How does darts prize money compare with other sports?
Michael Smith’s maiden victory at the PDC World Championship earned the St Helens darts player the No1 ranking and £500,000 in prize money.
It also lifted 32-year-old Smith to No1 in the PDC order of merit, with aggregate earnings of £1.24m over the past 24 months.
But how does darts prize money compare to the financial rewards in other individual sports?
The half a million pounds on offer to the winner of the PDC World Championship at Alexandra Palace is the most lucrative payout in darts.
That is almost double the £275,000 pocketed by the winner of Premier League Darts and 10 times as much as the first prize at the rival WDF World Darts Championship, which replaced the now-defunct BDO event.
Smith’s PDC World Championship prize money is equal to that on offer in the equivalent event in snooker.
Ronnie O’Sullivan also trousered £500,000 when he won the World Snooker Championship for a record-equalling seventh time last year.
But prize money in darts and snooker is dwarfed by the rewards in some other individual sports.
Winners of the biggest tournaments in tennis receive more than £2m a time, with four on offer each year.
The US Open is the most lucrative of the Grand Slams, paying $2.6m (£2.2m) to the winners of both the men’s and women’s singles titles last year.
Wimbledon isn’t far behind, with prize money of £2m for its singles champions.
And some of the payouts in men’s golf are even bigger. While each of the four men’s majors is worth more than $2m to the winner, the winner of the PGA Tour’s season-ending Tour Championship – Rory McIlroy, in 2022 – cashes in to the tune of $18m (£16m).
It looks set to rise for the very best players as a result of competition from the Saudi-backed LIV Golf circuit, which started last year.
Each LIV Golf event is worth at least $4m to the winner, with the year’s most successful player scooping a further $18m (£16m) in prize money.
Last year, former world No1 Dustin Johnson banked prize money totalling more than $35m from playing just seven events on the LIV Golf tour.