Premier League Darts Host Cities: Where Do Favourites Win Most?

The Premier League is a travelling show. The same small group of players plays a different arena every Thursday, so the venue is close to the only thing that changes from week to week. I wanted to know whether the host city shifts how often the rating favourite wins, because that feeds straight into handicaps and match prices.

The headline answer is mostly no, with two loud exceptions. Across 789 decided matches from 2016-2025 the favourite won 62.7% against 64.4% expected, a small shortfall. Scotland ran well above the rating at 74.7%, and the closed-door nights ran well below it at 52.4%. The night-by-night angles live on my darts betting tips page. This piece is about the room itself.

Ground 1Favourites hold their rating almost everywhere except two places

Each row sets the rating's expected favourite win rate against what actually happened. Northern England is close to a perfect match: 64.8% of 219 matches against 64.6% expected. Dublin, Belfast and Cardiff sit nearby at 63.8% of 138. For most of the circuit, the venue is not telling you anything the ratings don't already know.

The outliers are at either end. In Glasgow and Aberdeen favourites won 74.7% of 87 matches, and behind closed doors in Milton Keynes they won only 52.4% of 82, against 61.5% expected.

I find that second figure the easiest to believe. Without a crowd, the big names lost the atmosphere that seems to suit them, and the gap between the top seeds and the rest narrowed.

Ground 2Scotland sits clear of the rating, the empty arenas well below

This is the same data reduced to a single gap: actual minus expected, in points. Scotland is at +10.1, the closed-door nights at −9.1. Rotterdam and Berlin come in at −5.1 and the Midlands and southern England at −4.9, so both show a mild lean towards upsets.

The Scottish edge has a 95% range of ±9.1, so it only just clears zero. Across the regions those ranges run from ±6.3 to ±10.8 points, and most of the gaps fall inside them.

That is the main caveat, and I'll state it once. These are samples of 80-220 decided matches per region, featuring the same eight to ten players every week, so one player's hot run in one city can tilt a whole row. I read these as leans, not laws.

Ground 3Draw rates and upsets varied sharply between host regions

Before 2022, league matches could end level over 12 legs, so this chart puts the draws back in. Behind closed doors 18.0% of 100 matches were drawn, the highest share anywhere. Rotterdam and Berlin had the lowest at 5.7% of 87. Northern England sits in between at 7.6% of 237, with the underdog winning 32.5%.

Scotland is where underdogs struggled most. They won only 22.7% of 97 matches there, draws included.

For anyone who backed the draw or the handicap in the old format, the empty-arena nights were the ones where matches stayed level. That fits the picture of a flatter field with no crowd behind the favourites.

Ground 4The knockout-night era softened the strongest regional edges

The format changed in 2022, and the edges moved with it. Scottish-night favourites won 84.8% across 33 matches in 2016-21 but 68.5% across 54 in 2022-25. Northern England fell from 71.6% of 81 to 60.9% of 138. The Midlands and southern England went the other way, rising to 61.9%.

The final column turns each region's actual upset rate into fair underdog odds with no margin. They range from 3.95 in Scotland to 2.10 for the closed-door nights, with Northern England at 2.84.

My takeaway is that Scotland still leans towards the favourite in the newer format, just less than the early numbers suggested. Those fair prices describe the past and are not a fixed target to bet against.

Written byMaddie Croft

I'm Maddie Croft, based in Auckland, and I write the beginner-friendly darts tips at horse-racing.tips — reading averages, doubles and momentum rather than the seedings.

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