Beat Luke Littler Misses Bullseye as Netflix Tries to Compete With Celebrity Traitors Final

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SPOILERS FOR BOTH CELEBRITY TRAITORS AND BEAT LUKE LITTLER. STOP NOW IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED.

What on Earth was Netflix doing putting its Beat Luke Littler live event in a direct battle for eyeballs with the Celebrity Traitors final? There could only be one winner. It was never going to be the darts world champion. In the end, he didn’t even win his own show, with Fallon Sherrock claiming £501,000 after taking a leg against him.

(Incidentally, seeing the Queen of the Palace during her history-making run in 2019 remains up there on my list of the best sporting moments that I’ve seen live. Ally Pally was shaking!)

Traitors, celebrity and civilian, is a unique phenomenon. It’s basically the only show that can compete with live sport for ratings. Friday’s final had an average overnight audience of 11.23 million viewers and a peak of 11.6 million. Per Jake Kantar at Deadline, the audience was bigger than last year’s final. Bonkers numbers in 2026, especially as they come despite this series being widely regarded as somewhat flat.

Celebrity Traitors Was Always Going to Beat Luke Littler

Maybe they hoped starting Beat Luke Littler an hour ahead of The Celebrity Traitors would undo the damage. No chance; there was still a direct clash. In the end, the live show reportedly only drew in around 230k viewers.

The idea of amateurs competing against a world champion for life-changing money is a fun one. Who amongst us hasn’t sat in a pub and declared, “I bet if I really tried I could be a darts champion”? One week later, and Netflix might have been able to make a fuss about it.

However, for the streamer to think that a format based around a still niche sport, which relied on people watching it live, could compete in any way with the biggest show on British TV was crazy. Worse than that, there are surely plenty of people like me who might have watched Luke Littler, Fallon Sherrock and co. but were locked in to watching The Traitors instead. An international audience was never going to boost the numbers enough.

Beat Luke Littler might also have been a success if it were a multi-part series that did not need to be watched live. But everyone who cares about darts and was interested in the show knows what happened now. There is little point in checking it out.

Ultimately, the streamer trying the most to build its credibility in live and sports-adjacent events decided to compete with the UK’s most popular show. It’s genuinely inexplicable.