The easiest major in darts? The World Series of Darts Finals data tells a surprising story

The World Series of Darts Finals starts on the 17th September to kick-start the first of many TV tournaments in the last 3 months of 2026. Hosted at the AFAS arena in Amsterdam, the finale of the World Series is one of the most ambiguous tournaments on the calendar, as despite the £100,000 prize to the winner and a £450,000 prize, there are no ranking benefits for players competing.

This raises the question if the World Series is really a major, and to win the trophy, what is the standard needed? How does the World Series of Darts Finals compare to other majors, and after Michael Van Gerwen’s victory last year, is this tournament really beneficial for a player’s career?

The World Series of Darts is a knockout major, with matches starting from the last 32, taking a player to win five matches over the weekend to pick up the title and £100,000 top prize. To get past each round, the past five years show a clear picture of the standard you have to reach in order to get past each round. In the last five years, the overall first-round winner average was around 94.98. Averaging to just under a 16-dart leg, the average loser average is a very low 89.47, mostly explained by the first round including many international qualifiers who benefited from winning just one match in their respective World Series. For example, Viktor Tingstrom has qualified for this TV event for the first time, but in 2026 he is averaging just 85.10 whilst playing on the PDC tour. This reveals as a major that the World Series of Darts consists of quite a low floor due to its unique system. Requiring just 3 points to qualify this year, a win qualifies anyone, and with TIngstrom, again used as an example, qualified through a win against Stephen Bunting 6-5, where the Swede averaged just 83.47.

The gap between the overall first-round winner and first-round loser average is 5.51 in the last 5 years, showing again the gulf in quality the World Series has where players who haven’t featured in the World Series this year, with players such as Chris Dobey and Wessel Nijman, receive direct invitations through their PDC Order of Merit position, dominate the international qualifiers as they benefit from a free invitational due to their PDC Order of Merit.

With recent years following the format change presenting a higher ceiling to performance and a higher floor, with a 2024 gap of just 4.98 compared to the average 5.51, it is explicit that in order to get past the first round these international players must perform well above their seasonal average. Yet, the World Series of Darts is televised across the world and in front of a crowd of 5000; the environment is far from the domestic tour events that they compete in, where often darts are played in sports halls.

From the 2026 draw, this gap in averages can be seen with many match-ups: the inform Wessel Nijman against 2011 World Championship finalist Simon Whitlock and Nathan Aspinall against the Australian Raymond Smith. With Aspinall only appearing in the World Series in January in the Middle East and Wessel Nijman not even competing in a single event, the qualification system breeds this gap and is the only major to have such a low floor. Yet, the ceiling often isn’t high. In 2023, the winner’s average to get past the first round was 90.38, a standard below tour level.

To get past the Last 16, the ceiling increases, and following the exit of most international World Series qualifiers, the floor increases to the same level as most majors. In a first-to-6 format, averages should be consistently higher compared to a longer Matchplay format or a World Championship Set format due to playing fewer darts, therefore reducing the possibility of playing poor darts. In the last 16, the winner average sits at 96.94; a standard of only 14 players in 2026 are playing on TV. More recognisably, the gap between the last 16’s winner average and loser’s average is just 3.83, a small but significant change of 1.68. With the last two years also involving a mean winning average of 98.91, the standard from the last 16 is staggering.

Comparing the mean losing average in the last 16 to the mean winning average in the last 32, a gap of just 1.87 between the mean losing average in the last 16 and the mean winning average in the first round, showing how quickly the standard rises after the opening round.

Through these stats, it shows the possibility for international qualifiers to have runs. An average of 94.98 to win (of course subject to fluctuation and not context bound) shows that players such as Brody Klinge, Ben Robb and even Adam Leek, who can all produce darts at this standard, receive £10,000, which can help boost their careers.

Especially with players such as Klinge who don’t have the tour card, the World Series is an opportunity to build their career across the world and receive the backing to enter Q-school. This adds a layer of entertainment to the event, making it mostly different to all majors, but this doesn’t deny the fact it most definitely waters down competition.

In the quarter final, the standard increases due to the field of players streamlining into a collection of 8 familiar faces. In the last 5 years, only four players ranked outside of the top 16 have qualified into the quarter-finals, including the turned pundit Keegan Brown in 2023 and Dutch star Niels Zonneveld in 2021. This explains the Quarter-Final winning average of 98.30, with an average increase from the first round of 3.32. Over the last 2 years following the format change, this figure increased to 100.39, showing that to get past the quarter-finals, the difference between winning and losing at this stage is the difference between closing out 501 in five visits rather than six. However, the most revealing stat is the losing average of 95.03 in the quarter-finals, which is higher than the winning average in the first round. The World Series over just two rounds changes from a tournament littered with players below tour standard to a competitive major. The semi-final produces similar numbers, showing to reach the final a 98.92 average is needed. The outcome is determined at this point by pressure moments, really showing how open the field is for lower-ranked players such as Noppert, Rob Cross and Doets to make deep runs.

