World Darts Championship set for major change with Ally Pally tournament extended and more matches

THE PDC World Darts Championship is set to be expanded to 128 players within the next few years.

A field of 96 players will be involved in the 2025 tournament, which starts at Alexandra Palace on Sunday, December 15.

Yet the Professional Darts Corporation has been boosted by the speed in which tickets were hoovered up by the public for the 16-day event.

And there are plans, perhaps for 2026 onwards, to make the event even bigger by bumping up the number of tungsten throwers at world level by 32.

This would create a flat 128-player draw which, like the Wimbledon singles competitions, would mean one player would have to win SEVEN matches to become the overall champion.

PDC CEO Matthew Porter said: “Yeah, we are close to that (128). It’s not there yet but we are quite close to that.”

Asked by the Online Darts Youtube channel if 2026 was the goal, Porter replied: “Hopefully, yeah.”

In December 2018, the event saw one of its biggest changes when the number of participants increased from 72 to 96.

Only 24 people took part in the first ever PDC Worlds, which were staged at the Circus Tavern in Essex across 1993/94.

Each Ally Pally session has a capacity of 3,300 and the increased demand this time is down to the ‘Luke Littler effect’.

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Many more fans, particularly a younger demographic, have been drawn to the sport following the incredible exploits of the 17-year-old oche wonderkid.

Told that many fans had been left disappointed by a failure to nab tickets online, Porter said: “You look at it recently with Oasis. This isn’t a darts problem, this is an industry problem.

“We had the same number of people trying to access World Championship tickets which had tried to buy Glastonbury tickets.

“Glastonbury are selling 300,000 tickets. We are selling 80,000 or whatever. It is so difficult to get that process exactly right.”

World No1 Luke Humphries beat Littler 7-4 in the 2024 final on January 3 to bank the £500,000 top prize.

The current Sky Sports TV deal with the PDC runs out in November 2025 and only includes coverage of one more World Championship.