In his latest column, PDC Stats Analyst Christopher Kempf outlines the players with the most ranking prize money to defend over the next 12 months...
Darts players looking for a respite from Luke Littler's meteoric rise up the Order of Merit will not be gratified by the rankings trajectory of 2025.
The year 2025 has already begun with veteran players Mervyn King and Simon Whitlock being consigned to the Challenge Tour, 2023 World Champion Michael Smith being pushed out of the top 16 and a teenager becoming the fastest player ever to reach £1,000,000 in ranking income.
Further ranking upheavals are still to come if darts' old guard are not up to the challenging task of defending money earned in the relative comfort of the pre-Littler 2023 season.
Nathan Aspinall may have enjoyed a boost to his career thanks to his selection for the 2025 Premier League, but any success he achieves in darts' four-month roadshow will not make any difference to his ranking.
His challenge in 2025, rather, will be to defend his earnings as 2023 World Matchplay champion. 43% of his entire ranking total is represented by that £200,000 prize, dwarfing his 2024 ranking earnings of £140,000.
If Aspinall is to be eliminated in Blackpool's first round, all other things being equal, he would plummet to the point of falling out of the PDC's top 32.
Also in jeopardy of falling from a commanding ranking position is the former world number one Gerwyn Price, whose appearance in the quarter-finals of the 2025 World Championship was the Welshman's first televised ranking quarter-final since October 2023.
65% of the Iceman's ranking income was earned in that year, and though Price was buoyed by winning two World Series titles in 2024, he failed to win on the ProTour for the first time since 2018.
Price will need to dramatically reverse that trend and, if he does not claim a TV title, win at least half a dozen ProTour titles in order to successfully defend his 2023 ranking income.
25 other players earned more towards their ranking total last year than Price - a troubling state of affairs for a player tenuously clinging to his place in the world’s top ten.
Qualifying for every televised ranking event as a top-32 player essentially guarantees an income (from those events) of nearly £50,000, and winning one all but guarantees top-32 ranking for the next two years.
Two players are enjoying the benefits and the stresses of this situation, as first-time 'major' champions.
Ritchie Edhouse, as last year's European Champion, is only three months into the £120,000 rankings boost he earned.
With only £38,000 to defend from 2023, Edhouse is likely to continue to climb the rankings even if he does not win any more titles.
However, Andrew Gilding, who surprisingly became the 2023 UK Open Champion, must defend 28% of his ranking income in March or he will fall back into the 30s on the Order of Merit.
Neither player reached the final of any ProTour event in either 2023 or 2024, so without a reversal of fortune on the floor or the European Tour stages, the two will meet the same fates about 18 months apart.
Luke Humphries' near £800,000 pound lead as world number one should ensure that he spends at least the next eight months on top of the darting world.
Yet it is not as secure as it might appear, because world number two Littler is defending less than 1% of his ranking income until the 2026 World Championship.
Humphries, meanwhile, must win the World Grand Prix, Grand Slam and Players Championship Finals to replenish the money that will drop off his ranking in the autumn of 2025.
If Littler earns even slightly less from non-World Championship events in 2025 as he did in 2024, and Humphries fails to win more than one televised ranking title, then the 18-year-old will become the youngest top-ranked player in the history of darts, and will do it in time to defend his World Championship crown.
The Order of Merit defence timeline allows for a convenient identification of players who are likely to drop significantly in the rankings in 2025 because so much of their income was earned in one event (Gilding).
This also applies to players on solid form who are defending little because of consistent success on the ProTour last year (Bunting), and players whose income is consistent, secure, and allows the player to remain in his current ranking position (Wade).
If it is only a matter of time before Luke Littler reaches the summit of darts' world rankings, then his rivals must do all they can to shore up their ranking positions now, before 'The Nuke' demolishes the existing rankings hierarchy in its entirety.
Follow Christopher on Twitter @ochepedia