PDC World Championship 2025 outright preview: Darts expert Matt Hill’s best bets

Another festive darts frenzy is upon us with the PDC World Championship getting underway on Sunday, December 15th — and who better to guide you throw the sport's showpiece than our arrows expert Matt Hill?

After a hugely profitable Players Championship Finals last month, Matt will be hoping for more of the same at Ally Pally and gives us his best outright bets here for the 2024/25 renewal.

Nausea? Anxiety? Struggling to focus? Oh dear. I’m afraid you’re the latest poor soul to be struck down by DWS.

No need to panic, though. Darts Withdrawal Syndrome, to give its full medical term, always does the rounds at this time of year and impacts millions worldwide.

Ssymptoms will last for exactly 21 days, having presumably set in shortly after the last dart was thrown at the Players Championship Finals in Minehead on November 24th.

Thankfully, come December 15th, I’m pleased to say you will make a full and immediate recovery. But in the meantime, the only tangible treatment is to consume retro darts content at very regular intervals.

Both YouTube clips and Darts Gold episodes are equally effective and you’ll need to be taking them in preferably three or four times a day. Ideally more.

Any old clip will do. For exmaple, a re-run of Mervyn King vs Michael van Gerwen (a personal favourite of mine) will be just as effective as say, a slow-motion montage of John Henderson’s Premier League walk-on in Aberdeen (this doesn't techincally exist but if you play this video at half speed, it's as good as).

If things get really bleak, I’d suggest skipping straight to the hard stuff. Something like a distorted replay of John Part 7-6 Phil Taylor in the 2003 Worlds final. Or perhaps the Adrian Lewis vs Jose Justicia incident.

When on the go, videos aren’t always realistic, so a quick blast of Chase The Sun by Planet Funk is a handy way to provide some swift comfort. I'm also not against the odd rogue “ONEEAAAAAUNDREDANEIGHTY” shout either (yes, obviously in a Russ Bray voice) when the scenario dictates. Such as when at the dinner table with your other half, or perhaps late at night when your kids are in bed.

Crucially, the end is in sight now.  Just look to keep yourself busy for a little while longer because Sunday will soon be here and there’ll be an endless array of arrows to feast on throughout the festive period.

Perhaps you could take in an outright preview of this year’s tournament to fill the time? Ahem…

Luke no further than understated Humphries as the best bet

While the betting market tells you a certain Mr Luke Littler is the most likely winner of the 2025 PDC World Championship, I’m here to tell you that backing him at anywhere near 2/1 is, quite simply, bonkers.

Yes, Littlermania is running wild once again brother, and there’s no doubting the Warrington wonderkid is the best thing to happen to darts since William ‘Bigfoot’ Annakin planted three double tops in front of Leeds Magistrates Court. 

However, as we are very occasionally reminded by the media, there is another Luke knocking around too. One who, in my opinion, is far better equipped for the rigours of a 17-day Alexandra Palace marathon — and crucially, is a much more attractive price to boot.

Cards on the table, I have been chipping away at Luke Humphries to retain his crown all year and if anything, my confidence in him doing so has only grown in the last few weeks.

The Players Championship Finals in Minehead could hardly have illustrated my gut feeling better. 

For almost the entire weekend, Littler was chucking arrows from a different planet to the rest. Meanwhile, Humphries, seemingly under par and struggling for form, scraped and battled his way through to another final with his namesake.

It was a clash that bookies were convinced would see the younger man triumph. Bet365, for example, sent Littler off a 1/3 favourite, with the World Champ all the way out at 12/5. 

The eye test that weekend suggested they were right, and yet, Humphries defied those odds emphatically by sticking an extra 10 points on his semi-final average to close out an impressive 11-7 success.

HUMPHRIES GOES BACK-TO-BACK! 🏆

Luke Humphries retains his Players Championship Finals title!

Cool Hand puts on an absolute clinic to defeat Luke Littler 11-7 in an epic final!

