The 17-year-old darts champion leads the new class of athletes, gamers and entrepreneurs who are right on target.
By Matt Craig and Alex York, Forbes Staff
Luke Littler is the first to admit that darts isn’t a sport most people talk about. “It’s one of them weird sports that’s not that popular,” says the 17-year-old darts phenom from Warrington, United Kingdom, whose improbable run to the finals of the Professional Darts Corporation World Championships in January made him a sensation across Europe. “But,” he adds, “I’m glad to say that I’ve made it a bit more popular.”
That’s an understatement. Littler’s championship match, which he lost to fellow Brit Luke Humphries, drew the highest peak viewership (3.7 million) of any non-soccer broadcast in Sky Sports history. Barry Hearn, president of Matchroom Sport, which owns the PDC, called it “a Tiger Woods moment” for the sport. Practically overnight, “Luke the Nuke” saw his Instagram following grow from 4,000 to 1.2 million. He appeared on a TV talk show throwing darts with Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown and signed up new sponsors like the clothing brand boohooMAN. Plus, he cashed a £200,000 prize money check.
“The world’s gone mad,” Littler says. “You’re standing there throwing some tungsten into a board and then you’re winning yourself some money and you’re creating yourself some legacy.”
Littler is among the Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe Sports & Games class of 2024, a group of young athletes, game developers and entrepreneurs in the worlds of sports and gaming who are already making their presence known on the world stage.
The class of 2024 features 11 athletes, nine sets of entrepreneurs (cofounders are included together in the same entry), five game developers, four sports business professionals and one esports athletes, which showcase the diversity of the industries. Of this year’s 30 listers, 11 are women and 12 identify as persons of color.
This year’s class was selected from hundreds of nominations, submitted through a public online nomination form and generated from research and conversations with industry sources. Candidates must be 29 or younger as of April 9, 2024; they also could not have been previously named to a Forbes 30 Under 30 list. They were evaluated by a panel of judges including Mo Farah, the legendary British distance runner and four-time Olympic gold medalist; Sarai Bareman, FIFA’s Chief of Women’s Football; Rina Onur Şirinoğlu, a cofounder of Spyke Games; and Pontus Eskilsson, vice president of global partnerships at Twitch.
The list features honorees like Aitana Bonmatí, 26, who just put together arguably the most accomplished year of any soccer player ever, male or female, winning a World Cup for Spain and a Champions League title for FC Barcelona Femení while winning the Golden Boot, Ballon dÓr Féminin and every MVP award available. In 2023, 20-year-old Jude Bellingham transferred from Borussia Dortmund to Real Madrid for a $111 million fee and finished the year by winning the award for best player under 21 in the world. His teammate, Vinicius Junior, 23, has shined both on the field and as the face of the sport’s anti-racism efforts. Meanwhile, 22-year-old Jannik Sinner and 25-year-old Aryna Sabalenka both triumphed at tennis’s first Grand Slam of the year, the Australian Open, with the former becoming the first Italian to win a Slam in 48 years.
Former athletes, such as British and Jamaican Olympian Michael Gunning, 27, and Rwandan-Belgian racing driver Naomi Schiff, 28, have found successful second careers in broadcast media. Others, like 28-year-old cycling YouTuber Fabio Wibmer and 28-year-old gaming YouTuber Lucas Hauchard, have charted their course in the digital media space. Dana Sydorenko, 27, designed an app for finding new gamer friends, especially targeted to women and LGBTQ+ gamers. Now his company, Game Tree, has more than 700,000 users and recently completed a fundraising round at a $19 million valuation. And Takumi Jeannin, 28, who co-owns A&V Sports Group, represents some of the best women’s soccer players in the world on the management side.
This year’s list was edited by Matt Craig and Alex York. For a link to our complete 2024 Under 30 Europe Sports & Games list, click here, and for full 2024 30 Under 30 Europe coverage, click here.
