Greatest Matches
Eight televised matches that have earned and kept classic status. These are not simply high-quality games. They are the matches commentators still cite by year alone - 1992, 2007, 2010, 2017, 2024 - because the audience that watched them never quite got over what they saw.
Taylor 6-5 Gregory, 1992 BDO World final
Mike Gregory leads 5-3. He misses six darts at double to win the world title. Phil Taylor, then a relatively little-known defending champion from Stoke, takes the next three legs. Taylor wins his second world title 6-5 in what remains the high-water mark BDO-era final.
Cited by BBC coverage at every subsequent BDO championship, and re-shown by Sky as a historical reference match throughout the 2000s.
Van Barneveld 7-6 Taylor, 2007 PDC World final
Four-time BDO world champion Raymond van Barneveld had switched to the PDC the previous year. The 2007 PDC World Championship final between him and Phil Taylor went to a sudden-death leg at 6-6 in sets. Van Barneveld won it on a 164 checkout - the match that settled any remaining argument about which tour held the top end of the sport.
Taylor 10-4 Wade, 2010 Premier League final
Scoreline does not tell this story. Phil Taylor threw two televised nine-darters in the same final against James Wade - the first and only time this has happened in a televised match. Sky Sports has replayed the two legs, back-to-back, at nearly every Premier League event since.
Nine-darters alone would make the match historic. The combined 11-minute spell that built them - during which Taylor did not miss a scoring dart - is what made it a classic.
Van Gerwen 6-3 Smith, 2017 PDC World semi-final
Michael van Gerwen averaged 123.52 across the entire match. The highest televised average ever recorded, at the sport's biggest event, against a top-ten opponent. Michael Smith averaged 104.56 in the losing effort - a number that would have won most world semi-finals in any other era.
Van Gerwen would go on to win the title against Gary Anderson three days later. The semi-final is the match that stayed in the record book.
Cross 7-2 Taylor, 2018 PDC World final
Phil Taylor's farewell final. Rob Cross, a first-time World Championship qualifier, won 7-2 and retired Taylor on the day he was supposed to sign off with a seventeenth world title. The scoreline reads one-sided; the narrative is one of the most emotional televised moments the sport has produced.
Cross became the only player to beat Taylor in a world final. Taylor received a standing ovation that lasted into the commercial break.
Price 5-4 Van Gerwen, 2020 Grand Slam final
Gerwyn Price's breakthrough major came against the sport's dominant player in a bad-tempered final that still divides opinion. The aggressive celebrations, the close-quarters exchanges on the oche, and the 16-14 leg count made it one of the most talked-about Grand Slams of the modern era.
Price went on to win the 2021 World Championship two months later. The Grand Slam was the first evidence he was ready to.
Humphries 7-4 Littler, 2024 PDC World final
Luke Humphries won the match and the title. Luke Littler, then sixteen, delivered the arrival story of the modern era. Peak UK television audience of 4.8 million - the largest non-football sports audience Sky had broadcast.
Humphries averaged 103, Littler 100. The quality of play backed up the narrative; it was not just a teenager's story, it was a genuine world-final standard of darts. Littler returned a year later to win.
Littler 7-3 Van Gerwen, 2025 PDC World final
Seventeen-year-old Luke Littler defeats three-time world champion Michael van Gerwen to become the youngest world darts champion in history. Averaging 102, Littler led 5-1 before van Gerwen's short recovery was halted in set nine.
Second in consecutive years, now first in the youngest-champion record. The match every subsequent teenage talent will be measured against for a generation.