📺 https://t.co/AmuG0PMn18 #PCF2024 | Final pic.twitter.com/nZDWPUVjWE

— PDC Darts (@OfficialPDC) November 24, 2024

Of course, I could ramble on about Littler and Humphries for far longer than is advisable but to save you time, I’ll summarise what I believe to be the key point.

While the pair will share titles and titanic tussles for many years to come, and Littler will always be the more explosive, engaging and well-supported member of the duo, Humphries — certainly at this point of their respective careers — is the more reliable type.

He has gears, he has composure and he has experience. When Littler is on his A++ game, he wins, but if these two played 100 games at Ally Pally, I have Humphries coming out on top more frequently.

If my assessment is a fair one, then the 7/2 still knocking around about a Humphries repeat simply has to be a bet.

That is before I even get stuck into the draw, where I believe Cool Hand has had the better of things. His toughest route to the quarter-finals, on paper, looks to be Thibault Tricole, Raymond van Barneveld and James Wade. Solid players, some fabulous career achievements but ultimately not the most fearsome trio in 2024.

Littler, meanwhile, is likely going to have to overcome men in far better recent form. 

Presuming he takes care of either Ryan Meikle or Fallon Sherrock in round two, the European Champion Ritchie Edhouse will surely offer some stern resistance after Christmas. Beyond that, Ryan Searle and Danny Noppert (his likeliest round four opponents) are two of the most granite players around. Over set play, either of those will take a seriously strong performance to rid of.

Then, it could be Gian van Veen in the quarter-finals. Or so the market suggests. I actually would deduce a clash with Rob Cross is far more likely — and far more dangerous.

Voltage has done it all on that famous stage. Another master of set play, he has a score to settle with Littler from last year and is another who I think has been criminally dismissed by the market. 10/1 for Cross to prevail from this quarter looks four points too big to me.

Now, there’s nothing to say Littler won’t pass all those tasks with flying colours. Heck, there’s nothing to say he won’t storm to the title and make this piece look a bit silly.

But it’s all about price in this game and I strongly believe the market is leaning too much towards the game’s pin-up star. Anyone who deals purely in value should be taking a position on Humphries, pure and simple.

Bottom half has value lurking if you can find it

In case you weren’t already aware, Littler and Humphries have landed on the same half of the draw, meaning only one can reach the final this year.

That makes a bet in the bottom half of the draw feel almost mandatory, with the market suggesting it will be one of two legendary figures — Michael van Gerwen or Gary Anderson — on hand to take advantage and seal a spot in January 3rd’s showpiece.

I’m not so sure, though. 

Sure, Van Gerwen’s aura at Ally Pally is unrivalled and the Green Machine always raises his game for the big one. But his recent form has been rotten (by his own admission) and he has been searching to add to his three world titles since 2019 now.

Anderson, conversely, has rarely arrived here in better form but the Flying Scotsman is even longer between drinks at Ally Pally. While performance levels on the tour have been reminiscent of his 2016 peak, the icon is nearly a decade older and no longer seems to have the same hunger for silverware — understandably.

Of the two, it would be Anderson that takes my eye more (I did take a bit of 33/1 earlier this year) but I just keep coming back to that memory of him being dumped out by Brendan Dolan 12 months ago. That was a flat, unexpected performance and there’s every chance he’ll throw in something similar again during this long, draining slog of a tournament.

So, if not MVG and Ando in the bottom half, then who? 

In that same quarter, Martin Schindler makes most appeal to spring a surprise and I’ve taken him to reach the semi-finals at 16/1. I’m still not sure he’s quite ready to win a World Championship, though. He lacks experience in the biggest games of all and instead, I’ll focus outright attentions on the weaker, wide-open looking quarter three.

Shrewdies quickly cottoned onto the extremely inviting draw presented to young Wessel Nijman earlier this month. 

Another who I’ve banked a big price on earlier this year, I’d love their assessments to be correct but that price is now prohibitively short at 33/1 for someone who has played just one match at Ally Pally in his entire life and lost it, comfortably, to Steve Beaton a year ago.

