The 18-Year-Old Millionaire vs The 23-Year-Old Veteran: How Darts Murdered the Working Class Dream

There is something at once exhilarating and quietly troubling about watching an eighteen-year-old defend a world championship worth one million pounds. It suggests either that we have discovered a revolutionary new pathway to meritocratic wealth distribution, or that we have simply replaced one form of absurdity—grown men growing fat on beer while throwing arrows—with another: children becoming millionaires before they can legally order a drink in an American bar.

The Alexandra Palace stage tonight will bear witness not merely to a sporting contest between Luke Littler and Gian van Veen, but to the culmination of a social revolution that has transformed darts from the recreation of working men into the profession of ambitious youth—a shift as profound as any that has occurred in British sport during the past half-century, and considerably more unexpected than most. After all, when you watched Jocky Wilson chain-smoking his way to glory in the 1980s, you did not think: "Yes, this will one day be a finishing school for teenage millionaires."

Littler, still months from his nineteenth birthday, carries himself with the assurance of someone who has already achieved what most can only dream of, which is to say he possesses the supreme confidence of youth combined with the bank balance of middle-aged success. It is a combination that previous generations would have found mystifying, if not slightly offensive. Van Veen, at twenty-three, represents—and one writes this without irony—the older generation, the grizzled veteran, the man who has seen it all. Which is to say he has seen five more years than his opponent, placing him roughly at the same relative age advantage that Methuselah enjoyed over his younger contemporaries.

Between them, they embody the complete metamorphosis of a game that once belonged to factory floors and smoke-filled pubs, a game where Eric Bristow and Jocky Wilson competed with magnificent bellies and cigarettes, where working men could legitimately dream of glory without sacrificing their day jobs or their right to consume substantial quantities of beer before, during, and after competition. One suspects that if you placed Bristow and Wilson in a time machine and transported them to tonight's final, they would not recognise it as darts at all. They would think they had arrived at some sort of athletics competition accidentally hosted in a pub that had grown delusions of grandeur.

That world has gone, as thoroughly extinguished as the cigarettes that once characterised it. In its place has emerged something more polished, more professional, and infinitely more lucrative—but also, perhaps, something that has lost its moorings in the communities that sustained it for generations. Whether this represents progress or merely change dressed up in expensive clothes is a question worth asking, even if the answer makes us uncomfortable.

The economics alone tell a stark tale. One million pounds for first place. Such a sum, in an earlier age, would have seemed fantastical, the stuff of lottery dreams rather than sporting reality. Now it represents a career transformation achievable in a single evening's work for those with sufficient nerve and skill—which is to say, it makes investment banking look like a slow and uncertain pathway to wealth. For context, it exceeds what most British families will earn, collectively, across decades of labour. The psychological implications of such stakes for minds so young deserve closer examination than they typically receive, though one suspects that examining them too closely might reveal truths that make everyone involved slightly queasy.

Consider what it means to be eighteen years old with the opportunity to earn one million pounds in a single match. At eighteen, most of us were worrying about examinations, romantic rejections, and whether our parents would notice we'd borrowed the car without permission. Littler is worrying about wealth management strategies, tax optimization, and whether to diversify his investment portfolio. This is either the ultimate validation of meritocracy—talent rewarded regardless of age—or a symptom of a society that has lost all sense of proportion about what young people should reasonably be expected to handle.

Littler's journey to this juncture has been remarkable not merely for its precocity but for the quality of performance that has accompanied it. His quarter-final demolition of Krzysztof Ratajski—a 5-0 victory featuring a 100 average and opened with a 170 checkout of such casual brilliance that it seemed almost dismissive—was executed by a teenager who subsequently confessed, "I didn't feel comfortable tonight, but a win is a win."

That admission reveals more than any statistic could, and what it reveals is mildly terrifying. Here is an eighteen-year-old so thoroughly immersed in professional process that comfort becomes irrelevant, a player whose procedural memory operates with such autonomy that his conscious anxieties cannot derail it. This is athletic conditioning of a sophistication that previous generations of dart players neither required nor possessed. It is also, one might suggest, the kind of dissociation from normal human emotion that in other contexts we might find concerning. When an eighteen-year-old can average 100 at darts while feeling uncomfortable, we should perhaps ask not only how he achieved such mastery but whether achieving it required sacrificing parts of youth that might have been worth preserving.

