2025 Premier League Darts
Are you new to Darts? Or a are you a fan and not sure on the latest formats? We will cover what the tournament is about, who plays in it, what venues will host the event and what the odds are. Our 2025 Premier League Darts explainer will answer your questions!
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What is Premier League Darts?
Premier League Darts is a weekly PDC darts event held from February to May in huge venues across Europe. The event has been running annually since 2005. The format has undergone some changes over the seasons, but it has always featured a League Stage. This is used to find the top four players, and then decisive Play-Offs on Finals Night.
The event is unranked, meaning that the prize money won by players does not impact the Order of Merit. Despite this, the tournament is still very prestigious due to the elite field and famous locations. This has seen the Premier League become one-third of the PDC Triple Crown, alongside the World Championship and World Matchplay. This feat has only been achieved by three players in history. 18-year-old Luke Littler is the reigning and defending champion, having beaten Luke Humphries in last year’s final.
When Do the Premier League Darts Take Place?
Between the League Stage and Finals Night, there are 17 sessions, all taking place on Thursday nights and getting underway at 7:00pm GMT.
This season’s 16-week League Stage began on the 6th of February at the SSE Arena in Belfast and the location will change for the following 15 weeks. Players will have their final opportunity to pick up points on the 22nd of May at the Utilita Arena in Sheffield.
The Finals Night Play-Offs, will take place a week later on the 29th of May at the world-famous O2 Arena in London. This is where the Premier League Champion will be crowned. The O2 Arena has hosted the decisive session 10 times since 2012.
Where Does Premier League Darts Take Place?
This season the Premier League is based in the UK, but it will also visit three other countries; Ireland, Germany and the Netherlands. The players will visit Ireland on Night Three when the action comes from the 3Arena in Dublin on the 20th of February.
The two nights in Mainland Europe will then take place in April. There will be a night at the Uber Arena in Berlin on the 3rd, and then a visit to the Rotterdam Ahoy on the 17th.
The nine venues are among the 17 biggest indoor arenas in the UK. The Premier League will use the following:
Manchester’s AO Arena
London’s O2 Arena
Birmingham’s Utilita Arena
Utilita Arena Newcastle
Leeds First Direct Arena
Utilita Arena Sheffield
Glasgow’s OVO Hydro
Aberdeen’s P&J Live
Cardiff’s Utilita Arena
Who Plays in Premier League Darts?
From 2013 until 2021 the event League Stage featured ten players, but a new format introduced in 2022 saw this number reduce to eight. Half of these spots go to the top four on the main two-year PDC Order of Merit at the end of the World Championship.
This year that includes four World Champions:
Luke Humphries, 2024 World Champion and current World Number One
Luke Littler, the reigning World Champion and Premier League Champion
Michael van Gerwen, three-time World Champion and seven-time Premier League Champion
Rob Cross, 2018 World Champion and former Premier League finalist.
The other four spots are selected by the PDC, which causes controversy every year.
One of the spots this year went to the 2024 Masters Champion Stephen Bunting. Bunting has already won the Bahrain Darts Masters in 2025 and is returning to the Premier League for the first time since 2015.
The PDC have also picked the World Number Nine, Ten and Eleven.
The remaining players are:
Gerwyn Price, 2021 World Champion and former Premier League finalist
Chris Dobey, 2023 Masters Champion
Nathan Aspinall, 2023 World Matchplay Champion and former Premier League finalist
Six of the eight players are English, with the exceptions being Price who is Welsh and van Gerwen who is Dutch. This means that there are no Scottish players in the line-up for the first time since 2010.
Belgium’s Mike de Decker, the 2024 World Grand Prix Champion, was a controversial omission. He became the first winner of a Sky Sports major to miss out on the following year’s Premier League.
UK Open Champion Dimitri van den Bergh and European Champion Ritchie Edhouse were also not chosen.
What is the Format of Premier League Darts?
Prior to the 2022 overhaul, the League Stage used a round robin format which saw each player play once every night. Since that change, an eight-player knockout tournament has been held every single night of the regular season. This sees quarter-finals, semi-finals and a final. All of which are the best of 11 legs, played every Thursday night.
Points are awarded based on a player’s progress. The breakdown is as follows:
Losing quarter-finalists receive nothing
Semi-finalists get 2 points
The runner-up gets 3 points
That evening's winner gets 5 points
Every player will face each other in the quarter-finals between Nights 1 and 7 as well as 9 to 15. The draw for Nights 8 and 16 are based on league position. The top four players advance to Finals Night, where the semi-finals see first play fourth and second play third. The Finals Night semi-finals are the best of 19 legs, whilst the final is the best of 21.
What is the Prize Money for Premier League Darts?
The total prize fund for the event is £1 million, the most of any tournament outside of the World Championship.
The players are guaranteed at least £60,000, with that amount going to the player in eighth. The winnings then increase by £5,000 with each position up to fifth.
The losing two semi-finalists get £85,000 and miss out on the chance to play in the massive final.
The runner-up gets £125,000 and the winner gets a huge £275,000.
There is also a bonus of £10,000 that goes to the winner of every League Stage, but there is no prize for hitting a nine-dart finish.
Despite the magnitude of the prize money, it does not impact the World Rankings due to the unranked status of the event.
What are the Premier League Darts Records?
Michael van Gerwen has won the most Premier League titles ever with seven. He was in the final for nine of the eleven years between 2013 and 2023.
MVG also holds the record for the highest one-match average in Premier League history, which is also the highest televised average ever at 123.40 against Michael Smith in 2016.
2016 also saw van Gerwen set the highest tournament average at 107.48. One record that ‘Mighty Mike’ doesn’t hold is the longest unbeaten run, which goes to Phil Taylor’s 44-game streak between 2005 and 2008.
There have been a total of 16 nine-darters in the Premier League, with Phil Taylor and Gerwyn Price both having three. Taylor hit two in one match, the first player to ever do so, in the 2010 final, whilst Price hit two in one night in 2022. Reigning Champion Luke Littler hit the only other nine-darter in a final last year.
Gary Anderson, James Wade, Jonny Clayton and Raymond van Barneveld are the active past winners not to be in this year’s event. van Barneveld being one of only two non-British winners, alongside fellow Dutchman MVG.
What are the Odds for Premier League Darts?
Reigning World Champion and Premier League Champion Luke Littler is the favourite to lift the title in May. His outright odds are currently at 13/8, and 8/13 to top the league table.
Luke Humphries is priced at 5/2 to win the title and 5/6 to top the league. Humphries recently won the World Masters, his second major title in the last three major events.
Michael van Gerwen is the only other player that the bookies have given a short price to, with the Dutchman at 13/2 to lift the title.
Those three players are also the top three in the odds for reaching Finals Night. Price and Bunting are joint-fourth favourites at 5/1. Nathan Aspinall is the favourite to finish bottom at 6/5, with Rob Cross at 11/4. There are also odds available for each match, as well as the overall winner, on every night.
*All odds are correct at time of publishing and are subject to change
Where Can You Watch Premier League Darts?
The entire tournament is shown on Sky Sports in the UK and Ireland. Sessions are mainly shown on the Sky Sports Main Event and Sky Sports Arena channels.
DAZN have the rights in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, whilst VTM televise it in Belgium.
Viaplay show the Premier League in many other European countries including the Netherlands.
The event is available on FanDuel in the USA & Canada.
The event is also streamed on PDCTV for individuals not in the UK, Germany, Austria or Switzerland.
The vast majority of tickets for the nights are unavailable, with many venues having sold out in record time.