The PDC’s Matt Porter talks Premier League Darts selection, changing format and criticism

Premier League Darts returns this week, with over 150,000 people set to attend the biggest ever edition of the event.

Much has changed since the Premier League began in 2005 and Phil Taylor beat Colin Lloyd in the final to £50,000 top prize.

Last year Luke Humphries lifted the trophy and claimed £275,000, with runner-up Luke Littler having to settle for £125,000.

Gone are venues like Wellsprings Centre, Taunton and Glades Arena, Kidderminster, with sell outs now at the 3Arena, Dublin, Uber Arena, Berlin and now the AFAS Dome, Antwerp.

It has always been a huge deal for players to make it into the field, but more so now than ever with the rewards on offer.

The eight-man field this time round caused some controversy as fans debated who should have made the cut and who was lucky to do so.

Humphries, Littler, Gian van Veen, Michael van Gerwen, Gerwyn Price, Jonny Clayton, Josh Rock and Stephen Bunting were the chosen octet.

PDC chief executive Matt Porter talks to Metro about those picks, growth of the event, criticism of the format and plenty more.

How Premier League selection was made

‘It tends to happen towards the back end of the World Championship. It’s funny when people talk about it in September and October because they’re talking about it way before we are. There’s so much water to pass under the bridge.

‘We look at rankings, form, personality and popularity, on-stage presence, but it’s a whole package. It’s not fair when people say, “oh, he’s only in because of his walk-on” or something like that. That’s just not the case.

‘We look at every aspect of what a player can deliver, what a player can bring to the table. And the nature of the beast is that it’s never going to be universally agreed with, which is good because it means people have got opinions and if you’ve got opinions then they care.’

Who just made it and narrowly missed out

Bunting was the most controversial pick, having finished last in the tournament in 2025 and suffering a shock early exit from the World Championship.

Porter explains: ‘Stephen probably didn’t finish the year as strongly as he’d wanted, but he was world-ranked number seven. He won six tournaments across the year. He’s a popular player and we felt that jettisoning him after one year probably wasn’t the right thing to do.

‘It did mean a couple of other players could consider themselves unlucky. Danny Noppert was probably the one who would have the most cause to say he could have been in it and he had a very valid case and he was very, very unlucky not to be selected.

‘Everyone’s in consideration, but obviously only to a point. James [Wade] started the year really, really well, then faded away. He was runner-up at the UK [Open], runner-up at the World Matchplay and then had a more disappointing year after that, first round defeats in four tournament and two quarter-finals. So there were players who outperformed him in the second half of the year.’

A change in Premier League format?

‘We will change it at some point, but at the moment you can only look at the numbers that are in front of you. The live crowd and the TV audience, the numbers are telling us that the format is working. If people stop buying tickets or start changing the channel then it wouldn’t be working, but every metric is improving.

‘It’s not a format that will keep forever because we never keep any format forever in the Premier League. The format must have changed half a dozen times in the 20 years of the event. But at the moment, it’s still the right format, we believe, for what we’ve got.’

‘There is a lot of repetition’

16-time world champion Phil Taylor suggested the repeated contests over the Premier League dims the drama of rivalries, telling Online Darts: ‘You need it, you need rivalry, you do. But you don’t need that rivalry week in and week out.

‘Me and Raymond (van Barneveld). That was exciting when we were going to play each other. Sky even had a countdown. But once we had the Premier League and he was in it and I was in it, we were playing week in and week out. So it becomes a bit less.

‘Manchester United versus Liverpool is exciting, but if they did it every other week, it wouldn’t be as exciting.’

Porter tells Metro: ‘I would accept that that is the biggest criticism of it. There is a lot of repetition.

‘But you’re looking at it through the eyes of somebody who’s perhaps watching it on TV every week. If you’re in Nottingham, you want to see Littler vs Humphries, and if you’re in Aberdeen, you might want to see the same, and if you’re in Brighton, you might want to see the same. It’s very difficult to turn around to people and say, “oh, sorry, you can’t see the biggest matchup in your city.”

‘Actually the nature of the bracket with those short format games, you should get enough variety in it anyway. But clearly with the same eight players playing each other over 16 weeks, there is going to be some repetition. I don’t remember many tennis fans complaining about watching Federer versus Nadal.’

The Premier League’s biggest year ever

‘It’s been a sold out event for a few years, but the numbers will be bigger this year because we’ve added Antwerp to the roster. That replaced Exeter, so that’s a bigger venue.

‘Over 150,000 people. It’s our biggest event in terms of ticket sales. We identified Antwerp because of the growth of darts in Belgium over the last few years and we’re not a UK company, we’re a global company, so the sport needs to be spread.’

The PDC’s Saudi debut

Last month the Saudi Arabia Darts Masters was played for the first time, in a very different atmosphere and environment to the ones we will see in the Premier League.

‘It was obviously an interesting, interesting place to do an event for the first time,’ said Porter. ‘Different to our other events, the crowd was obviously a little bit more restrained, but nevertheless, they enjoyed it. There was a lot of local interest. We were very well looked after. It went as well as we’d have hoped.’

‘Each of the players would have taken to it differently. They knew what to expect. And obviously they get the chance to go out and play on the stage before the crowd come in so they could see the size of the arenas, perhaps not as big as they’d been used to in other events. But they’re playing exhibitions in those sort of size arenas and they’re perfectly capable of adapting. Some can adapt more easily than others.’

Will there be more darts in Saudi Arabia? ‘I think one event in any sort of developing country is right. So no, there wouldn’t be any more than that. No.’

A £5m winner’s prize at the World Championship

Matchroom president Barry Hearn told The Sun: ‘I look at darts now and I think, OK, we’ve done well — £25million prize money, £1m for the winner.

‘So the next target is to get to £100m prize money with £5m to the winner.’

Porter responds: ‘I think the key thing is that you never rule anything out. Who’d have thought 10 years ago we’d be paying £1m to the winner of the World Championship?

‘As the sport keeps growing, then we’ll keep delivering across not just the world championship, but every other event. We’ve raised prize money across the board for this year. £25,000,000 in total. One day it’d be great to get it to 50 million, 75 million, 100 million. All we can do is just keep growing it and the market will react and tell us to the level that we can get to.’

A ‘frightening’ next generation of darts star

‘The talent base is frightening. The number of teenagers who are throwing 100 averages, 9 dart finishes is remarkable.

‘And it’s definitely a young person’s sport now and I think you’ll see that with the emergence of more talent from the JDC and the Development Tour over the coming years.

‘We have a fascinating spreadsheet, which I enjoy looking at every year, which shows the average age of our players, not only our tour card holders, but then our top 8 top 16, top 32, top 64, etcc. And it just drops every year.

‘It’s a sport that young people are coming into because there’s a genuine career path and it’s a sport that they, you know, they can get into from any background, wherever they’re from. There’s very few barriers to entry and that means that natural talent is really the only, only denominator.’

25 years working with Barry Hearn

From Leyton Orient press officer in 2001 to his position as PDC chief executive today, it has been quite a journey for Porter.

‘Every day is a different challenge,’ he said. ‘We’ve grown so much and so organically, you kind of take it in your stride, but the schedule is so relentless that there isn’t really always time to sit back and reflect.

‘But it’s been an amazing journey. This is my 25th year working for Barry and if I look at where we are now as a company compared to where we were in 2001, it’s a remarkable transformation.

‘I think it’s testimony to the events and the players who played in them, that they’ve been so popular with fans and that’s enabled us to get to this stage. We haven’t reinvented the wheel, we’ve just delivered products that the people want to engage with and enjoy. And at the moment, that’s going really well.’

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