Phil Taylor, the greatest of them all, developed such capabilities across years of brutal competition, failed marriages, and the kind of character-building adversity that makes good copy for autobiographies. Littler arrived with them already installed, the product of youth systems and coaching methodologies that treat darts not as a pub game elevated but as a professional sport from the beginning. He is the finished product at eighteen, which raises the uncomfortable question: what does one do for an encore when one has already finished at an age when most are just beginning?

His semi-final against Ryan Searle—won 6-1 with a 105.35 average and a 58.8% checkout rate—demonstrated the young champion's capacity to elevate his performance when the stakes intensify. Such numbers would have seemed implausible to earlier generations; they now represent the expected standard for those who would wear the crown. This is either magnificent progress or statistical inflation, depending on whether you believe that human beings are genuinely getting better at throwing small metal objects at circular boards or whether we have simply become more efficient at training them to do so from an absurdly young age.

One is reminded of those tennis prodigies who dominate junior tournaments, turn professional at fourteen, and burn out by twenty-two, having compressed an entire career into the years most people spend working out who they actually are. The question is not whether Littler can maintain his current level—clearly, he can—but whether maintaining it for the next fifteen years represents the kind of life anyone should wish upon an eighteen-year-old, million pounds notwithstanding.

Yet for all Littler's brilliance, the challenge presented by Van Veen is formidable and, in certain respects, uniquely suited to exploit the few vulnerabilities the champion possesses. The Dutchman's quarter-final destruction of Luke Humphries—itself a 5-1 rout powered by a 105.41 average and finishing that included takeouts of 170, 124, and 120—announced a player in the kind of form that can overwhelm even the most established champion. Though "established" is perhaps an odd word to use for an eighteen-year-old, even if he is the reigning world champion. It is rather like describing a toddler as a "seasoned walker."

Van Veen's principal weapon is his supremacy as what the modern game terms a "switcher"—a player who, when the treble twenty is obstructed, can divert to alternative trebles with such efficiency that the disadvantage becomes negligible. This is presented as revolutionary innovation, which it may well be in darts terms, though one suspects that in most other pursuits, having a Plan B when Plan A encounters obstacles is considered basic competence rather than elite specialisation. Still, statistical analysis reveals that with his second and third darts at trebles seventeen through nineteen, Van Veen averages 35.18 points per dart, extracting three additional points per switching visit compared to Littler. In a sport where margins are measured in millimetres and matches pivot on single darts, such advantages are profound—assuming, of course, that one accepts that three points per switching visit is "profound" rather than "marginally relevant but statistically quantifiable."

More significant, perhaps, is what Van Veen demonstrated in defeating Gary Anderson in the semi-final. Anderson represents a living connection to darts' more recent past, a two-time world champion who bridges the old world and the new, which is to say he is young enough to be professionally fit but old enough to remember when dart players looked like men who enjoyed a proper meal. For Van Veen to confront his acknowledged idol and dispatch him with such clinical efficiency speaks to a capacity for what sports psychologists term "cognitive decoupling"—the ability to separate emotional attachment from competitive necessity.

In simpler terms, this means Van Veen can worship someone on Monday and destroy them on Tuesday without experiencing the kind of cognitive dissonance that would trouble most humans. This is either maturity of a rare kind or emotional compartmentalisation of a sort that would interest psychiatrists, and while Van Veen is only twenty-three, those five additional years of life experience may prove significant when the match enters its inevitable crisis point. Though whether five years of life experience between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three genuinely constitutes superior wisdom is debatable. It might simply mean Van Veen has had five additional years to make youthful mistakes and learn from them, or it might mean he has had five additional years of avoiding normal youth experiences in favour of throwing tungsten at boards.

The trajectory that brought these two to this final began at the 2023 World Youth Championship, where Littler prevailed 6-4 in an encounter of surprising quality. Both teenagers averaged over 97; thirteen maximums were hurled between them. It was not, in any meaningful sense, junior sport. It was elite performance executed by players who happened to be young, a distinction that encapsulates precisely what has changed about modern darts. The term "youth championship" once implied a certain degree of charity in one's assessment, a recognition that young players were learning their craft and should not be judged by adult standards. Now it means "world-class performance executed by players who cannot yet vote" (well, they could vote, but only just).

