, however, would take longer to settle.

These four months broke his confidence, and to recover from being beaten 60% of the time on Sky Sports every week in front of some of the biggest crowds in darts, this is a big enough blow to any player's composure and almost single-handedly explains his stage woes. Yet, following being left out of the 2026 Premier League, Bunting was included despite finishing five points below. Dobey was in 8th position in the 2025 Premier League, meaning Dobey juggled high averages, poor results, media scrutiny and being dropped for a player who finished below him. Stage problems aren’t inherited but are slowly being built into Dobey’s DNA.

On television, the drop is impossible to miss. Excluding the Premier League, Dobey won eight and lost eight of his televised matches in 2024, and he improved to 13 wins and 10 defeats in 2025. In 2026, he won two and lost six. A year after reaching the World Championship semi-final, the Geordie went out of the 2025/26 World Championship in the last 64, beaten 3-1 by Andrew Gilding, and every major since has told a similar story.

Losing 4-2 to Gerwyn Price in the Masters quarter-final was respectable, and a 102.90 average in a 10-9 defeat to James Wade at the UK Open showed the level was still there. But a 13-11 defeat to Dirk van Duijvenbode in the first round of the World Matchplay began a run that has gone from bad to worse. Averaging 83.18 in a 6-2 defeat to Gian van Veen at the World Series of Darts Finals, 79.93 in a 2-0 loss to Jermaine Wattimena at the World Grand Prix and 87.12 in a 6-1 thrashing by Josh Rock at the European Championship, Dobey has produced his three lowest stage averages of the year in his last three televised events. Averaging 93.15 on television in 2026, he is playing over five points below his Players Championship level, and the gap between the floor player and the stage player has never been wider.

This isn’t a lack of ability, as the end of 2025 proves. After the Premier League, Dobey reached the World Series of Darts Finals quarter-final, losing 10-8 to Price, the last 16 of the Grand Slam, losing 10-9 to Michael Smith, and the quarter-finals of the Players Championship Finals, where he averaged 104.57 against Luke Littler and still lost 10-5. At the 2025 European Championship, he averaged 101.21 against Michael van Gerwen and lost 10-5. When Dobey does turn up on stage, he is still losing close matches to elite players, and that is the fine margin between a very good player and a champion.

Those defeats came at a high level; the 2026 defeats haven’t. The level was there at the end of 2025, and the confidence has gone in 2026. Losing on stage against the best is a margin that can be closed, but averaging under 85 in two of his last three televised matches suggests a player who walks onto the stage expecting the worst, exactly what the Players Championship rooms protect him from. If the stage problem were only a matter of missed match darts, the averages would hold up while the results fell. Instead, the averages are falling with the results, and that points back to belief rather than precision. Why does that matter now, rather than next year?

The PDC Order of Merit doesn’t wait for confidence to return. Sitting 16th on £547,500, Dobey’s ranking is built from three seasons: £103,000 from 2024, £228,750 from 2025 and £215,750 from 2026. The 2024 block is almost entirely the £100,000 he earned from that World Championship semi-final, and it drops off after the 2026/27 World Championship, leaving him on £444,500 plus whatever he earns at Alexandra Palace. His 2025 money, 41.8% of his total, then rolls off through 2027.

With Ryan Searle on £557,750 and Gary Anderson on £564,250 just above him, there is little margin for another early exit. His floor earnings, 38.1% of his total, give him a reliable base no other source of his income does, but the televised money that pushed him up the rankings is the part about to go. Last year’s World Championship earned him £25,000, a quarter of what the semi-final paid a year earlier. Without a deep run this December, Dobey goes into 2027 defending a ranking built mainly on Players Championship events, the one place he doesn’t need to prove himself. A ranking held up by the floor can keep him inside the top 32, but it won’t carry him back into the top 10, and it won’t bring the Premier League back to Newcastle. The longer the stage form stays away, the harder the ranking becomes to defend.

Dobey is due a title. Three years of Players Championship titles, a 108.27 first nine that only two players in the world can beat this year, and an average that has stayed between 97 and 98 for three seasons all earn that. Nobody wins nine floor titles from 13 finals by luck.

But he isn’t ready for one, because a player who wins 76% of his Players Championship matches and 25% of his televised ones hasn’t yet solved the stage. The Premier League didn’t take away his level; it took away his results, then his place, and with them the belief he described so clearly in January 2025.

The answer to the question in the introduction lies somewhere in between: it isn’t an allergy to stages, as the 2023 Masters and that World Championship run proved, but it has become a habit of expecting to lose under the lights, and that habit is now showing in his averages.

The opportunity is coming quickly. The Grand Slam runs from 14 to 22 November, the World Championship follows in December, and in between sits the Players Championship Finals, a televised event built from the format Dobey dominates. A year ago, he averaged 104.57 there against Littler. If there is any stage where the floor player and the stage player can become the same player again, it is that one. In January 2025, Dobey said he felt like he belonged on the big stage. Over the next six weeks, the stage will decide whether it agrees.