By Emma Kemp
It isn’t clear these days whether Luke Littler is meeting famous people or famous people are meeting him.
The rubbing-shoulders concept got a little blurry between his hot lap with Formula 1 ace Lando Norris and posing with English Premier League soccer players Aaron Ramsdale and Declan Rice (the clue probably lay in the fact the Arsenal pair requested the photo). But it is safe to say that, in the aftermath of the PDC World Darts Championship run that shot him to global renown, he was less established with the spectacle surrounding celebrity than NRL grand final winner and England great Sam Burgess.
In January, when Luke ‘The Nuke’ finished runner-up to world No.1 Luke Humphries in London, the final pulled in 3.71 million TV viewers - Sky Sports’ highest non-football audience on record. Even so, he did not expect to be warned about the cameras waiting outside his family home in England’s north-west. Nor did he anticipate the instant notoriety before he had even turned 17, and the online abuse directed towards his then girlfriend, Eloise Milburn.
“Me and my family, we went away to somewhere in Wales. No one knew where we were - we just had to get out of there,” Littler recalls. Once the circus had died down and the family returned to Warrington, Littler received an invite to visit his beloved rugby league team, the Warrington Wolves, during pre-season training under their new head coach.
“Sam Burgess, the manager, he actually helped me out,” Littler says. “He just spoke to me on how he dealt with the pressure and gave me advice. Obviously, there was paparazzi outside my house during the world championships and after, and I was getting a bit of hate. He was just like ‘don’t even read anything, just get on with your life’. He didn’t really speak about what he went through, he just said it was the same sort of thing.”
Pretty soon after that, he hired PR firm Soapbox to look after his social media accounts. “They’ve done something, so I can’t see message requests off random people,” he says. “That’s helped me, so I don’t go checking and see some awful message. And I don’t really look at anything else.”
Littler does still look at his phone quite a lot, especially while he’s competing and can’t physically be on the terrace at Warrington’s The Halliwell Jones Stadium. Between Premier League matches, while his rivals practise for the next round, he is often hunched over the small screen. “I have a little practice, but if Manchester United or Warrington Wolves are on, I’ll have to tune in and watch a bit of the game,” he says. “I just do what feels right for me.”
These are level-headed words from a teenager whose catalogue of early career achievements and kebab-loving everyman persona have amassed him 1.4 million Instagram followers and single-handedly turned darts into a sexy sport. As Paris 2024 experiments with breakdancing, calls are growing louder to include darts on the Olympic program.
That is mostly because of this young man who started shooting targets at a magnetic board while still in nappies. He scored his first 180 (hitting the triple 20 segment of the board three times in a row) at six and first nine-dart finish (the fastest way to get from the 501 starting score to zero) at 13, and has spent the past year accumulating a long list of “youngest” accolades. Youngest player to hit a televised nine-darter. Youngest to win a World Darts Championship. Youngest to win a major PDC tournament. There are more, but it’s not just them that appeals.
Luke Littler’s life has changed profoundly within eight months.Credit: Getty
It’s also the subtle swagger - that very teenage blend of bravado and vulnerability, revealed when he described winning a World Series event in Bahrain “with not even 10 minutes of practice”. Last month, when he was drawn against Dutch world No.3 Michael van Gerwen in the first round of the World Matchplay, he labelled it “a big first round for both of us”. A fortnight after losing that match, he won his seventh senior title of the year and said he had “been chilling out and have not really picked up a dart since the Matchplay”.
But he also appreciates every opportunity. “It’s just been crazy for myself,” he says. “Got invited to the Premier League, was the youngest person to play in it, and then I did win that. People might’ve thought I would’ve changed as a person, but I’m just a 17-year-old boy at the end of the day. I’m just enjoying my darts.”
Littler, after all, is not yet of legal drinking age. He cannot secure traditional darts sponsorship (gambling companies) until he turns 25. How does he spend his six-figure prize packet? Buying a few Under Armour tracksuits. Where will he tour next? The NSW city of Wollongong.
For all his parading around Silverstone and Old Trafford, Littler is not yet internationally well-travelled. He has been to Bahrain, Poland, and the Netherlands, and also across the Atlantic to New York and Florida. But Australia was his longest flight to date. This Friday and Saturday, he and Humphries will headline the Australian Darts Masters at the WIN Entertainment Centre.
The two-day timetable means he will not have a chance to catch a Dragons game as initially hoped (they play the Bulldogs at Nestrata Jubilee Stadium on Saturday night). After that, he will fly to New Zealand to contest the next World Series leg.
“I enjoy it whenever I play, especially when I’m playing in front of fans,” Littler says. “The amount of people who know who I am now is a good feeling ... My run at the worlds, it changed me a lot, and obviously, it changed the sport. But at the end of the day, I’m just a darts player.”
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