He won’t be taking all of it home though
Luke Littler has guaranteed himself a huge payday after he reached the final of the World Darts Championship for the second year running.
The 17-year-old thrashed Stephen Bunting 6-1 in the semi-finals on Thursday night to move within one game of darts’ biggest prize.
He will take on three-time champion Michael Van Gerwen in the final at the Alexandra Palace on Friday night.
By reaching the final, Littler has already bagged himself a guaranteed £200,000 in prize money. Should he beat his Dutch opponent, this will rise to a staggering £500,000.
The showdown with MVG marks the culmination of an incredible 12 months for Littler, which kicked off in December 2023. Littler burst onto the scene with his debut performances at the World Championships just over a year ago, going from relative unknown to household name in a matter of weeks.
In his first year on the PDC circuit, he has earned £618,500 in prize money through other PDC events and majors, not including his performances at this year’s World Championships.
The teenage darting sensation won the Grand Slam of Darts, the Premier League and the World Series of Darts in 2024, and has soared to number four in the world thanks to these performances.
However, he won’t have taken all of his earnings home. No, just like everyone else, Luke the Nuke has to pay his taxes.
Sports finance expert Dr Rob Wilson explained to Card Player just how much Littler will have actually kept from his prize money in 2024.
He said: “On a simple tax calculation, he will have lost 40, 45% of his earnings, but he’s not going to be on a normal tax calculation. He’s going to have companies set up doing certain things.
“He’s going to have big expenses that need to be taken off those earnings. So the reality is that he’s paid 20% of that back in tax, then that probably feels about right.
“It might be a little bit less if he’s got some really good tax advisory around him which we’d expect someone to have that’s having that sort of earning capacity.”
Dr Wilson pointed out that this wasn’t “evasion” though, and was instead “just being efficient with the use of tax and how you generate your expenses and the types of activities that you undertake.”
He continued: “Let’s not forget that of that 600 plus thousand, he also has a team around him that he needs to pay for. They will all be on salaries, he needs hotels, he needs travel, and all of those things get wrapped up in some of that as well.
“Having earned £633,000, you can estimate that he’s kept 500k of that. But if he’s got a competition manager and a personal assistant and a chauffeur and so on and so forth, all of that’s going to come off that 633.
“The expenses are high. It’s like golfers. Golfers get paid loads because of prize money on offer, but actually it costs them a lot to travel around the world and do the competitions as well, unless they’re fortunate enough to get paid to do that as well.”
Luke Littler will take on Michael Van Gerwen in the PDC World Darts Championship final at 19:30 on on Friday, January 3.
