A day after announcing one of the largest commercial deals ever known for a teenage sportsman, Luke Littler got to work on the surreal business of his side-hustle.
The barest details of this venture were contained in images posted on Instagram, showing him at home last Saturday and surrounded by stacks of padded envelopes.
There was a caption that offered context to a chaotic scene – he was flogging a few of his football trading cards on eBay under the name lukethenuke180.
To trawl through the sales on that account is to answer the question of what you give an 18-year-old who has everything. In Littler’s case, it went something like this: £4 for Brighton’s Lewis Dunk and £4.58 for Tino Livramento of Newcastle.
An Erling Haaland card cost someone £10, Cody Gakpo was rehomed at £6.92 and an autographed Matheus Cunha went for £74.33 – the buyer of the latter said in a feedback message that the ‘delivery of the product was timely and packaged brilliantly’. Across the past fortnight, there have been more than 20 such notes, pertaining to transactions worth £411.72.
All of which is mildly amusing when set against Littler’s other takings this month – on January 3, he collected £1million for winning his second world darts title, and on January 9, one day before his Instagram post, came the astonishing news of a £20m, 10-year sponsorship contract with Target, a darts manufacturer.
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Luke Littler has landed a deal worth £20million over 10 years with Target Darts
Littler has a side hustle of selling football cards on eBay under the above account
Littler has sold cards for as little as £4 but currently has a Zinedine Zidane one listed
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Everything Littler has touched in the past two years has turned to gold. But still he operates his cottage industry, selling cards for £4 and up.
‘Steve used to do something very similar with music,’ Barry Hearn told Daily Mail Sport this week, and he was talking about Steve Davis, the six-time world snooker champion, whom he managed in the years before he became the founding father of modern darts.
‘Steve used to buy records for five cents from companies going out of business,’ Hearn adds. ‘He would then sell them on for, like, £1.12 and say, “What a great deal”. It’s not monetary. It’s about being in love with something, with what you do, your hobbies.
‘With Luke, it’s just him, isn’t it?’
It is. But how does one explain Littler? Or rather, the Littler phenomenon, which is among the most captivating mysteries of these sporting times, casting a gifted teenager from Warrington as the heart, soul and face of a multimillion-pound industry.
Two years on from that run to the world championship final, when he was 16 and making his debut in a major event, are we any closer to understanding what we are looking at? Or where the limits exist for the most extraordinary of ordinary lads.
This being the guy who, in 2024, told me of an invitation he accepted to watch Manchester United train, only to then walk inside when it started to rain. In the same interview it became clear he knew little about the existence of Emma Raducanu, meaning he was oblivious to the cautionary tales of her career.
He instead spoke about playing video games until 2am and explained that his practise sessions rarely exceeded 25 minutes per day – he struggled to talk in detail about what made him so good, just that when he throws a small arrow, it usually goes where he is aiming.
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Barry Hearn (above) thanks Littler, who has taken darts to another level, every time he sees him
On some level, it felt like a definition of sporting genius and this quirky formula is yet to let him down – prior to turning 19 this Wednesday, Littler has won 10 Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) titles, earned £3.3m in prize money and just bought his parents a £1m house. He is the world No 1 and utterly remarkable.
But he is carrying evermore weight on those shoulders. He is far beyond the stage of being his own entity, which brings substantial pressure.
‘Every time I see Luke, I just say “Thank you”,’ adds Hearn, whose Matchroom promotional behemoth owns the PDC.
‘In any sport, you need narrative, something that gets people talking about what they’ve seen on TV or read. Luke Littler has given us narrative on a level that I’ve not seen before, and we can talk about that in a couple of ways.
‘One, his personal finances are going to go through the roof. His deal with Target is huge – they can’t supply stuff quick enough to satisfy market demand. So for him, personally, it is great, but the success is for darts, too.’
A key observation to make about the ‘Littler effect’ is that the sport was flying before he stormed into the public consciousness in late 2023. But it has grown exponentially since his arrival.
A case in point is the most recent broadcast deal between Matchroom and Sky Sports, which was signed in 2025 and understood to be worth £125m across five years.
Prior to reaching that agreement, negotiations were tense – Hearn publicly floated the idea of going elsewhere, but Sky ultimately climbed to a figure that, according to our sources, was roughly double the value of the previous contract. Among the prime drivers behind Hearn getting what he wanted? He had Littler, the golden goose.
Validation for Sky came at this year’s world championship – their audience figures this year were 100 per cent up on 2022, which was the last time the worlds were staged prior to Littler’s arrival on the scene.
In short, when Littler wins, everyone wins. It is similar to the impact Tiger Woods had on golf and one reason why Hearn felt emboldened to double the first prize to £1m this year at the world championships. It’s also why, in 2025, 41 players cleared £100,000 for earnings, up from 30 in 2022.