Their subsequent meetings on the professional circuit reveal a pattern: Van Veen has competed creditably, but Littler possesses a superior record in major televised finals. This suggests that the younger player has developed—or perhaps was born with—a particular affinity for the unique constellation of pressures that major finals impose: the extended format, the hostile or hysterical crowds, the weight of millions watching, the consciousness of what defeat means economically as well as psychologically. In other words, Littler appears to possess the emotional range of someone who has been performing under pressure for decades, which would be impressive if he had been alive for decades. As it stands, it is simply peculiar.

The tactical confrontation tonight will centre on whether Littler can impose his relentless treble-twenty assault with sufficient early dominance to neutralise Van Veen's switching advantage, or whether the Dutchman can control the mid-leg phase—those scores between 300 and 150 where matches are genuinely won and lost—and thereby dictate the rhythm of the contest. This is presented as high-level strategic thinking, though one might observe that "score heavily early and don't let your opponent score heavily" is roughly the same tactical insight that governs every competitive endeavour from chess to military warfare. Still, when applied to darts by eighteen and twenty-three-year-olds competing for one million pounds, it acquires a certain gravitas.

But beneath the technical battle lies a deeper question about what it means for young men to bear such economic and psychological weight, and whether we have collectively lost our minds in thinking this represents healthy human development. At eighteen, Littler has already achieved financial security that most will never know. At twenty-three, Van Veen stands one match away from the same destination. This is success on a scale and at a speed that traditional pathways—university, apprenticeships, years of patient career building—cannot match, which either validates darts as a legitimate career or suggests that traditional pathways are obsolete, or possibly both.

Yet there is a price paid, though it may not be visible tonight. These young athletes have sacrificed the ordinary freedoms of youth—the ability to fail without consequence, to explore without pressure, to develop gradually rather than under the unforgiving spotlight of global scrutiny, to be spectacularly drunk and embarrassing at twenty without it trending on social media, to make catastrophic romantic choices that don't get analysed by tabloids, to spend an entire summer doing absolutely nothing productive without feeling guilty. They have compressed into a handful of years the kind of professional intensity that most careers distribute across decades. Whether this bargain ultimately proves beneficial or damaging may not become clear for years, possibly decades, possibly never, because by the time we have enough data to assess the psychological impact of making teenagers into millionaire athletes, we will have already created several more generations of them.

There is also the uncomfortable reality that darts' transformation into a professional pathway requiring youth academies, coaching, specialized equipment, and years of full-time dedication has fundamentally altered its accessibility. The working-class heroes of previous generations could practice around their day jobs, could compete without professional support systems, could dream of glory without requiring their families to make middle-class investments in their development. Phil Taylor worked in a ceramics factory. John Lowe was a joiner. These were men who came to darts through the traditional route: employment, pub, practice, competition, and possibly glory if fortune smiled.

The route Littler and Van Veen have travelled is considerably more exclusive, requiring resources and opportunities not equally distributed across British society. Their families needed to support years of development without financial return, needed to fund travel to youth tournaments, needed to accommodate training schedules that precluded normal employment. This is middle-class investment in human capital, not working-class aspiration through accessible recreation. Darts may have become more professional, more lucrative, more globally popular—but it has also, perhaps inevitably, become less democratic in its accessibility to those from genuinely disadvantaged backgrounds.

Which raises a provocative question: have we simply replaced one form of class barrier with another? The old darts establishment excluded people through snobbery and lack of commercial infrastructure. The new darts establishment excludes people through economic requirements and professional expectations that working-class families cannot easily meet. We have traded the pot-bellied pub player for the sleek young professional, and in doing so we may have traded one form of exclusion for another, albeit one that looks more meritocratic on the surface.

None of this diminishes the achievements of these remarkable young athletes. Littler's capacity to win while uncomfortable, his transformation of hostile crowds into devotees, his clinical execution under pressure that would shatter most adults—these are genuine accomplishments deserving of admiration, even if they are also slightly unnatural. Van Veen's statistical superiority in switching, his nerveless finishing, his ability to defeat his idol when millions watched—these too represent excellence of the highest order, even if one wonders what he might have become had he spent those years reading philosophy or learning to paint rather than perfecting his dart throw.

