Premier League Darts 2025 Night One Preview and Order of Play | Roadshow begins in Belfast
The 2025 Premier League Darts roadshow begins in Belfast on Thursday night as the elite eight aim to make a winning start.
The 21st edition of BetMGM Premier League Darts commences at a sold-out SSE Arena with the first of sixteen £10,000 weekly bonuses up for grabs.
The fourth consecutive staging to incorporate the weekly knockout format sees the quarter-finals played down to a winner, with a repeat of the World Championship final among the stand-out fixtures.
Reigning champion Luke Littler launches the defence of his title with a showdown against seven-time Premier League champion Michael van Gerwen.
Littler claimed a crowning glory at Alexandra Palace a month ago courtesy of a dominant 7-3 victory over Van Gerwen, becoming the sport’s youngest ever World Champion at the age of 17.
Having since celebrated his 18th birthday, Littler is back out on the road looking to become only the third player to successfully retain the Premier League title and finish top of the table in the process.
Littler defeated Van Gerwen 6-3 in the recent Dutch Darts Masters in MVG’s own back yard in Den Bosch, but is yet to pick up a title in his three tournament outings since the World Championship, having most recent lost to Jonny Clayton in the quarter-finals of the Winmau World Masters.
Littler, whose triumph in Belfast last year marked the first of his four weekly titles, faces a fired-up Mighty Mike – who won three of the opening four league nights in 2024.
Van Gerwen was denied by nine-dart Dimitri van den Bergh in the Second Round of the Winmau World Masters last Saturday and has now gone over 12 months without picking up a televised title.
The opening match of the tournament sees former World Champion Gerwyn Price take on the returning Chris Dobey.
Price is making his seventh appearance in the Premier League, having finished runner-up in 2023 – the year Dobey last featured in the line-up.
World number nine Price endured a below-par 2024 which saw him finish second from bottom of the Premier League and fail to pick up a ranking title, though his brace of World Series titles and run to the quarter-finals of the World Championship secured a return this prestigious event.
The Welshman finished runner-up in last month’s Bahrain Masters and will be keen to hit the ground running in the Premier League, having failed to register a single weekly title last year.
Dobey, who finished second from bottom in his debut campaign two years ago, returns for a second crack at the elite invitational after reaching the semi-finals of the recent World Championship, and the former Masters champion has fond memories of performing in Belfast, having claimed the Night One title on this stage in 2023.
World number one Luke Humphries, last year’s Premier League runner-up, starts out against two-time major winner Nathan Aspinall.
Humphries was denied glory by nine-dart Littler in the final at The O2 last May, having finished second in the league table with four weekly titles to his name.
Humphries heads to Belfast on the crest of a wave after securing the season’s first ranking silverware at the Winmau World Masters on Sunday, closing in on becoming the first player to reach the £2million mark on the PDC Order of Merit.
Aspinall is embarking on his fifth Premier League campaign, having finished runner-up behind closed doors in 2020 before reaching the semi-finals a year later and narrowly missing out on the play-offs in fifth spot for the past two successive seasons.
The 2023 World Matchplay champion reached the quarter-finals of the recent World Championship and World Masters and has shrugged off any suggestion of injury hampering his progress in the coming months.
Meanwhile, Stephen Bunting marks his return to the Premier League with a showdown against former finalist Rob Cross.
Bunting is back in the line-up for the first time in a decade, with his maiden campaign resulting in an eighth-place finish from the ten-man field in 2015.
Crowd favourite Bunting clinched his first televised PDC title at the 2024 Masters and went on to reach the semi-finals of the World Championship, climbing to a career-high of fifth in the Order of Merit in the process.
Bahrain Masters champion on his World Series return last month, ‘The Bullet’ was then denied back-to-back titles by Cross in the final of the Dutch Masters a week later.
Cross captured his fifth World Series title in Den Bosch to bounce back from a shock First Round exit in Bahrain, but was then beaten by William O’Connor in the opening round of the World Masters.
Premier League runner-up in 2019, Cross is making his sixth appearance in the event and is out to improve on a sixth-place finish in 2024 and challenge for a first weekly title.
The action gets under way from 7pm GMT, with all matches to be contested over the best of 11 legs.
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Premier League Darts 2025 Night One Schedule
Night One – Thursday February 6
The SSE Arena, Belfast
Quarter-Finals
Chris Dobey v Gerwyn Price
Stephen Bunting v Rob Cross
Luke Littler v Michael van Gerwen
Nathan Aspinall v Luke Humphries
Semi-Finals
Dobey/Price v Bunting/Cross
Littler/Van Gerwen v Aspinall/Humphries
Final