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Littler poses with the Man United Red Devil mascot and his World Championship trophy
Littler isn’t the sole cause of the boom but he is a large part of it. Hearn adds: ‘If I make what I think I’m going to make over the next few years, that (prize of £1m for the worlds) is going to double, triple.’
Broadening the theme, Hearn says the growth of darts in China ‘is going to be massive’ and has pointed to surging markets of the United States and Middle East, where Turki Alalshikh, better known for boxing promotion, has announced that next week’s Saudi Arabia Darts Masters will feature a prize of $200,000 for anyone who throws a nine-darter followed by a bullseye. Littler was the first name mentioned in the press release.
‘People used to look down their nose at darts,’ Hearn adds. ‘The perception was fat guys playing, smoking, drinking. But that’s 25 years ago. Today, it’s a vibrant sport and on the route to overtake golf. That is the target. We are on that track, chasing them down, and our army is led by Luke Littler waving the flag and a host of other people following him.
‘They want to do what he has done. Luke Littler has brought that Tiger Woods appeal to darts and opened the door to other people saying, “Why not me? I can change my life like he has.” He has already inspired thousands to pick up a dart.’
It remains to be seen if Littler has the staying power to one day match Phil Taylor’s improbably large haul of 14 PDC world titles. And likewise if a time arrives when his ecosystem is destabilised by the pressures of being him. History tells us that no one gets an entirely clean ride.
It would be wrong to suggest Littler is immune – his angry reaction to being booed during the fourth round at the world championships was proof of it, even if he did find a route through it.
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The youngster is changing the way people look at darts and Littler has brought the kind of Tiger Woods appeal that golf had to the sport, says Hearn
As ever with sport, greatness is a fragile commodity and the hope is that media attention and vast wealth do not upset the balance. Same goes for commercial pressures to fit a certain image.
It was perhaps notable when I interviewed Littler in 2024 that one of his handlers was amusingly adamant that we do not ask him about kebabs, after he had previously spoken about his dietary routine on his way to the final. It seemed unlikely that the directive would have come from him.
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‘Listen, he’s a very normal kid,’ says Hearn. ‘I think that’s half his attraction. I think he still prefers a kebab to a fine dining experience. He’s not going to change like that.
‘He’s bought his mum and dad a nice house because he’s a nice lad and he’s getting the trappings. He will change and that’s part of the process. It’s natural – everyone changes as they get older, don’t they? Tiger Woods did as well.
‘At the moment, he’s the perfect athlete because he’s totally focused on collecting trophies. While he feels like that, he’s going to be dangerous.
‘The risk is, he starts thinking he’s bigger than the sport, because no one is as big as he is, right? In this sport, you can get caught because there is a lot of quality out there. A lot of very good players.
‘But Luke has class about him. I always say to the players, “Be a worthy champion”. And I think he buys into that.’
For now, the signs of change have been limited. In October, when he dropped his long-standing manager, Martin Foulds, sources in the sport say the split was amicable.
Foulds did not respond to a request for an interview, but it was perceived as a natural progression when Littler then chose to work with Garry Plummer, who is also the chairman of Target. They are the market-leading supplier of darts equipment with whom Littler has just signed his eye-watering deal.
Littler returns to cheers from family after world title win
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Littler posted this picture of himself as a child posing in front of a bullseye he hit
One former darts player, Vincent van der Voort, has expressed scepticism about the £20m figure that has been reported, saying: ‘Nice numbers, sure. I don’t think that’s achievable by selling darts gear. That’s not possible.’
‘I’ve known Garry for a long time,’ Hearn says. ‘He’s probably the perfect manager for Luke because he’s obviously got a vested interest. His company has done unbelievably well out of Luke Littler and he’s looking beyond five years, a bit like Tiger and Nike. It’s happened before, just it’s never happened in darts.’
Speaking early in 2025, Plummer said the company’s turnover had doubled in the space of a year after Littler came to attention. They had moved from supplying the hardcore of the sport to shifting Littler-branded products in toy shops – the Littler name transcends multiple demographics.
When we contacted Target, there was an awkwardness around doing an interview. They wanted to be informed of precisely which questions we would be asking and eventually the prospect fizzled. As with many strands of the Littler craze, there was a level of reluctance to add to the noise, as if governed by a fear of disrupting the magic.
Because there is still a teenager at the heart of this lucrative operation, and one who now has three active directorships according to Companies House – D16 Property Group Ltd and The Nuke Merchandise Shop Ltd, which are yet to file any accounts, and Luke Littler Darts Ltd, which reported assets of £1.2m for 2024.
Much more has been since then. From eight-figure endorsements to countless prizes and £4 for a mind-condition card of Lewis Dunk. Littler is a wonderful tale, the normal lad who is anything but.
The only hope is that he is somehow allowed to remain in such a blissful state.
