In his latest 'Stat of the Week' column, PDC Stats Analyst Christopher Kempf reflects on the best tournament ever in terms of overall standard, before assessing whether tournament averages are trending up or down?
Nearly ten years ago, a milestone was reached in the history of televised darts.
When Michael van Gerwen won his third consecutive title in the outdoor heat of Dubai, his victory concluded the first televised tournament with a combined average exceeding 100.
Over 123 legs, the eight best players in the world (all of whom, except Phil Taylor, still hold Tour Cards) combined to win 100 legs in 15 darts or fewer.
To date, no other tournament average has come within one point of that of the 2015 Dubai Darts Masters. Only five other broadcast PDC tournaments have even managed to exceed a 98 average.
The record is so hard to beat because the eight-person single-elimination tournament field has been all but abolished for PDC events.
Even for an assemblage of the eight most elite players in the PDC, a tournament outcome in which most of the players have exceeded 100 averages in their losses is extremely rare.
Consider that in the 2024 Premier League to date, only 40% of match winners exceeded that record tournament average from nine years before.
However, 2015-2017 was an exceptionally fruitful period in the history of darts for high tournament averages, being as it was the height of the three-way Van Gerwen - Taylor - Anderson rivalry which pushed all three stars to the limit of their scoring potential.
With a 99.55 average, the 2017 Masters - won by Van Gerwen with a 106 average across his four matches - remains the high-water mark for any tournament with at least 16 players.
The 2015 Premier League encompassed a whopping 1,658 legs played to a combined average of 99.01, a high point in the history of the Premier League.
The highest figure for a ranking tournament also dates to this golden age of high averages: the 2015 European Championship concluded with half of the averages, win or lose, in a best-of-19 or 21 contest exceeding 100, for an overall tournament figure of 97.09.
The main driving force behind the high tournament averages of the mid-2010s was Van Gerwen, who recorded an astonishing 21 110+ averages on TV in the three years spanning 2015 and 2017.
While the unique competitive factors at the highest levels of darts of Phil Taylor's twilight years can't yet be replicated, the 2024 ProTour has been the most productive yet seen for high tournament averages.
Furthermore, every European Tour event of 2024 is on the list of the top 10 European Tour tournament averages of all-time.
The overall record, set in the autumn of 2023, was broken with Luke Littler's triumph four weeks ago in Austria, capping off the first-ever 95 average in European Tour history.
It was once rare to see a 100+ average in a Friday first-round match; the 19 tournaments held in 2015 and 2016 produced only 16.
The first six events of 2024 resulted in 21 ton-plus averages, including only the second ever by a Nordic & Baltic qualifier.
Though Luke Humphries averaged 107.51 in his winning campaign this year in Munich, winners' tournament averages have increased only slightly over the years.
The big improvements have come from the depth of the qualifying field, whose Friday wins and eventual losses make up most of the legs played in these events.
Darts' highest ranked players often excuse themselves from Players Championship events, and while the calibre of performances exhibited by all Tour Card holders continues to rise, the Players Championship series has not seen the same litany of broken records.
Fifteen of these tournaments - held since the introduction of DartConnect - have posted tournament averages in excess of 93; the top 14 were all held in the 2020s.
Nevertheless, unlike the European Tour, the high Players Championship average of 93.79 has endured for four years.
This event, held in July 2020 during the first series of COVID-19 lockdown-era tournaments, was contested by every past, present and future World Champion active at that point, as well as any other Tour Card Holder desperate to resume their career.
Yet while tournament averages are down from 2023 to 2024, the averages of first-round losers are up, indicating that even if players do not hit the same heights in winning that they once did, they are finding it harder every year, regardless of the setting or the prize money, just to advance out of the first round.