Darts started out humbly as a pub game, but in March 2025, a new broadcast agreement was announced between PDC and Sky Sports said to be worth £125 million over the next five years.
This makes it one of the fastest growing and most popular sports in the UK/Europe, with World Championship viewership second only to Premier League football on Sky Sports!
As a result of the increased sponsor and media spend on darts, Barry Hearn revealed that the 2026 World Championship will see the winner take home £1 million in prize money.
A figure many retired darts players never thought they’d see in the game.
That means darts is going to produce multi-millionaires over the coming years, however, some of the best have already achieved that level even without the mega-money coming into the sport now.
Below we’ve ranked the 10 highest earning darts players of all time based on prize money earned.
This is for professional players only (PDC) and we’ve used available data going back to the 1st January, 1994, the year that the PDC was created. All data was sourced from DartsOrakel and is accurate as of 15th October, 2025.
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10) Rob Cross – £3,337,700
Rob Cross earned his PDC Tour Card in 2017 so the former electrician has had the shortest professional career of anyone on this list making his inclusion in the top 10 an impressive feat!
After his first year on the tour, Rob Cross stunned the darts world by winning the 2018 World Darts Championship, beating Phil Taylor in the final (Taylor’s last professional match) and completing an unbelievable underdog story.
Related – Ranking the most UNEXPECTED title wins by darts players
Despite his ‘short’ career to date, Cross has won four major titles whilst also making it to several finals and he plays a lot of tournaments.
Cross has beaten recent world champion Luke Humprhies onto this list, as well as players with decades of consistency on the tour like Dave Chisnall and Simon Whitlock.
This just goes to show how successful Voltage has been since becoming a professional player!
9) Adrian Lewis – £3,382,385
Adrian Lewis is often considered to be one of the most naturally talented players to ever throw a dart.
Jackpot joins a select few darts elite who have won back-to-back world championship titles and with 14 major finals appearances, it’s not so surprising to see him make this list.
Lewis seemed to peak during 2011-2014 and issues with temperament, commitment to darts and his personal life away from the oche, many feel that he has never quite lived up to his true potential.
From 2017 onward, he only made a handful of semi-final and quarter-finals appearances so his earnings really have been the result of a brief period of dominance.
He is also one of just two players on this list no longer active and adding to their total earned.
With Rob Cross not even £100k behind, it’s likely Lewis will drop to 10th this year, however, Jackpot has hinted at a return to darts in the near future 👀
See more – Adrian Lewis reveals ‘only way’ he’ll return to darts
8) Raymond van Barneveld – £3,650,340
Barney has had one of the most influential impacts on darts of any player.
His 2007 World Championship win over Phil Taylor after moving to the PDC from the BDO basically ignited darts in the Netherlands and he is largely responsible for darts growth in Europe.
Raymond van Barneveld is a 5 x world champion but four of those titles came in the BDO. From 1995-2006 he dominated the BDO unquestionably winning 14 titles from 17 major final appearances.
That doesn’t contribute to this list though…
In 2006 he moved over to the PDC. Here, he wasn’t as dominant but still made it to 15 major finals and won 6 titles.
His millions have come from a tremendous number of deep tournament runs where he was frequently in the last four or last eight players but as his prime was the late 2000’s, he didn’t benefit from the huge prize money that was to come.
Becoming a multi-millionaire through darts prize money was the result of longevity and consistent performances from Barney.
7) Michael Smith – £4,239,800
Michael Smith was almost considered a ‘nearly man’ in darts.
From 2018-2022 he went to eight major finals without winning one.
The 2022 Grand Slam was where he finally broke the curse and this win was the catalyst for him to then go on and win the 2023 World Championship in an all-time great match against Michael van Gerwen.
Smith is the best example of players benefiting from the money in modern era darts.
He has the fewest major titles of anyone on this list and less than some who missed out, but due to the higher prize money and a world championship win he has amassed a good fortune in prize money.
Unfortunately, it might be hard for him to build on this.
Poor form as the reigning world champion in 2023 carried into the 2024 season.
Smith fell from second in the rankings to outside the top 16 and performances in 2025 are not showing signs that he can get back to his best any time soon.
Read more – Michael Smith stat shows ‘worrying form’ as he continues to fall down the rankings
6) Gerwyn Price – £4,672,750
Gerwyn Price is easily considered to be darts’ biggest pantomime villain.
His ‘antics’ are often making headlines but there’s no denying that when Iceman is on form he is simply blockbuster to watch!
A former professional in rugby, Price has transitioned to a sport that has been far more financially lucrative for the Welshman.
Joining the PDC a decade ago in 2014, Price has been to 15 major finals and won 7.
That puts him amongst the elite and similar to Smith, his success has come in the late 2010’s and mostly the 2020’s so he has benefitted from more prize money to go with his achievements.
The 2021 world champion had an off year in 2024 by his standards but has returned to form in 2025 with several titles on the tour so far this year. Won’t be surprised to see him reach the £5m mark some time soon…
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5) James Wade – £4,969,039
James Wade has won the third most PDC titles in history, trailing only Phil Taylor and MVG.
