How Luke Littler can avoid making the same mistakes as Emma Raducanu ...Middle East

For better or worse Luke Littler and Emma Raducanu are forever linked, two of the great British sporting prodigies cast into legend less than three years apart.

Now 22, Raducanu’s life after winning the US Open has been one of huge commercial success but relative regression on the court; injuries, upsets and six new coaches.

Yet Littler’s success is only broadening – from a world championship final at 16 to the trophy at 17, nearing £2m in prize money ahead of his 18th birthday on Friday, which he will spend at the Bahrain Darts Masters. Raducanu said recently she would like to speak to Littler – as she would most elite sportspeople – to ask how he holds it together under pressure and constantly appears to improve when she is not seeing the same results.

Luke Littler can make darts the UK’s second sport – but only if he wants to

There is an obvious if slightly tongue-in-cheek answer here – Littler is better at darts than Raducanu is at tennis. Yet while that is true, there is far more to it, based in the work Littler’s team had done preparing him for a superstardom not even they saw coming. There is equally a huge amount he can learn from the mistakes Raducanu has made.

This starts, as great stories so often do, with a 28-year-old bald electrician from Kent. In January 2018, when Littler was nearly 12 and Raducanu recently 15, Rob Cross won the World Darts Championship on his debut attempt, beating a waning Phil Taylor in the final. This was a seminal achievement for many reasons, but one is the realisation it triggered at darts manufacturer and supplier Target.

“We went, how can this happen?” Target managing director James Tattersall tells The i Paper. “In a sport like darts, these players should be discovered when they’re youngsters. So we set up the Elite 1 Academy.

“And as part of that, we sponsored a ton of academies up and down the country, and one of them was St Helens, where a 12-year-old Luke Littler attended. We didn’t set up Elite 1 to sponsor players as young as 12, we thought 15 is probably as young as we’d go.

“But Luke’s dad approached our chairman and said, ‘Hey, will you sponsor my boy?’. He was just a phenomenal, phenomenal talent, so we signed him pretty much straight away.”

That deal was potentially the most important Littler will ever sign. Raducanu has spoken about not having “strong foundations”, and Target provided him with an established base which has allowed him already to not fall into some of the same traps.

Even before taking to the Alexandra Palace stage for the first time in 2023, when Littler’s name was only known by the darterati, Target was preparing him for fame.

“We treat our young players exactly the same as we treat a current pro,” Tattersall explains. “That meant that before Luke got to the stage, the dart he used was in the market.

“We launched it with personalised packaging, with a logo and branding and font sizes and all of those things that that you that people just see and take for granted, but don’t recognise the work that’s got into them. It was pulling together the brand.

“We talk to our players and go: ‘how do you want to be presented? What’s your nickname? What colours do you like? What’s important to you? What football teams do you like?’ We want to understand the players and make sure that they’re comfortable with what that what that image will be.”

There is a lot here that Raducanu could still learn from, about the value controlling your own narrative and branding, how to create a more secure identity and image. Yet Littler – who said last year he had never heard of Raducanu and had to be told “she is tennis’ equivalent of you” – should also be watching her travails closely.

Part of this stems from their age. 18 appears to be the accepted age for trial by media to begin, and Littler has been a teenager up to this point. Raducanu has been widely criticised for her perceived underperformance, injury record and commercial dealings. While Littler felt some of this attention around his relationship with Eloise Milburn, which ended in July, he has largely been spared.

“I don’t think the game has got anything left to throw at Luke,” Tattersall says.

“It’s just a question of whether he’s treated more harshly by the media, whether they’re perhaps more inquisitive. Once he turns 18, the gloves come off perhaps, which I hope they don’t, because he’s just a remarkable talent, and a really nice guy.”

'I hope he doesn't hate me': Raducanu's apology to Murray over Wimbledon snub

As both a supposed adult and world champion, more criticism and focus is going to come his way. Learning to block this out as Raducanu has often failed to, whether that’s through retreating from social media or keeping his circle tight, is key.

And then there are the sponsorships. While Littler has been in high demand over the past year, he has only signed a handful of deals – with KP Nuts, Boohoo Man, National Rail and Xbox. These have largely extended to iron-on logos on his shirt and the odd advert. It hasn’t exactly been strenuous.

The same could not be said for Raducanu. She said recently “I’ve learnt to put myself first a little bit more”, but initially drowned in sponsored engagements and magazine shoots. She signed deals with Vodafone, Dior, Tiffany & Co, British Airways, Nike, Wilson, Porsche, HSBC and Evian. In 2023 her limited company made £10m from prize money of around £200,000.

“Emma was a parallel we drew a year ago,” Tattersall says. “What was really important for us with Luke was we wanted to keep everything the same, and there’s a really, really strong management team around Luke as a sponsor and a brand.

“That’s been the key – there hasn’t been any deal-chasing or money-chasing. There’s just been knuckling down and focusing on what Luke wants to do, which is win a world championship and to throw nine darters and to really enjoy it. That’s what he’s been able to do.”

As Littler gets older, the temptation to expose him to more and more of this, to take more commercial opportunities and expect he can bear the weight, will be obvious. The boy saying all he wants is a nice car and some Fifa points is about to be exposed to a world he doesn’t realise exists, the world of a young multi-millionaire.

The lesson to take from Raducanu is that constantly chasing money and bigger names is not the path to glory and salvation most believe it is. He will earn enough from prize money to secure his future if he continues at his current level. And this is not to say avoid commercialisation altogether – just resist its rampant advances where possible.

As it stands, Littler has a grounded team around him with his best interests at heart. Continuing to trust in them, to listen to advice he does not want to hear, is going to be crucial. The base he has around him is a privilege Raducanu was not afforded. Without it his career trajectory could begin to mirror hers.

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