Luke Littler: Nuke or Fluke?

The recent shattering of the audience record for the World Darts Championship Final has been well documented in the press. The eclipsing of the previous record (total: 1.65 million) was fuelled by a Luke Littler inspired hysteria that delivered a total audience of 4.8 million viewers – also a record for any live non-footballing event shown on Sky Sports.

The fact that Littler was only sixteen at the time of the final, the youngest ever finalist at a darts World Championship event, received widespread daily coverage in the news and on social media. In turn, this cultivated interest from a widespread audience, which underpinned the record viewing figures. Since the Championships, Littler has continued to make headlines after he defeated Michael van Gerwen in the Bahrain Masters final – securing his first senior Professional Darts Championship (PDC) win.

Young athletes achieving a meteoric rise to prominence in their sport has always encouraged non-fans to tune in and witness history being made. These flashes of inspiration can do more for raising the profile of a sport than any well-thought-out marketing strategy. The real question is: can this have a long-term impact on the sport as a whole?

Understanding what drives value in sport is a key part of our business at Oliver & Ohlbaum.

Segmenting fans can help assess media rights for a sport

When assessing media rights values for different sports, we typically segment fans by their willingness to pay to watch a given sport on TV or via streaming.

One way to segment fans in this scenario is into casual and avid fan groups. In simple terms, casual fans are those with some interest in a sport but who are unlikely to pay to watch it on TV, while avid fans are those with a significant interest in the sport and who are willing to pay for it.

Examples of this split are commonplace – there’s a huge difference between tennis fans and those who watch Wimbledon; between horseracing fans and Grand National viewers; or between Six Nations viewers and those who watch club rugby week-in, week-out.

Growing the casual fan segment offers great returns for free-to-air broadcasters in the form of sponsorship and advertising, while a larger avid fan segment will drive pay TV subscription revenues – the holy grail of revenue for any professional sport.

Events that drive remarkable spikes in audiences - like the one we have just seen in darts - can serve as significant catalysts for increasing the popularity of a sport. The idea being that if you can sustain this popularity, it will be highly lucrative for the sport in the long run, especially when it comes to agreeing sponsorship and media rights deals.

This spike in enthusiasm is usually driven by generalist sports fans who have neither an avid nor casual interest in the sport but are intrigued by the phenomenon - in this case a 16-year-old making it all the way to the final in the biggest tournament in his sport.

The extent of the impact of the ‘Littler Effect’ will largely depend on darts’ ability to convert as many of these new, ‘intrigued fans’ as possible into casual fans in the short term, and then, in the long run, convert them into avid fans. The more successful a sport is in doing this, in theory, the greater the value of future rights deals.

A large sporting phenomenon, such as Littler winning the World Championships, can intrigue individuals who are not currently fans of a sport. In time, these individuals might convert to ‘casual fans’, and ultimately ‘avid fans’ as their interest and dedication to the sport grows. It is important to note that ‘intrigued fans’ can convert back to ‘not currently fans’ if their interest in the sport wanes, and the sporting phenomenon passes.

So, where have we seen this before?

Golf: Tiger Woods

In the ten years following Tiger Woods’ explosion onto the world stage in 1997, participation in golf in the US increased by 20%, gaining more than 5 million players between 1996 and 2006.

Woods shot to global fame by winning the 1997 Masters by an astonishing 12-stroke winning margin - the average winning margin of the previous 10 years was just 1.8 strokes. Perhaps most impressively, this was just 8 months after becoming a professional. Over 14% of the US population tuned in to watch his final round in 1997. Over the previous 15 years, the average for the final round of the Masters was 8.8%, with a high of 10.5% - illustrating the level of heightened national intrigue surrounding Woods’ colossal performance.

The rise in golfers’ earnings, eventually, followed suit. Before Woods turned pro, only 10 golfers had ever grossed more than $7m. By 2017, over 150 golfers had earned more than $10m in their careers. This illustrates the long-term benefits of converting intrigued/ casual fans into avid fans – as sponsorship and broadcasting deals grow in the wake of increased viewership.

Tennis: Emma Raducanu

Emma Raducanu rose to fame after winning the US Open in 2021. Astonishingly, and in similar fashion to Woods’ first win, she won the tournament without conceding a set. Raducanu was just 18 at the time and became the first British female tennis player to win a grand slam for 44 years. And if that wasn’t impressive enough, it was just her first year on the WTA Tour.

Channel 4’s last-minute sub-licensing deal with Prime Video for the US Open final enabled a peak audience of 9.2 million viewers - the highest audience for the channel since 2012. This surpassed the BBC’s 2021 Wimbledon coverage, which generated a peak audience of 7.9 million over the fortnight.

Off the back of Raducanu’s popularity, tennis participation in the UK increased by 119% in 2021, with over 42% of that growth occurring in the two months after Raducanu’s victory.

Despite her early success, Raducanu has failed to make it past the 2nd round in 5 of the subsequent nine grand slams and didn’t enter the other three. As a result, she has been unable to build on her early popularity in the same way that Woods did.

How does Littler compare?

Although early signs of Raducanu’s impact on tennis were promising - particularly for grassroots participation - her injuries may have hamstrung further growth in the tennis avid fan group.

Luke Littler has had a similar short-term impact on audiences for his sport. Perhaps if his success continues throughout the rest of the season, Littler will be able to gain the meaningful traction in interest Raducanu has been unable to.

The Tiger Effect is well documented and, while Littler’s achievements are not on par with Woods’ early performances, the audience growth he has attracted is similar. The increased demand to watch this years Championship final is evidence of this, with ticket trading prices up 44% compared to the 2023 final.

This, alongside the fact that darts is almost perfectly engineered for TV – with skillful, fast-paced sets and an easily digestible format (for both playing and viewing) – may enable Littler’s emergence to have a similarly significant impact on the sport. Additionally, with Littler being so young, in a sport where players and fans skew much older, he will attract a younger demographic of both viewers and participants, which will help strengthen the sport of darts in the long term.

Littler’s emergence is also likely to attract more sponsorship, both to Littler himself and the live events. However, it will be interesting to see which partnerships Littler agrees, given he’s unable to partner with the darts’ usual betting and alcohol sponsors.

What does this mean for broadcast deals?

Sky is currently in the latter stages of an exclusive seven-year broadcast deal for all tier 1 darts events with the PDC – which expires in 2025.

With renegotiation of the deal imminent, continued enthusiasm for Littler and the darts could bring other pay TV broadcasters to the negotiating table and drive the value of the broadcasting deal up.

Sky will be aware that tier 2 darts properties are currently broadcast on free-to-air via ITV. This provides the opportunity for newly aware fans, or those who are potentially intrigued (i.e. did not watch the World Championships, but followed the Littler story in the press), to see Littler in action. This would invite an even larger pool of generalist fans to become interested in the sport.

This bodes well for ITV in the short term in terms of advertising revenues. However, this greater exposure to the masses could be the death knell for Sky’s relatively unopposed acquisition of darts’ tier 1 rights - especially if Littler can build on his World Championship performances and become a major fixture in the late stages of the tier 2 competitions and attract new and devoted fans. Consequently, we can expect much more competition for the rights next time.

The following twelve months is now a critical time in the darts ecosystem. The best outcome is that Littler continues his meteoric rise, succeeds during the upcoming Premier League tournament, and drives more fans to the sport. The worst outcome is that Littler disappears - either due to underwhelming performances or mismanagement (as has been known to happen with young stars) - and darts is unable to retain the new fans he attracted.

All eyes on February the 1st, when the Premier League of Darts begins – will the new fans come back for more?