"No changes planned at the moment": PDC Chief Executive Matt Porter confirms no plan to alter Premier League format despite rumours

Amid murmerings that the Premier League Darts will go back to 10 players this past week on Dutch television, PDC Chief Executive Matt Porter was quick to rule this out with German podcast Checkout getting the scoop at the Alexandra Palace.

The Premier League Darts as ever dominates conversation this time of year as a sub plot to the PDC World Darts Championship with players regularly asked and with the line-up confirmed in January before the tournament starts, it sees players clamour to stake their claim.

But was there set to be something different in the waters this year? Jacques Nieuwlaat reportedly hinted at a change to the Premier League format which was a discussion point on Twitter as to who would be involved.

There could yet be a situation with the Order of Merit dictating this that Gian van Veen and Jonny Clayton could be fighting for that World No.4 spot with Clayton currently ahead of Van Veen and could even see MVG drop. As a result perhaps the previous leading lights such as Stephen Bunting might not be safe for next year on paper albeit of course it is never a foregone conclusion even in event of winning a major.

But while change may come according to Porter in the form of evolving the event as opposed to reverting to the previous format or even changing it entirely from the tournament eight player format which he notes works well for the fans in the arena who are the paying public as opposed to those who are more hardcore fans over casuals perhaps.

It has been polarising at times with viewing figures supposedly up for it and it being a success but the complaint pointed to the format currently is that feasibly Littler and Humphries could play most weeks which makes matches that are often craved in the past stale. But it seems at least for now there won't be any change.

“We asked Matt Porter whether the Premier League would stay at eight players or expand to ten, and he was clear in his response: there are no changes planned at the moment," said Kevin Schulte and Micha Wattenberg of the Checkout Podcast translated from German.

They continued: “When we briefly discussed the idea of expanding the Premier League to ten players, we quickly realised it didn’t really make much sense. Matt Porter explained that the PDC has tried a lot of different things, but if they make changes, they want to evolve the format rather than go back to something else. He also made it clear they know this tournament format works well, especially for fans in the arena.”