The night began with four quarter-final matchups: Luke Littler vs Stephen Bunting, Gerwyn Price vs Rob Cross, Chris Dobey vs Luke Humphries, and Nathan Aspinall vs Michael van Gerwen.
Littler breezed past Bunting in the opening match of the night, a 6-0 victory for the teenage world champion. Cross saw off Price with relative ease, a 6-2 victory after missing four darts in the fourth leg to go 5-0 up. Wayne Mardle labelled the match as “the most important game of the tournament”, with both players fighting for a play-off spot being fourth and fifth in the table. Luke Humphries beat hometown hero Chris Dobey 6-3. A tifo was held high by fans supporting the Geordie player, cheers also went round the arena when Carabao Cup winners Dan Burn, Kieran Trippier, and Harvey Barnes were picked up by the cameras. The closest quarter-final match came last with Aspinall beating van Gerwen 6-5. This saw both players fail to capitalise on the other’s mistakes until Aspinall hit a 130-checkout to go 5-4 up.
The semi-finals followed: Rob Cross vs Luke Littler and Nathan Aspinall vs Luke Humphries.
Littler comfortably eliminated Rob Cross 6-3, his 3-0 lead meant that he picked up his first nine legs of the night unchallenged. This saw the third semi-final defeat in a row for Cross. Aspinall vs Humphries provided the matchup of the night. Aspinall hit another impressive 142-checkout to make it 2-2 and then followed it up with an 11-dart leg to go 3-2 ahead. Humphries missed double-16 to make it 3-3 to which Aspinall capitalised to go 4-2 ahead. Humphries bounced back from this, however, winning three legs on the bounce to go 5-4 head - Humphries went on to win the match 6-5.
This set up a Luke Littler vs Luke Humphries final, two names that have dominated the darts world in the past two years.
This time, Littler made light work of Humphries. Littler won the first four legs unanswered by Humphries and converted this to a 6-1 win to take victory in Newcastle.
This dominant display leaves Littler eight points clear at the top of the table just over halfway through the Premier League campaign.
The Courier was granted access to Luke Littler’s post-match press conference where he stated:
“I have got to stay hungry, [...] stay at the top spot, and try not to drop off”. Confident in his world-class ability, he added, “It is all about trying to make more history for myself”.