Luke Littler’s back at it at Ally Pally tonight (2 January) for the semi-finals of the World Darts Championship.
And that means it’s been about a year since the lad truly broke through as a household name when he amazed us all with his skills on the global stage.
Last year’s matches marked just the start of a remarkable debut season for the Nuke as he went on to win the likes of the Bahrain Darts Masters, the Premier League and the Grand Slam.
So, with a number of titles under his belt, Littler has been able to rake in a staggering amount of money. However, he’ll lose a large chunk of those earnings.
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Yep, just like the rest of us, the 17-year-old isn’t safe from the tax people.
Littler has earned a whopping £1,013,500 in career winnings across ranked and invitational tournaments so far. He took in a whopping £811,000 in 2024 before the increases thanks to the current Worlds.
And with big earnings comes a big tax bill at the end of the financial year.
Sport finance expert Dr Rob Wilson explained to Card Player: "On a simple tax calculation, he will have lost 40, 45 percent 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.”
Wilson said Littler will have ‘big expenses’ to cut off those earnings ‘so the reality is that he's paid 20% of that back in tax’.
“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,” he added.
This isn’t ‘about evasion’ though apparently, ‘just being efficient’.
“Let's not forget that of that 600 plus thousand [his earnings], 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,” Wilson said.
"Having earned £633,000 [in the financial year of the PDC’s Order of Merit], 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.”
Littler’s earnings will only get heavier if he makes it to the final of the Worlds again with the winner taking £500,000 and the second-place player, £200,000.
Topics: Luke Littler, Sport, Money
Jess Battison