THE best Tour in sports is back today with the Belgian Darts Open as the European Tour kicks off 14 darting events across Europe as a prelude to the European Championships in late October.
2025 means a new seeding format being brought to stages across Europe and from a first glance it will not look like too much of a shake up, but there are ramifications that affect some of the Euro Tour’s best.
The number of places in the tournament remain the same, 48, and the qualification rules for entry to the competition remains the same.
The Top 16 in the Overall Order of Merit (two year rolling system from all PDC ranking events) gain entry first, with a further 16 being topped up from the Pro Tour Order of Merit (1 year rolling system from just the Players Championships and European Tour i.e. excluding major events).
The remaining Tour card holders will fight for 10 places in a qualifying event, four players from the Host Nation Qualifier tournament and then two winners from the Nordic & Baltic Qualifier and the East Europe Qualifier respectively.
The change comes in which 16 players automatically qualify for the second round and negate the first round.
Under previous tournaments, the Pro Tour Order of Merit ranking was used, whereas now the Main Order of Merit is used, seemingly a subtle change, but there are losers to this system.
This new system, in including major tournament victories, means that your performances in the Tour events have less of a bearing in your likelihood of being automatically progressed into R2.
For this weekend’s Belgian Darts Open, there are six players who are in the Touring Top 16 will are placed in Round one, with this change. Josh Rock, Martin Schindler, Ross Smith, Ryan Searle, Daryl Gurney and Gian van Veen are those affected. Those had ten event finals between them last year.
The winners in this new system are Top 16 main OOM, are players who can have the occasional deep TV run and good performance in major events but who seem to fail on the tour. Peter Wright, James Wade, Gary Anderson and Gerwyn Price all get put through to R2 despite shortcomings on the tour.
The benefits to being put right through to R2 seem obvious put there is also a finical inequality, with those ‘winners’ seeing £3,000 directly added to their rankings and bank accounts without having to win a match.
Luke Littler won the Belgian Darts Open last year, defeating Rob Cross and hitting a nine darter in the final. Littler will play the winner of Ryan Searle vs Danny Pilgrim.
