2025-05-12

Darts Betting Guide

What is darts betting?

Darts is a popular option amongst bettors. It’s a relatively simple sport but competition is fierce, leading to nail-biting tournaments. Darts betting markets are diverse, giving you plenty of different options to choose from when making your picks.

In addition to the vast number of competitions you can wager on, including the BetMGM Premier League Darts and the PDC World Championship, there’s a long list of bet types you can make. This includes picking a winner of a single match or the outright victor in a tournament, you can also make predictions about who will achieve the most 180s and which player will achieve the highest checkout.

In this darts betting guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about how to bet on darts, the different types of wagers you can make, and how to understand the different odds that you’re likely to see.

Darts Betting markets

With action taking place almost every day, there are fresh odds being published all the time.

Many of the biggest darts tournaments take place here in the UK, with a few others in Ireland and other parts of Europe. The ones you’re most likely to come across are:

BetMGM Premier League Darts - One of the biggest, with 17 nights of action to bet on, all sponsored by BetMGM.
PDC World Championship - The largest darts competition on the planet, held in the UK. It takes place each December and January.
World Matchplay - Another huge event on the darts calendar attracting players from around the world to Blackpool’s Winter Gardens.
World Grand Prix - A challenging tournament that requires players to start and finish each leg on a double that favours some players over others.
European Championship - This German tournament features 32 of Europe’s best darts players.
Grand Slam of Darts - Another major British darts tournament that grabs headlines in November.
UK Open - A massive darts tournament featuring 160 players that uses an unseeded open draw after each round to mix things up.
The Masters – A non-ranking PDC event featuring 24 top darts players that’s been played in the UK since 2013.
Lakeside World Championship – An event that’s been taking place since 1978 in Surrey that’s now sanctioned by the WDF.
MODUS Super Series – Launched in 2022, this is a weekly event that’s hosted in Portsmouth.

International Darts Tournaments

In addition to these major competitions, you’ll find betting markets open for other big international darts tournaments like:

World Series of Darts – The World Series of Darts is an international tournament that’s hosted in a different country each year with a programme of qualifier events leading up to the finals.
International Darts Open – A major event on the annual PDC European Tour programme that takes place in Germany.
Dutch Darts Masters - A fairly new event on the global darts calendar, having started in 2022, it forms part of the World Series of Darts.
Belgian Darts Open – The biggest darts tournament in Belgium with players from across the world flocking to compete.
World Cup of Darts – A team darts event that was first launched in 2010, hosted in Germany each year. It pits pairs of players against each other.

Types of darts bets that can be placed

Within all of the darts betting markets, there are several different bet types that you can place. As is common in almost every sport, the most popular bet type is the match winner, but there are also several darts-specific wagers that you can make on most matches.

Here is a breakdown of the different ways you can bet on darts.

Match Winner - A wager on which player you think will win the match.
Outright Winner - A futures bet on the winner of the entire tournament or league.
180s - Your prediction of which player will achieve the most 180s in a match.
Highest Checkout - A bet on which player will have the best checkout during the match.
Leg Betting - Leg bets are a prediction of how many legs will be played during a match.

In addition to these single bet types, you may also find options for combinations. These are similar to accumulator bets but they’re premade and work by combining two or more of the above wagers into a single bet and are usually presented with two options - yes or no.

Another term you may come across is a “match treble”. In darts betting, this means a combination wager that includes winning the match, scoring the most 180s, and hitting the highest checkout. All three elements need to win for the bet wager to payout, so a player winning the match but tying or losing on one or both of the other elements would see the best also lose.

Understanding Darts Betting Odds

When betting on darts, you may see the odds displayed in a few different formats. It’s important to remember that the underlying odds and, therefore, the returns you’d receive from a winning bet do not change across formats. They are simply different ways to display them.

Here in the UK, the most common odds format for darts betting is fractional, where you may see figures like 6/1, 7/9, and 100/1. The number to the left of the slash denotes how much you would receive for every bet multiple of the number to the right that you wager.

For example, odds of 6/1 on a winning darts bet would pay out £6 for every £1 you wagered, plus the original stake back.

While fractional odds are the default option for you, you’re free to swap to decimal or moneyline (American) odds if you prefer them.

Those same 6/1 odds would be displayed at 7 using the decimal format. This format works by showing how your stake should be multiplied to calculate the return, including your stake. Therefore, odds of 7 mean you simply multiply a £1 bet by 7 to get a return of £7.

In the moneyline format, odds are denoted as a three or four-digit number with a plus or minus symbol at the beginning. The smaller the number, the shorter the odds, and the smaller the return.

For moneyline odds with a +, the number denotes how much you’d receive (plus your stake) for every £100 bet. So, the 6/1 odds, which are displayed as +600 in this format, would return a £600 payout for each £100 you staked.

For short moneyline odds with a - symbol, the calculation is flipped. -600 would require you to wager £600 to win £100.

As you can see, it’s easy to calculate your potential profits from each wager just by looking at the odds but our betslip makes it even simpler by doing all the number crunching for you.

BetMGM Premier League Darts

BetMGM Premier League Darts is one of the biggest competitions in darts, forming one-third of the PDC Triple Crown. Across 17 nights between February and May, eight of the best darts players in the world compete for a share of a £1 million prize purse.

Each night is hosted in a different location, with events in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, the Netherlands, and Germany. The vast majority, however, will take place in England with locations spanning the entire country from Newcastle to Exeter.

The final fixture in the BetMGM Premier League Darts will be at London’s legendary O2 arena, usually at the end of May.

There are around 100 different betting markets for each match, including match winners, 180s, highest checkouts, and some other specials, creating plenty of wagering options for you to choose from at BetMGM. It’s showtime!