2024/25 World Darts Championship Preview, Tips and Odds | James Hubbard

Wessel Nijman is a player I certainly expect to have a strong World Championship campaign and his draw looks very enticing. Although not a name many would back to go far, he's had a fantastic debut season on the PDC pro tour. He won his first senior PDC title in October, winning a Players Championship event and also finished top of the Development Tour rankings after winning 7 titles this season.

He qualified for the Grand Slam this year, losing all 3 of his group games, but had a running average of 107.70, including losing to Gian van Veen with a 111.1 average. Still only 24, he has risen to 58 in the World Rankings and has the 16th best running average over the past 12 months at 95.44, a very solid first year from the young Dutchman. 

Nijman has been drawn in the third quarter, and I personally think he has a great chance of getting through it. If he wins his first-round match, his second-round seed is Joe Cullen, a game that's very winnable. Cullen is probably one of the seeds players who wanted to play early, as his form has been pretty poor for a while now, although he does always seem to play well at Ally Pally.

Gerwyn Price, Michael Smith, Chris Dobey, and Jonny Clayton are the other notable seeds in this quarter, but apart from Dobey, they’ve all had under-par seasons, which makes Chris Dobey the danger man in this quarter.

This isn't Nijman’s debut in this event. He lost to Steve Beaton last year in the first round, which I think will do him good. He now knows the stage and has had a taste of the unique Alexandra Palace crowd. This time around, it's a different Wesell Nijman coming into this World Championship, and I really expect him to be dangerous.

Ross Smith has notoriously underperformed at the PDC World Championship, never progressing past the third round. However, I think he's coming into this campaign looking very sharp after a great run to the semi-finals of the most recent major tournament, the Players Championship finals, where he narrowly lost out to Luke Littler.

‘Smudger’ has had another very solid season on the Pro Tour, winning a tournament at Players Championship 13 and finishing 12th in the seasonal Players Championship rankings. He's also ranked 13th in the averages over the past 12 months 95.77.

Smith will no doubt be going to Ally Pally this year, hoping to erase the memories of past disappointment, and I fully expect him to do so.

He has a tough quarter with a potential third-round match against Gary Anderson and a potential fourth-round tie against Michael Van Gerwen, but if he plays well and power scores with 180s like he does so often, then I think he has a great chance.

He's no stranger to winning big games on TV and is a previous major winner at the European Championships in 2022. I think he's very hard to ignore, especially betting wise, with Michael Van Gerwen and Gary Anderson so strong in the market.

As I said previously, Luke Humphries comes into this tournament as the defending champion. He has the chance to write himself into the history books and become the fourth player to defend a PDC World Championship.

He is currently the World Number 1 after accumulating a staggering £1,804,250 in prize money over the last 2 years, almost £1 million more than World Number 2, Michael Smith.

This incredible run of form has seen Humphries dominate the world of darts, winning a mind-blowing 8 TV events in the last two years. Still, at just 29 years of age, he has a lot of years ahead of him to win even more.

Luke Humphries has had another stunning season in major tournaments, winning the World Cup of Darts, World Matchplay, and Players Championship Finals. He also lost in the final of the UK Open and the Premier League. This season, he has won 2 European Tour events and 1 Players Championship floor event and has a yearly average of 98.54.

Luke has been drawn into a pretty tough quarter with a potential third-round encounter with five-time World Champion Raymond van Barneveld.

Other notable seeds in his quarter of the draw are James Wade, Peter Wright, Stephen Bunting, and Damon Heta. Although this is probably the toughest Quarter of the tournament, I think Humphries will navigate his way through to a mouth-watering potential Semi-Final clash against Luke Littler. 

Of course, playing Luke Littler in the Semi-Final isn't ideal. I think he’d prefer to play him in the final, but Humphries seems to be the only player in World Darts at the moment who can deal with Littler on TV.

He seems to get the better of him more often than not. Luke Littler will certainly be the main rival for Humphries’s bid to become a back-to-back World Champion, as will a few others, Gary Anderson in particular, but I just can't see past ‘Cool Hand Luke’ and I think he has too much quality, especially with his record at Ally Pally. For me, he goes on to create history once again.