What’s next for darts sensation Luke Littler?

Luke Littler appeared to take his World Darts Championship final defeat better than anyone else. He applauded and embraced the victorious Luke Humphries, then outgoing referee Russ Bray. He was charming and self-effacing in interviews. There was a hint of dead-eyed exhaustion he desperately tried to mask, but that’s understandable. For all we’d seen of Littler’s mental resilience and level-headedness in victory, he was all the more impressive and serene in defeat.

So, what’s next for the soon-to-be 17-year-old? The immediate future for Littler involves, in his own words, “plenty of days off”. His next darting engagement will most likely be the Bahrain Masters between 18-19 January, before the Dutch Masters a week later.

A lot will then depend on whether he’s selected to play in the Premier League, an eight-player knockout competition running weekly from February to May across Europe, announced at 4pm on Thursday. It’s considered a tough challenge for younger players as the standard is so consistently strong. Any weakness or poor form can be at times brutally extracted and punished.

Littler himself seemed reluctant to join the Premier League when asked earlier in the tournament. There are previous examples of players whose careers have been set back by poor Premier League campaigns after early inclusions, most notably 2023 world champion Michael Smith. Humphries wasn’t selected for the 2023 edition and has since said that allowed him the necessary time and space to work on his game and reach world No 1.

Away from the oche, Littler has already been paraded around Arsenal and Tottenham, had a surprise visit from Warrington’s rugby league team and signed autographs for Declan Rice.

Manchester United have been next to invite him for a photo opportunity over some mediocre football. Next up, an ill-advised sit-down with Rishi Sunak, who’s already congratulated him on social media, perhaps tea with the King? Everyone wants a piece of the Prince of the Palace.

At first, Littler was just fuelling the content machine, but he’s since become it himself. He’s gone from novelty to oddity to megastar in a fortnight. Everything he does, everything about him, is now innately fascinating, even when it unavoidably isn’t.

The movie will be coming. The documentary crews will already have been running round Warrington like Rat Race. Littlermania will only make meme pages and banter accounts more inanely insufferable than they have long become. The vultures are already circling, conveniently dressed as Birds of Paradise. If you think the prize money he’s made at Ally Pally is eye-watering, wait until you see the cheques about to be waved under his nose.

Until now, Littler’s sponsors have been either directly darts-related or local firms, something you expect will change almost overnight. He cannot advertise alcohol or gambling due to his age, but that won’t stop other companies from making their best offers. Littler has spoken about celebrating with kebabs, Tango and Coke and Domino’s Pizza are already heavily involved in sponsoring sport, so that’s another possible port of call, as is basically any fast food or soft drinks corporation.

Past this, he’s now reached 680,000 Instagram followers, something which brings with it further profitability. Sponsors will pay upwards of £3,000 per post advertising or wearing their products. This is easy money.

And then there’s the freebies. He said he fancied taking his mates to Alton Towers or Blackpool’s Pleasure Beach to celebrate a potential win. The former offered him the keys to the park, the latter a free hotel stay with personally installed dartboard. Littler was celebrating by eating kebabs, so chain Kebhouze offered him free doner for life. A holiday company offered him a job as “Top Kebab Taste Tester” across their top hotels in Turkey. This is his life now. There’s no need for £200,000 when so much is lobbed at you for free.

Becoming a celebrity is a novelty, but actually being one can exhaust and harass. By all accounts, taking selfies and signing autographs is a pleasure and a privilege until it becomes the thing you’d least like to do in the world. He won’t be able to leave his house without having to talk to 10 people he’s never met, without hearing that he’s got school in the morning or the indubitable fact that there’s only one Luke Littler.

Littlermania has done more for darts’ international profile that it could ever do itself. There were as many Germans on the bus to the People’s Palace on Tuesday as there were Brits, despite this being the first time since 2006 there were four English semi-finalists. The only French player lost 3-0 in the second round, but L’Equipe still dedicated more than 10,000 words to a long read on Littler and “how darts conquered the world”.

There was a foreign correspondent from Hong Kong at Alexandra Palace who had never watched darts before, but just couldn’t miss out on some sweet Littler content. CNN had Littler on their US homepage.

NFL stars Pat McAfee and JJ Watt discussed it on the former’s massively popular TV show. Type Luke Littler into Google in Arabic, or Russian, or Chinese and there are hundreds of thousands of results. This has run away now. You’re never going to catch it again. He’s a global star now.

None of these pressures can do much good for his six-week-old relationship with 21-year-old Eloise Milburn, a beauty consultant and amateur darts player Littler met playing Fifa.

Eloise’s mother said their romance was “not a very serious one, although that might come later”. They’ve just gone through a world-altering experience together. She didn’t sign up to have her every move critiqued in the court of social media.

This moment is unfathomably significant to darts, but the challenge now is to craft sustainable success and popularity from the wreckage the Nuke will continue to leave behind.

Littler’s success needs to create a new generation of mini-hims, kids who average over 100 for fun, for whom this has always been the plan, who can elevate the sport to previously unseen levels. Littler must inspire enough people to ultimately create something that can beat him, otherwise his only real opponent will be himself.

Littler will always have the 2024 World Championship. This will be the unbearable lightness of being Luke Littler, or perhaps more aptly, the unbearable weight of his massive talent. Every time he improves, everything he now achieves, only makes him more famous, more recognisable, further removes his former life and personality and world.

He appears to be handling instant stardom about as well as you can imagine a 16-year-old doing so, but it’s not really begun in earnest. The World Championship protective bubble is about to burst. Littler may well hope to simply return to the life he lived before. No such luck. What’s next for Luke Littler? Everything.