A PDC professional player since 2004, Wade is now a stalwart of darts but still aged just 42, a long way from seniors!
During a solid career, Wade has been to 27 major finals and won 11 major titles during this time.
When you look at his career, he has played the majority of major tournaments and with his consistency, longevity and deep runs, he has managed to rack up a very healthy earning total.
The main reason that Wade doesn’t rank higher though is that he has finished runner-up on sixteen occasions and the big one is that he has never won a world championship title.
Related – Best players to never win a World Championship [ranked]
Spoiler alert but Wade is the only player on this list without a championship title. It is a major asterisk over his career and means he is often left out of the debate when discussing the best players of all time.
It does, however, show how impressive it is for him to have earned so much without one.
Many players on this list have had a healthy £500,000 or more added to their prize money totals just from lifting that trophy alone.
Wade has never even been to a final of that tournament so to make it to 5th place on this list is very quite an achievement…
2025 update – Wade has made it to the final in the UK Open and World Matchplay and is now up to 4th in the PDC Order of Merit.
4) Gary Anderson – £5,450,725
With 8 major titles from 21 finals appearances, Gary Anderson is one of darts most successful players and an all-time great.
The two-time world champion not only held his own playing in the eras of both Phil Taylor and Michael van Gerwen, he was INCREDIBLY successful despite this.
From 2015-2018, the Flying Scotsman was in the last four of a tournament more often than not but it’s not just the majors where Anderson would be impressive.
He loves playing darts and especially playing on the ProTour. Where he is away from the big stage he plays some of his best darts that show unbelievable numbers.
In 2024 he put up some numbers on the Players Championship that were simply ridiculous and this combination of consistency across the board is what has seen Anderson as one of the very few players to cross £5m earned in prize money through darts.
A quarter-final at the recent 2025 World Grand Prix means that Ando is still adding to his tally with some healthy chunks throughout the year!
3) Peter Wright – £6,124,875
Peter Wright ranks incredibly high on this list as a result of a long career combined with major trophy wins coming in more recent years with more prize money available.
Snakebite has been in the PDC for over two decades (whilst also playing BDO for a decade earlier) and is the best ‘late bloomer’ story in darts.
From 2014-2020, Peter Wright went to thirteen major finals but only won the UK Open in 2017 during that entire run.
He was racking up great prize money for these deep runs and titles on the tour (5 Euro Tour titles in 2017) but he would have been contentending closer to the 8th-10th positions on this list
That all changed in 2020…
In a complete reversal of results, Wright went to eight major finals between 2020-2023 and won seven of them. Two of which included World Championship titles.
This run saw him become just the third player at the time to reach £1m on the PDC Order of Merit rankings and at 49 years of age the oldest first-time winner of the world championship.
One of darts greatest personalities, his success in the 2020’s shows how much the current prize money in darts is impacting a list such as this.
2) Phil Taylor – £7,511,475
The most successful and greatest darts player of all time is the opposite to Peter Wright’s scenario.
Phil Taylor dominated the sport like no other, however, he did so when darts was NOT at the height of popularity.
Phil Taylor can take a large amount of credit for the growth of darts throughout the 1990’s-2000’s where his domination of major tournaments made its way into mainstream media.
To earn his millions though, Taylor relied on winning basically everything to make up for the much smaller prize money amounts.
‘The Power’ went to 92 PDC major finals during his career and won 79 of them. That’s a win rate of 85%.
The staggering win total combined with dozens of professional titles on the tour puts his trophy count well into the hundreds and this was necessary for Taylor to rank so highly on this list.
His first world championship earned him £12,000 in prize money, a decade later when winning his tenth it was £60,000, and his last championship title in 2013 earned him £200,000 (the prize money for the 2025 runner-up).
When you look at the prize money he was winning during his most dominant periods, it’s surprising that he was still able to make so much more than every other darts player in history, except for one person…
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1) Michael van Gerwen – £11,857,300
Michael van Gerwen seems to have found close to the perfect balance of dominating darts for an era whilst also benefiting from increased prize money.
MVG took the baton from Phil Taylor in the 2010’s in becoming the dominant force in darts.
64 major finals, 47 major titles and an over total count in the 100s, he is the only player who has come even remotely close to the kind of numbers Phil Taylor put up.
As he did it in the 2010’s though, MVG was able to become the first and only player to reach eight figures in prize money earned as he closes in on the £12m mark.
He hasn’t won a major ranking title since 2022 but is still third in the PDC Order of Merit because of how consistent he is when it comes to deep tournament runs.
It will sound strange to say but for all his dominance and earnings, MVG has maybe underperformed and could be on much more…
He’s a three-time world champion but there are multiple champions that are two-time winners on this list and he is miles away from Taylor’s 14 PDC world championships.
MVG is maybe unlucky that he’s had to compete with other greats like Lewis and Anderson, so while he’s without a doubt been dominant in darts, he was unable to have a chokehold on the game like Taylor did.
Still, when you win over £11m playing darts, it’s hard to look at many downsides!
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