PDC told to make World Youth Championship change after Luke Littler run as extraordinary stat emerges

Darts fans are calling for a major change to be introduced to the World Youth Championship amid Luke Littler's run to the semi-finals of the competition.

Littler was looking to progress to the final in Minehead in November, but suffered a 6-5 semi-final defeat to Cam Crabtree on Monday.

The structure of the World Youth Championship means that all the preliminary matches - from the last 64 onwards - were played on the same day in Wigan.

World Youth Championship change requested after Luke Littler run

Currently, the tournament is untelevised until the final, which is played as a standalone match on the weekend of the Players Championship Finals.

Littler missed his opportunity to play in two tournaments at the same time when he lost to Beau Greaves in the last four in 2025. Gian van Veen - who was also playing in the Players Championship Finals - beat Greaves in the final.

But fans believe the earlier rounds of the World Youth Championship should also be televised, given the standard of competition.

Iconic darts referee and spotter Richard Ashdown wrote on Twitter: "I've said it once and I'm going to keep saying it. This tournament is too good to be played behind closed doors, not streamed and only the final played on the big stage.

"It's worthy of the Women's World Matchplay and North American Championship type treatment on television across a full session, surely..."

One look at the averages from Monday somewhat proves Ashdown's point. Littler, the world number one, recorded the highest winning average of the day - a figure of 100.03 in his 6-4 first round win over Lewis Cook. But Cook had the highest overall average among all players of 100.40.

Germany's Jan Schmidt, who will play Crabtree in the final, averaged 99.97 in his first round win over Owen Roelofs, while Players Championship event winner Henry Coates and fellow PDC tour card holder Charlie Manby averaged above 97 in the first and second round respectively.

And in their semi-final clash, Crabtree (97.89) and Littler (97.91) put in some of the best averages of the entire day in Wigan.

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Littler's defeat to Crabtree in particular creates a potentially intriguing scenario ahead of the World Darts Championship in December.

Crabtree currently occupies one of the three automatic qualification places via his performance on the Development Tour, while he is one place outside qualification via the ProTour Order of Merit.

Should he either qualify via the latter metric and win the World Youth Championship final, the third Development Tour spot would be passed down to the next highest-ranked player, who is Owen Bates.

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Bates, 23, has reached Ally Pally twice before - in 2024 and 2026 - but is yet to win a match. He was banned from using his nickname, 'The Master', before his inaugural appearance.