Five things to look out for as Premier League Darts returns

The 17-week roadshow is back as Luke Littler and Luke Humphries are among the eight darts superstars competing across Europe for the Premier League crown. 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:. 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.

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.

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.

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.