But sport, properly understood, is never merely about individual achievement. It exists within social and economic contexts that shape who gets to compete, what success means, and what is lost as well as gained in transformation. Darts' journey from working men's clubs to million-pound championships is a journey that mirrors broader changes in British society—the decline of industrial employment, the professionalization of previously informal pursuits, the concentration of rewards at the elite level while participation becomes either casual recreation or serious professional commitment with little space between, the worship of youth and precociousness over experience and maturity, the elevation of statistical measurement over subjective assessment.

It also reflects our societal ambivalence about class, merit, and opportunity. We celebrate Littler and Van Veen as examples of talent rewarded, yet we rarely ask what talents are being left unrewarded because they belong to young people whose families cannot afford to support years of unpaid development. We applaud the professionalization of darts as progress, yet we ignore the reality that professionalization always creates barriers as well as opportunities. We marvel at eighteen-year-olds earning millions, yet we do not interrogate whether creating such incentives for youth specialisation serves anyone's interests except those who profit from broadcasting and sponsoring the spectacle.

Tonight's final will be decided by technical execution, psychological resilience, and perhaps by fortune at critical moments. Littler's superior record in major finals, his procedural memory refined to the point of operating independently from conscious anxiety, his proven capacity to elevate performance when stakes intensify—these factors favour the champion, though they also mark him as someone who has been shaped by forces and pressures most eighteen-year-olds never encounter. Van Veen's elite switching ability, his five additional years of mental maturity (such as they are), his current form that saw him dismantle a former world champion—these provide genuine hope for the challenger, though one wonders whether "hope" is quite the right word for a twenty-three-year-old's chances of becoming a millionaire.

Whichever young man prevails, he will have earned his victory through skill and nerve of exceptional quality. But the deeper significance of this final extends beyond individual triumph. It represents the completion of darts' transformation from accessible working-class pursuit to professional sport requiring early specialisation and sustained commitment. It demonstrates both the opportunities and the exclusions inherent in such change. It raises questions about what we value, what we reward, and what we are willing to sacrifice in the name of progress and professionalization.

As these two young athletes prepare to contest for a sum that could secure their financial futures before their mid-twenties—a sum, one might note, that is substantially more than most teachers, nurses, or firefighters will earn across entire careers of public service—it is worth remembering what has been gained and what has been lost in darts' evolution. The sport is richer, more skilful, more globally visible than ever before. But it no longer belongs, in quite the same way, to the communities that created it. It has become, instead, another arena where the young and talented can pursue wealth and glory, provided they have the support systems, resources, and psychological resilience to survive the journey.

The arrows will fly tonight with precision that would astonish earlier generations, who were content to hit the board consistently after several pints. The averages will reach heights that redefine what seems possible, or at least what seems normal. One young man will achieve glory and wealth that most can only imagine, and will do so at an age when such achievements seem simultaneously magnificent and vaguely obscene. And somewhere, in the shadows beyond the television lights, the ghosts of darts' working-class past will watch with feelings more complex than simple admiration—perhaps with pride at how far the sport has come, perhaps with regret at what has been left behind, perhaps with bemusement at a world that rewards eighteen-year-olds with millions for skills that their generation developed for the price of a pint.

The game has changed. Whether it has improved is a question each observer must answer according to their own values and priorities. But there is no question that it has become something fundamentally different from what it was—something sleeker, richer, younger, and more professional, but also something that has travelled far from its origins in the working men's clubs where ordinary men could dream of extraordinary achievements without requiring extraordinary resources to pursue them.

Tonight, Saturday January 3rd two extraordinarily talented young men will compete for a prize that represents security, success, and validation. They deserve our respect for their abilities and our recognition of the pressures they bear. But they also deserve our honesty about the system that has created them, the opportunities it has closed as well as opened, and the questions it raises about how we value talent, reward achievement, and structure pathways to success in modern Britain.

The arrows will fly. The crowd will roar. One young man will become a millionaire, if he is not already. And we will celebrate the spectacle while quietly wondering whether we have created something magnificent or merely something new.