PDC ranking system ‘under review’ reveals Alan Warriner-Little

PDPA president Alan Warriner-Little has revealed the PDC ranking system is being reviewed following the announcement of a record-breaking prize fund for the World Championship.

This year’s World Championship will incorporate a staggering £1m top prize, double that of last year’s event, and a total prize fund of £5m.

This means that the World Championship winner’s cheque now stands at more than four times the amount of any other televised ranking event and is set to have huge implications for the ranking system.

The PDC Order of Merit operates on a rolling two-year basis based on prize money earned in ranking competition, with Luke Humphries currently leading the way with a total of just over £1.8m.

During ITV Sport’s coverage of the World Series Finals on Sunday, Warriner-Little revealed the ranking system is currently under review following the recent landmark prize money announcement.

“It gives us new challenges,” said Warriner-Little, former world number one and founding member of the Professional Darts Players Association.

“Anything like that you think is great, but you have to look into the scenarios that brings up for all the players.

“At this moment in time, we’re looking at the ranking system – there’s no details yet – we had a meeting this weekend actually but we’re looking through that to see what we can do over the next couple of years to make it fairer with that prize money in the World Championship.”

Fellow ITV pundit and commentator Chris Mason added: “The PDC, Paddy Power and Sky Sports have all created this opportunity for literally life-changing money.

“But it’s going to skew the rankings. You could win that tournament, pretty much not play in anything else, someone else could win pretty much all of the big TV majors and still not be world number one.

“It should carry that prestige, but is it going to affect players for one when they come to defend it? Because you’ll go from the world number one to what? 

“We had the same scenario with Nathan Aspinall, he was number seven in the world and went down to 24th, but he wasn’t the 24th best player in the world, he was top ten.”

The current PDC Order of Merit has been in operation since 2007 – when it replaced the previous points-based ranking system, which saw points awarded for performances in tournaments according to their relative prestige.

A total of 13 players have held the world number one spot since the introduction of the WDC rankings in 1993.