How the ‘Littler Effect’ helped Target Darts hit a commercial bullseye
Luke Littler’s transformation before our very eyes from unknown 16-year-old to World Darts Championship finalist and international celebrity was one of the stories of the last 12 months, and nowhere was it felt more keenly than at his longtime sponsor, Target.
In just over a fortnight, Littler’s groundbreaking run at Alexandra Palace generated increasingly feverish interest, turned the kebab-loving prodigy into a household name and even thrust darts onto the pages of haughty French daily sports publication L’Equipe.
It barely mattered that he lost the final to the older, more established Luke Humphries; a star was born, and Target had hit a commercial bullseye.
“When Luke got to the final of the World Championship all of our metrics went off the scale,” James Tattersall, managing director at Target Darts, tells Morning Wire.
“There’s one we watch quite closely, which is the Amazon heat map. How popular is darts on Amazon at a given time?
“Amazon search data is like, air fryers are No1, multipacks of loo roll, No2 – common household items that everyone’s buying. And in January, darts was No3 on the whole of Amazon UK, which is astonishing.”
He adds: “It’s never been this busy in the darts industry.”
Like Littler’s career, Target’s sales have only gone from strength to strength. Tattersall says business has doubled in 2024, as has the number of UK employees.
Amateur players and fans alike were quick to snap up Littler’s preferred model of dart, which features a “Pixel” grip patented by Target and a “K Flex” flight and shaft.
“We saw some phenomenal sales,” says Tattersall. “It was a brand new bit of kit, and Luke was one of the first players to see the potential for it.”
Target capitalised on the teenager’s appeal to younger fans by launching a toy range, including a magnetic darts and board set, opening up a brand new revenue stream. Argos, Smyths Toys and The Entertainer began selling them in July; since then sales have exceeded 100,000 units.
But not all of the Harlow-based company’s growth has been down to the Littler Effect, says Tattersall. New, tech-focused products, an expanded ecommerce offering and the acquisition of a US firm have also helped to move the needle.
“It’s going to be a record year for us, for sure,” he says. “We’ve been doing lots of good things and growing very well. But this year has been the culmination of all of those things together.”
Littler, now 17, is a new face for a new era of darts. Since Barry Hearn’s Matchroom promotions empire took over the sport, it has grown into a business that sells half a million tickets to shows from the UK to Eastern Europe, Australia, Asia and America and turns over more than £50m.
The World Championship at Ally Pally is its Wimbledon, only with louder shirts, fancy dress and lots more beer. All 90,000 tickets for this year’s event sold out in 15 minutes. Despite it being behind a paywall on Sky Sports, almost 5m viewers watched Littler’s appearance in the final in January. Even Prince Harry turned up to drink it in, quite literally, back in 2014.
“I think darts was always more popular than many people thought it was,” says Tattersall. He calls it “a lot of people’s second sport” which, like fishing, they take part in more than they talk about – but Littler’s ascendancy has changed that, and attracted a new audience. “There’s a lot of people that have been learning about darts and what tungsten is all about.”
Littler, too, has reaped the rewards. The keen gamer has just announced deals with Xbox and KP Nuts, adding to a stable of sponsors that also includes fashion brand BoohooMan and local businesses.
He has won nine titles in his first season on the PDC Tour, meaning that he has banked prize money totalling more than £1m before he turns 18 next month. Meanwhile, only Olympic 800m champion Keely Hodgkinson is a shorter price to win BBC Sports Personality of the Year tonight.
How Target Darts spotted Luke Littler at 12
Littler’s meteoric rise has already been mythologised but for Target, the key staging post was a match that The Nuke wasn’t even involved in.
It was almost seven years ago, at the 2018 World Championship final, when debutant Rob Cross – an electrician until a year prior – beat the sport’s biggest name, Phil Taylor.
“We looked at that and said, how can this happen in a sport? You can’t imagine in tennis, someone just rocking up at Wimbledon and winning it,” says Tattersall. “And the reason was because no one was looking for youngsters.”
Target decided to seek out and partner with darts centres across the country which provided a place for young people to play outside of pubs. The company provided much-needed equipment and, in return, were ideally placed to identify promising talents.
“We started to sponsor the best youth players, the ones that really showed promise and talent who wanted to push it,” he says.
“It was St Helens Academy, who we partner closely with, and Luke was spotted. He was only 12 at the time, and we were really looking at 14 to 16-year-olds. But we saw him play and signed him immediately.”
Target founder and owner Garry Plummer was convinced Littler would go right to the top after watching him in his first youth tournament, says Tattersall.
“He was the youngest kid there by a mile. He made the final but he lost. And Luke was really, really upset after that, despite performing way better than you would expect up against older teenagers. And right then we saw that he was a winner.”
Fast-forward to 2024 and Littler is the favourite to win the World Championship, which began on Sunday and culminates on 3 January. Target signed him to a new contract in February, launching a range of products soon after that includes £100 darts and £50 shirts.
The company now has dozens of young players in its Elite1 academy programme, as well as other contenders for the £500,000 top prize at Ally Pally, including Cross, Nathan Aspinall and Stephen Bunting. Online darts is the next frontier for the business, enabled by its DartCounter app and Virt Camera technology.
Tattersall says Target shares “the same aspiration and determination” as Littler. “We’re not standing still, we’re not resting on laurels. We’re pushing and trying to break new ground and I think we’re very aligned.”