In his latest column, PDC Stats Analyst Christopher Kempf assesses the developing and potentially record-breaking rivalry between World Champion Luke Humphries and Premier League winner Luke Littler...
The two most high-profile tournament finals of 2024 featured two players who, at the time of the founding of the PDC, had not yet been born.
Luke Littler and Luke Humphries combined for 65 legs of near 105 average darts between those two scintillating matches, with the 17-year-old Littler avenging his defeat at the Alexandra Palace to the tune of £275,000 in the Premier League.
11 years ago, a similar situation unfolded when Michael van Gerwen defeated 16-time World Champion Phil Taylor, kick-starting the 24-year-old's legendary career.
For the next four years, the Taylor-van Gerwen rivalry was the most exciting and hotly contested in darts. Is Littler destined for a similar struggle with Humphries?
In just the first five months of 2024, the World Champion and Premier League Champion have combined, in 9 matches, to play 140 legs of darts at an exceptional standard - a 100.78 combined average and 115 three-treble visits.
Littler has got the better of Humphries in seven of the eight matches occurring after January's World Championship final, and in five of six deciding legs, for a combined 101.42 average against his new rival.
Of his seven Premier League opponents, Rob Cross is the only one against whom Littler has been more effective.
His 102.85 average against the 2018 World Champion is the highest average of 2024 of any Premier League player against any other in the 17 matchups with at least five encounters.
Cross has similarly found little success against the teenaged phenomenon in spite of his 101 average in those matchups, losing six of seven matches and all three deciding-legs.
One of Littler's most important rivals could be Damon Heta, the Australian number one who eliminated the Warrington wonderkid from the UK Open in March.
Heta's 106 average in that quarter-final represented the best performance of his career in a ranking TV match and is, incredibly, the only TV event of 2024 in which Littler, having qualified, did not reach the final.
Littler exacted some measure of revenge with 6-3 and 6-2 demolitions of 'The Heat' on the European Tour, but Littler will need to defeat Heta for £1000 or £2000 on the ProTour many more times to make up for the ranking impact of that UK Open loss.
Additionally, their 102.24 combined average is second only to Chris Dobey vs Ross Smith for the highest combined matchup average of the 2024 season.
While all of Littler's rivalries are still in their infancy, the most frequently-contested matchup in the history of darts - the Michael van Gerwen-Peter Wright series which has now extended to more than 100 meetings - has gone off the boil in terms of its relevance to the outcome of tournaments.
Between 2014 and 2020 it was the most common matchup to be featured in a televised final, with 12 of their games occurring therein - but in 2024 the two players never met beyond the first round of a Premier League night, or beyond the round of 16 in a ranking event.
The magic of their innumerable encounters has faded - the 2017 Premier League Final, on a knife edge until the final leg, had a combined 103 average; in 2024 the MvG-Wright series is producing only 92.
In their eight confrontations of 2013, a year on a parallel track to 2024 with respect to a young star avenging his defeat in the World Championship final by taking the Premier League crown, Taylor and van Gerwen combined for a 102.09 average.
However, that rivalry only featured 0.692 171-180 per leg, whereas the Littler-Humphries rivalry has given us 0.821 171-180s per leg, as well as a nine-darter to boot.
It compares even more favourably with the storied Taylor-van Barneveld matches of 2007, with more 12-darters, 180s, and higher averages than even the hottest point of those two champions' multi-decade rivalry.
With Littler aged just 17 and his biggest rival not yet 30, and with nine matches already in the books, the 'ConfLUKEt' has the potential to surpass Wright-MvG for longevity and Taylor-RvB for quality and importance to this new era of professional darts.