In the last five years, final averages have fluctuated from losers averaging 83.57 in 2023 to 101.99 last year. With an average of 99.70 to win the tournament, the World Series produces mostly the same result as most majors, but can it be considered a major? Players such as Michael Van Gerwen, who walks into the AFAS arena as the defending champion, don’t hold the same pressure as he will in the World Championship, where he is defending £200,000. Without this pressure, it's hard to see the level of pressure in the World Series as comparable with other majors.

The World Series of Darts is an invitational tournament mostly, meaning, as mentioned before, the quality of the tournament suffers from lower-ranked players. Compared to qualification systems such as the World Matchplay, the quality comparatively suffers because of the Matchplay’s strict qualification system streamlining the best players against the most in-form players. In the last five years, the mean average for the tournament is 94.59, with the highest average being last year with a tournament average of 95.94.

Compared to the WSOD Finals five-year tournament average of 94.59, the Matchplay first-round average of 94.15 differs by just 0.44 points. Additionally, when contrasted with the European Championships, where qualification isn’t invitational and is based upon form, the same format actually produces a mean average of 94.14 in the first round, a gap to the WSOD of 0.45 points.

Barely measurable, but with the first round having 10 players without a tour card in it, the elite players seem to produce better quality darts in the World Series. Moreover, in the World Matchplay, which, although played over a first-to-10-leg format compared to a first-to-6 format and in turn carrying a higher likelihood to reduce the averages, the WSOD produced higher mean averages in the last 5 years. An average just 0.01 more than the European Championship, the World Series of Darts consistently produces better first-round performances on average.

First-round fixtures prove the World Series of Darts produces the best darts on TV, but in the tournament, the averages in the last five years are in the bottom three TV majors. The World Grand Prix, as an exception due to the double-start format, the World Series averages 94.77 finishes, just above the Players Championships and World Championships in terms of mean averages. In practice, this means in terms of majors with a 32-player field, the World Series of Darts finals actually produce the worst quality darts in terms of averages. Although averages aren’t a direct representation of the quality of darts, they are the best representation using statistics of the quality of a major.

Compared to the World Matchplay, which produces the highest mean average in the last five years of 96.61, the invitational qualification clearly damages the World Series of Darts. Considering the short format of the World Series in addition to the first 11-leg finals, which haves the same format as the second round of the World Matchplay, the World Series of Darts can be considered one of the easiest tournaments for a player to win. A low mean tournament average can allow lower-ranked players, such as Keegan Brown in 2023, to make significant inroads, with his quarter-final run a result of a tournament average of 92.37. This wouldn’t be possible at the World Matchplay and was only really produced at the European Championships last year by Ryan Joyce in his quarter-final run, averaging 93.31 in the tournament.

Winning the World Series of Darts Finals is not without consequence, even without ranking money. In the last eleven years, ten of eleven winners have gone on to win at least one ranking major or reach a major final in the same autumn season. The list reads as a who's who of the sport at its peak. A World Grand Prix and World Championship double. A Grand Slam and European Championship clean sweep. Multiple Players Championship Finals titles. The correlation is remarkable and almost too consistent to be coincidental. Whether winning the World Series produces form or simply identifies who already has it is impossible to say from the data alone, but the pattern holds across a decade.

The one exception is last year, where the defending champion walked into the AFAS Arena with the trophy but left the autumn season without a ranking title to show for it. One exception across eleven years is an anomaly. But it is the most recent data point on record, which makes it the most relevant. In the context of Van Gerwen, however, this win can be seen as a surprise win, as his form didn’t suggest the World Series of Darts Finals would be a winnable major this time last year.

The broadcast footprint tells you what the PDC believes the tournament is. Seven international territories, including the United States and Australia, confirm this is a global commercial showcase as much as a competitive event. Prize money unranked, qualification partly invitational, overall standard barely above one Matchplay opening round across five years. By every structural measure, the World Series of Darts Finals is not a major. But ten of eleven winners going on to major success in the same autumn is not the record of a tournament that does not matter. The data refuses to give a clean answer. That is probably the most honest thing you can say about it.