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Premier League Darts returns with a bang this week as the best players in the world start in Belfast before hitting the road to bring a party to Thursday nights.
After 16 one-night stands across Europe that will leave darts fans feeling emotionally satisfied, the tournament – with its £1m prize pot – will culminate with the top four players competing in the play-offs at the O2 Arena in London on 29 May.
Eight men – Luke Humphries, Luke Littler, Michael van Gerwen, Rob Cross, Stephen Bunting, Gerwyn Price, Chris Dobey and Nathan Aspinall – have been chosen, competing in a mini-tournament each night, with a £10,000 bonus to to the winner in each city, while also accruing points for the overall league table to try and qualify for the London finale.
After hitting Belfast this Thursday, the roadshow heads to cities such as Glasgow, Dublin, Cardiff, Berlin, Rotterdam, Liverpool and Sheffield with drama guaranteed.
Here’s five storylines to look out for in the 2025 edition of the Premier League:
Littler prepares his encore
Luke Littler is the man at the forefront of darts’ current boom and the teenager confirmed his ascension to the best player on the planet when he went one better than a year ago by winning the World Darts Championship final last month.
Just 17 at the time, Littler became the youngest world champion in history by seven years and is becoming an unstoppable juggernaut in the sport yet maintaining his down-to-earth demeanour.
He had burst on to the scene at the 2024 World Championship with that run to the final, before losing to Luke Humphries, but went on to have a historic 2024 season even before lifting the world title. That included becoming Premier League champion by getting revenge over Humphries in the final at the O2 Arena, hitting a nine-darter in the showpiece to prove exactly what a box-office star he is.
Now he launches the defence of his Premier League title but the 18-year-old seems impervious to pressure, so seeing what he is capable of as an encore will be a key part of the next 17 weeks.
Can Cool Hand recapture the magic?
Having won the World Grand Prix, Grand Slam of Darts and Players Championship Finals in the space of three months at the end of 2023, Luke Humphries won the 2024 world title in January and then confirmed his status as the best player on the planet that summer. He claimed the World Cup for England alongside Michael Smith before triumphing at the World Matchplay in July – becoming just the second player after Phil Taylor to win that title and the Worlds in the same year.
However, by his own hugely high standards, things started to slip slightly towards the end of 2024 as he suffered a shock defeat to Mike De Decker in the final of the World Grand Prix, went out of the group stage of the Grand Slam of Darts and then saw his world title defence ended by Peter Wright at Ally Pally in December.
Of course, he’s still world No 1 by a significant margin and his World Masters win last week is a step in the right direction but the aura is diminishing slightly amid Littler-mania and the Premier League could be the perfect platform for Cool Hand to recapture some of the magic and deliver a message to his young rival.
Let’s go Bunting mental
Littler may be the world champion but Stephen Bunting is probably the people’s champion. The supremely likeable 39-year-old has been around the world’s top 16 for a while but has really made the jump to truly elite over the past 12 months and is in the form of his life.
He won his first televised PDC title, the Masters, at the start of 2024 and after a crowd-pleasing run to the semi-finals of last month’s World Championship – that was ended when he met the Littler buzzsaw – he has continued his form by winning a first World Series title at the Bahrain Masters, then finished as runner-up at the Dutch Masters. He’s now ranked No 5 in the world.
Ten years on from his lone Premier League appearance (he finished eighth in the 2015 edition), The Bullet is back and there will be no more popular player across the four months of action. His walk-on to Titanium has become the stuff of legend and you can guarantee that crowds will be chanting ‘let’s go Bunting mental’ throughout his matches. Given his form, he’ll also have designs on sealing a top-four spot and a place in the play-offs.
MVG is ‘back’?
Michael van Gerwen is the king of the Premier League, with no one able to match his record tally of seven titles in the event, having first won in 2013 and most recently in 2023.
He is making a 13th consecutive Premier League appearance and has, remarkably, only finished outside the top four on one occasion, meaning he’ll be among the pre-tournament favourites. But 2024 was something of a year to forget for Mighty Mike.
For the first time in a calendar year since way back in 2011 (when Littler was turning four years old, incidentally…), Van Gerwen did not win a televised tournament as he struggled for form. However, a run to the final of the World Championship may have signalled a return to something near his best, even if he was dismantled 7-3 by the teenage prodigy in a surprisingly one-sided showpiece.
His very first match on Thursday night in Belfast is a re-run of that final against Littler and if MVG truly is ‘back’ he’ll relish the occasion and will be confident of claiming a top-four spot at the end of the 16 weeks.
Hollywood and The Asp try to justify selection
There’s nothing darts fans love more than the 24 hours after the World Championship final when they can debate who should be given a place in that year’s Premier League and then moan about who did indeed make it once the names are announced. Such fun…
There are always at least one or two players that some supporters are furious about getting a slot, as their favourite, who they’re adamant had a cast-iron case for selection, got overlooked. Most of the ire seems to be directed towards Chris Dobey and Nathan Aspinall on this occasion, with the likes of Damon Heta and Mike de Decker the most frequent names mentioned as alternatives.
The case for Belgian rising star De Decker centred around his Grand Slam of Darts triumph and the fact that having another player from continental Europe in the line-up would be a real boon to the event, while the Heta case was based on his personality, flamboyant style, consistency of play and ranking as world No 8 – above Gerwyn Price, Aspinall and Dobey. But it’s the latter two who were ultimately chosen and they’ll be keen to vindicate that call.
Dobey’s impressive run to the World Championship semi-final bolstered Hollywood’s argument and he’ll be eager to improve on a seventh-placed Premier League finish from 2023 while Aspinall was runner-up in 2020 and his walk-on to Mr Brightside always gets the crowd rocking but needs to pick his form up after a middling 2024.
Premier League Darts schedule and dates
Night 1 – The SSE Arena, Belfast – Thursday 6 February
Night 2 – OVO Hydro, Glasgow – Thursday 13 February
Night 3 – 3Arena, Dublin – Thursday 20 February
Night 4 – Westpoint Exeter – Thursday 27 February
Night 5 – The Brighton Centre – Thursday 6 March
Night 6 – Motorpoint Arena, Nottingham – Thursday 13 March
Night 7 – Utilita Arena, Cardiff – Thursday 20 March
Night 8 – Utilita Arena, Newcastle – Thursday 27 March
Night 9 – Uber Arena, Berlin – Thursday 3 April
Night 10 – AO Arena, Manchester – Thursday 10 April
Night 11 – Rotterdam Ahoy, Rotterdam – Thursday 17 April
Night 12 – M&S Bank Arena, Liverpool – Thursday 24 April
Night 13 – Utilita Arena, Birmingham, Thursday 1 May
Night 14 – First Direct Arena, Leeds – Thursday 8 May
Night 15 – P&J Live, Aberdeen – Thursday 15 May
Night 16 – Utilita Arena, Sheffield – Thursday 22 May
Play-Offs – The O2, London – Thursday 29 May
