A record number of 14,000 darts fans will come to watch the 2024 Premier League Darts playoffs at the O2 Arena in London this Thursday night. This is a record for a PDC event on British soil, the association reported.
At the conclusion of this Premier League, Luke Littler, Luke Humphries, Michael van Gerwen and Michael Smith will compete for the prestigious title. They secured positions in the top four league table after 16 weeks of play through the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands and Germany.
The Premier League Darts 2024 began all the way back on Feb. 1 in Cardiff and since then more than 150,000 darts fans have visited the best darts competition in the world. Never before has the Premier League attracted so many spectators since its inception in 2005.
The Premier League's popularity follows record-breaking ticket sales for the past World Darts Championship and the upcoming World Matchplay. Both events sold out in less than 24 hours.
The worldwide popularity of the sport has also skyrocketed in the past six months, following a hugely successful world championship in which the new world number one Humphries beat teenage sensation Littler in the final.
Sky Sports, the British broadcaster of the World Darts Championship, drew as many as 4.8 million viewers at the final. That was the highest number ever for a non-football-related event. According to Sky Sports, the Premier League Darts is also being watched better than ever. On other fronts, too, the sport is more popular than ever. The number of entries for the Development Tour (the youth circuit of the PDC) is almost 40 percent higher than last year. The JDC Tour tournaments (for talents aged 10 to 17) are also under much more interest.
''The sport is riding the crest of a wave at the moment and the momentum created by the huge success of the World Darts Championship has been maintained throughout the first five months of 2024,'' general manager Matt Porter said in conversation with the PDC's website. "The BetMGM Premier League season has experienced record interest from fans attending, watching through Sky Sports and our global broadcast partners and media, and we're all excited for Thursday's Play-Offs between four wonderful players. We've seen an upward curve in the popularity of darts since emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic, but recent months have been a huge acceleration of interest globally."
"After the Premier League finishes, June will feature World Series of Darts events in New York, Copenhagen and Poland, which have all sold more tickets than last year, ahead of visits to Australia and New Zealand in August as fans across the world clamour to see the top players live in their region," Porter concludes. "The World Championship captured the imagination and has also brought a new generation of fans to the sport - whether that be watching or now taking up the sport. With participation levels rising, fans snapping up tickets in record numbers and darts manufacturers such as Winmau reporting record sales - particularly in the UK - the sport has never been as healthy."
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