Preview first quarter at 2025 PDC World Darts Championship: Is Luke Humphries living up to his status as favourite?

It’s nearly that time of year again. This Monday is the 2nd of December, which means it’s nearly time for Christmas, but more importantly the PDC World Darts Championship. The big one is just around the corner now, and the action gets under way on December 15th and runs all the way until January 3rd.

So the World Championship is now a little under two weeks away, and darts fans will already be planning their trips to the capital and Alexandra Palace, where the event has been held at since 2008. Last year, Luke Humphries announced himself as the best darts player on the planet by winning his first World Championship, and Cool Hand has had a stellar year since where he’s picked up several other major titles. But really, everyone remembers the last World Championship as the debut of 16 year old Luke Littler. Before the tournament started, no one had heard of the ‘The Nuke,’ now he’s one of the most well known British sportsman, and he’s still just 17.

Since the draw was made earlier this week, we’re going to start to take a look at the full second round draw. The tournament follows a knockout format, beginning with a field of 96 players. The tournament is divided into preliminary and main rounds, with the top 32 players from the PDC Order of Merit automatically seeded into the second round. They are joined by qualifiers from various regional tours and events, who compete in the opening round, and matches increase in length as the tournament progresses, starting as best-of-5 sets and culminating in a best-of-13 sets final.

There’s big money on the line, as the total prize pool this year is £2,500,000, and the winner will take home half a million. And there’s still money on the line in the second round, where even the loser will pick up £15,000. So, let’s take a look at who is in action in the opening quarter of the 2025 PDC World Darts Championship.

Defending champion and number 1 seed Luke Humphries will kick off his campaign on the very first night of the championship, where he’ll face either France’s number one Thibault Tricole or Australia’s Joe Comito, who will battle it out in the first round earlier that day.

Humphries was absolutely sensational in winning the world title back in January, and for large parts of 2024 he’s been unbeatable. He picked up the World Matchplay title with a win over Michel van Gerwen, and last week he successfully defended his PC Finals title. But, it’s not been all plain sailing in recent months for Humphries, who lost his World Grand Prix title to underdog winner Mike De Decker back in October. And at the Grand Slam of Darts earlier this month, Humphries was dumped out in the group stage after losing his first two games.

Regardless, Humphries is the joint favourite for a reason. On his day, he can be absolutely unplayable, and he proved last year that he’s got the bottle to do it on the biggest stage. If he’s back at his best, there’s no reason that the 29 year old can’t successfully defend his crown.

16th seed James Wade will get his campaign underway against 2024 European Championship runner up Jermaine Wattimena or Stefan Bellmont from Switzerland. ‘The Machine’ has had an incredible career so far where he’s won 38 senior PDC titles, but the World Championship has always eluded him. He’s made it to the semi-finals on multiple occasions, but last year he didn’t make it out of the second round after losing to Matt Campbell.

Wade’s best performance of the year came at the World Matchplay, where he was only beaten by eventual winner Humphries in the semi-finals. Many will fancy Jermaine Wattimena to make it through to the second round, after his strong performances at the European Championship and the Grand Slam, but Stefan Bellmont will definitely provide a stern test.

There’s no doubt about it, Peter Wright is going through a difficult period in his darts career. It seems like just yesterday that the Scotsman was winning his second World Championship back in 2022, but so far he’s been no where near that sort of from in 2024. And maybe his bad form can be traced back to his shocking second round loss at last year’s World Championship against Jim Williams.

We hope for the sake of the competition that Wright can find some form, as he is truly electric when he’s at his best. Wesley Plaisier and Ryusei Azemoto have never faced off before, and Wright will be expected to make it past either one of them regardless of his current form.

2024 Masters champion Stephen Bunting is the 8th seed for the World Championships, and he’ll face off with either Alan Soutar or Kai Gotthardt. Bunting made it to the fourth round last year, where he was beaten Michale van Gerwen. His win at the Masters earlier this year was the first time he’d made it to a PDC Major final, and he made no mistake in gaining revenge of Van Gerwen who he beat 11-7.

Alan Soutar vs Kai Gotthardt in the first round should be a close contest, but Bunting will hope he can comfortably beat either of them in the second round. The 39 year old’s best World Championship performance came when he made it to the semi-final in 2021, and he’d love to go one better this time around.

Coming in at the 24th seed is one of 2024’s new stars, Mike De Decker. The Belgian’s breakthrough came at the World Grand Prix in October, where he beat Luke Humphries 6-4 in an epic contest that saw him stun the defending champion. With that win, De Decker became just the second man from Belgium to win a major title, following in the footsteps of Dimitri Van den Bergh.

And the 29 year old was looking good once again at the Grand Slam of Darts earlier this month. He defeated Michael Smith and Mensur Suljovic in the group stage, before he narrowly lost 10-9 to the superstar Luke Littler in the second round.

So De Decker has already had a great end to 2024 so far, but how will he do at the World Championship? He’s never made it past this round at the World Championships in his three previous attempts, but he will fancy his chances this year.

In the first round matchup, Luke Woodhouse will fancy his chances against Lourence Ilagan, and if he does make it through that clash, he will be pretty confident against De Decker. That’s because of the 2 times Woodhouse has played De Decker, he’s won on both occasions. Could he make it a third?

Luke Humphries (1) v Thibault Tricole or Joe Comito

Raymond van Barneveld (32) v Nick Kenny or Stowe Buntz

James Wade (16) v Jermaine Wattimena or Stefan Bellmont

Peter Wright (17) v Wesley Plaisier or Ryusei Azemoto

Stephen Bunting (8) v Alan Soutar or Kai Gotthardt

Dirk van Duijvenbode (25) v Madars Razma or Christian Kist

Damon Heta (9) v Connor Scutt or Ben Robb

Mike De Decker (24) v Luke Woodhouse or Lourence Ilagan