A former darts World Championship winner found himself in a desperate situation just years after his crowning moment.
Given the increase in popularity of the sport over the past five years, most professional darts players who feature in the biggest tournaments are earning a tidy wage.
2025 PDC World Darts Championship winner Luke Littler has already earned in excess of £1.5 million in prize money from major tournaments despite still being just 18 years of age.
As reported by BBC Sport, over two years, seven-time major winner Littler has pocketed around £1.68m in prize money, and that’s without considering his many commercial deals with Xbox, boohooMan and KP Nuts.
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But current world number one Luke Humphries is still the sport’s highest earner, having reportedly received £1.73m in prize money over the last two years.
Michael van Gerwen (£760,000), Stephen Bunting (£660,000) and James Wade (£620,000) make up the rest of the top five highest earners list.
But darts has not always been such a lucrative business to be involved with.
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Former BDO world champion and PDC World Championship quarter-finalist Richie Burnett found this out when he ran into difficult times.
The 58-year-old was crowned BDO world champion in 1995, but by the early 2000s, he was struggling for cash and resorted to desperate measures to feed himself.
In an interview with the Mirror back in 2023, Burnett claimed that he once drained hot water from a radiator to make a Pot Noodle as he couldn’t afford a kettle.
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"When times were hard and I had no money, I was in Wigan for a tournament and bought myself a Pot Noodle for my tea,” Burnett said.
"But I didn't have a kettle to boil water for it," he added. "The only thing I could do was drain the radiator from my room and use the hot water from that. It was all soily and brown, but it worked, and the Pot Noodle went down OK.
"But I'd used a pair of nail scissors to open up the valve, and it wouldn't shut again, so hot, brown water was leaking out.
"All I could do was put a tray underneath it to catch it all. I didn't get much sleep because I had to get up every hour to tip the water down the sink."
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Despite his struggles, the player returned to the game he loves before reaching the quarter-finals of the Grand Prix in 2014.
Burnett currently competes in the World Seniors Darts Tour, which is an organisation with an eligibility age of 45.
He reached the last eight of the competition in 2025 but lost 0-3 to Steve Beaton.
Topics: Darts
Luke Davies