Beat Luke Littler: Fallon Sherrock Wins £501,000 With One Leg of Darts

One leg of darts, 15 throws and a £501,000 cheque: that was the outcome of Netflix’s Beat Luke Littler in Manchester on Friday night, when Fallon Sherrock became the only contestant to topple the reigning world champion.

Sherrock, 32, won the bull to throw first, hit a 180 (only the third maximum of the night) and finished on double 20. Littler, 19, had beaten 14 challengers before her. He called it “world class” and noted that winning the bull and going out in 15 darts was exactly what a challenger needed to do. Sherrock’s win ended the event immediately, so the five amateurs still waiting never got their turn.

A prize second only to Littler’s own

According to Sky Sports and the Independent, the payout is the second-biggest in darts history. Only Littler has taken home more from one prize pot, the £1m he earned for his second world title in January. For comparison, Sherrock won £25,000 for reaching the third round of the 2019 PDC World Championship, the run that made her the first woman to win a match at the event and earned her the nickname “The Queen of the Palace”. She was awarded an MBE in 2023.

Sherrock said her son Rory was in the crowd. “It’s his first time at anything and he has seen me win,” she said. Sixteen-time world champion Phil Taylor called the win “life-changing” and said it could clear a mortgage.

The criticism over who counts as an amateur

The victory came with an argument attached. Netflix billed the show as giving “amateurs a chance at life-changing money”, and Sherrock’s name on the list drew criticism on social media because of her profile. She qualified under the rules because she has never held a PDC Tour Card.

She admitted the backlash was “tough”. “I wouldn’t class myself as a pro really, because all I do is just play darts for the enjoyment of it,” she said. She added that people forget she was still playing World Darts Federation events when she made her Worlds breakthrough. Her reaction after winning was: “I’m just so happy to overcome all the hate and win.”

PDC president Barry Hearn, who sat on the audition panel, defended her place. “She’s entitled to enter. Why should she be denied?” he asked. He argued that a field of 20 people who could barely throw a dart would make poor television, and said the aim was “excellence competing against excellence”. Other contestants ranged from the world’s top-ranked WDF player to a bin man, an Australian jockey and a Nando’s manager.

How the field was built

The scale of the project was considerable. Some 25,000 people applied. Hopefuls first had to get down from 501 in 24 darts or fewer, then face an interview panel that included Taylor, Hearn and pundit Laura Turner. Sixteen players were picked outright, while the most experienced were paired off and put to a Netflix viewer vote. Sherrock took 75% against Germany’s Jarod Becker to earn her place.

Not everyone’s night ended well. Ireland’s Pearse Mackle, a 21-year-old student from County Cavan, was close to winning but missed the bullseye he needed.

The format fits a growing trend of amateurs-versus-stars spectacles. The Australian Open’s one-point tennis slam produced a A$1m winner who beat Jannik Sinner, and 100 amateur drivers recently raced Max Verstappen at Silverstone. Hearn linked the Netflix event to Littler’s arrival. “Luke Littler gave me the one thing I was missing, he gave me that young audience,” he said, adding that Beat Luke Littler was “a statement on where darts has become”.

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File photo: Fallon Sherrock – 2022 (cropped).jpg by Sven Mandel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.