Nijman has the raw tools to win the lot, as displayed by averages of 105, 107 and 111 in November’s Grand Slam of Darts. But almost every time, history shows players of his profile need a few cracks at Ally Pally to produce their best stuff and there’s enough question marks hanging over him to look elsewhere.

Michael Smith and Gerwyn Price are the biggest names here but both arrive in London off the back of disappointing years, so I can swerve them without too much concern despite their drifts in the betting. 

Chris Dobey is so often my go-to man from the mid pack, particularly at Ally Pally. I’d rather not dwell on what happened last year (I had Dobey running in a couple of doubles and trebles for a gigantic return) — but I do have to acknowledge it for the purposes of this preview.

Did Dobey bottle it against Rob Cross? Not for me. He certainly went off the boil a bit midway through the contest and let Cross gather some momentum. 

But more impressively for me, he stood up to the barrage from Voltage — particularly in the last set from 2-0 down — and was the width of the wire away from sudden death. 

You have to give immense credit to Cross, who was relentless for those final five sets and didn’t give his opponent an inch. He needed all his class and energy to get through that contest and I prefer to just applaud his efforts rather than question the unlucky loser.

Dobey loves it at Ally Pally and is the epitome of consistency. Only once in the last six years has he not made the last 16 and 2024 was a second consecutive quarter-final for the Geordie.

I think set play really suits him, more than most, due to his stress-free throwing action. He’s able to go long distances without too many dramatic peaks and troughs and we all know how devastatingly consistent Hollywood is on the treble 20.

Recent struggles on TV, exiting at the group stage in Wolverhampton and crashing out round one in Minehead, are of slight concern, particularly given he referenced those recent struggles on social media.

But I back him to put things right and another year of improvement, such as making the semi-finals, feels feasible. At 11/2, he’s worth a quarter winner investment.

There’s one other man lurking in quarter three though who I think, at current prices, has been overlooked a tad.

Kind draw and subtle resurgence makes Ferret worth a flutter

Jonny Clayton has not had a good time of things in the last two years.

2021 truly was the Year of the Ferret, with four TV title wins including the World Grand Prix and the Premier League. There was a really solid case for the likeable Welshman being the best player on the planet at that time and while titles didn’t continue to flow in 2022, his consistent deep runs did.

In 2023 though, Clayton’s life was turned upside down by the ill health and eventual passing of his father John. The now 50-year-old admitted last December that he is “not the same person” after losing his Dad and has understandably taken a lot of time to process that bereavement.

His form on the board has suffered in tandem, though I have seen clear visual improvements in the last few months. There is a sense, albeit a subtle one, that he is close to rediscovering his very best form.

Clayton won 26 of his last 34 Pro Tour matches this season — including a fantastic run to the Players Championship 30 final where he lost a quality-laden affair to Josh Rock 8-7, despite posting a 107 average.

I also thought he caught the eye at the Grand Slam, disposing of Ritchie Edhouse and Ross Smith in efficient fashion before exiting to world No1 Luke Humphries in a contest that could easily have swung his way too.

You’re always taking a chance on someone priced 100/1 for outright glory but I do think the market has underestimated the Ferret’s recent resurgence. The fact my two fellow panelists on our big PDC World Championship YouTube preview were also unconvinced on Clayton’s form probably goes a long way to telling you how subtle these improvements have been, admittedly.

But I’ve definitely seen something I like in the last three months and in this very open part of the draw, I think 9/1 about him winning the quarter and three-figure quotes on him outright are both worth a little go.

Matt Hill’s best outright bets for the 2025 PDC World Championship

• 5pts - Luke Humphries 7/2 - (Betfair Exchange)
• 1pt ew - Jonny Clayton @ 100/1 (PricedUp.bet)

Right now, my simple advice would be to take Humphries if you’re looking for the best value outright winner and Clayton if you’re looking for an interest at a massive price.

As you’ll see at the top of the article, I’ve also had a few quarter and “to reach round four” bets, which are justified in more detail over on our YouTube show.

Throughout the tournament, I’ll be providing daily blogs and vlogs, flagging up my fancies in case you want to follow.

Happy punting and enjoy the arrows!