Fallon Sherrock Wins Netflix Darts Challenge — But Was It Really Fair?

Fallon Sherrock won £501,000 on a Netflix special called "Beat Luke Littler" on Friday night. The show invited members of the public to play one-on-one darts against Littler, the current world champion. Sherrock landed a double-top shot to knock Littler out and claim the prize. But almost instantly, people began asking whether the competition was truly fair — because Sherrock is far from an ordinary member of the public.

Sherrock has spent most of the last ten years playing, practising, and promoting darts professionally. She became famous in late 2019 when she reached the third round of the World Darts Championship at Alexandra Palace — a historic achievement. Even though she has never held a full Professional Darts Corporation tour card, most people in the sport consider her a professional player. After Littler himself, she may be the most well-known darts player in the entire country.

The show was advertised as a competition for 20 "amateur" players trying to beat the world champion in a single leg of darts. Members of the public were invited to apply, queue up, and audition for a spot. But one of the other contestants was Mitchell Lawrie, a 15-year-old who is widely considered the best junior darts player in the world. Both Sherrock and Lawrie filled out the forms and followed the rules — but many people felt they were not really the "ordinary" players the show had promised.

Former world champion Mark Webster said he did not think Sherrock should have been chosen to compete. He was careful to say that Sherrock herself had done nothing wrong by taking part. Much of the anger was directed at Netflix for the way it advertised the event. The streaming service filmed its trailers in a working men's club to give the feeling that any regular person off the street might beat Littler — but that was not really what happened.

The debate goes beyond just this one TV show. Across many sports today, the line between amateur and professional has become blurry. Events like influencer boxing matches and special league competitions have mixed professional athletes with non-professionals in ways that make it hard to tell them apart. Prize money is even taxed differently depending on whether something is classed as a sport or a game show, which makes the labels matter quite a lot.

Darts is one of the few sports where people still dream that an ordinary person could walk up and beat a world champion. That idea works because darts looks simple — anyone can throw a dart. But the reality is very different. Years of intense training, coaching, and practice have created a huge gap between elite players and true beginners. Barry Hearn, the president of the Professional Darts Corporation, summed it up after the show: "Do you want just a series of 20 matches where someone can't even throw a dart? No, we want excellence competing against excellence."

The same gap exists in almost every sport today. A club tennis player is nowhere near the level of even the lowest-ranked professional. When Fleetwood Town beat Arsenal in a League Cup match recently, it felt like a giant upset — but Fleetwood's players were still paid professionals who had trained at top clubs. The gap between professionals and true amateurs is now so wide that moments of real upset are almost impossible. The Netflix show tried to pretend that gap did not exist, and that is why many viewers walked away feeling disappointed.

In the end, nobody is really the villain of this story. Sherrock was right to grab the opportunity. Littler was happy to take part. Netflix wanted to ride the wave of darts' growing popularity. But the show ended up being something in between — not quite a real sporting contest and not quite a true game show. It left many fans feeling like they had watched something that looked like sport but did not quite feel like it.