Michael van Gerwen once marveled at Dennis Bergkamp’s house as a tiler. Nowadays, the successful darts player and his family also live in a spacious house worth 1.2 million euros in Vlijmen. Tonight he will face ‘Bully Boy’ Michael Smith for his fourth world title. If he wins, he can credit 580,000 euros. For that amount he would have had to work as a tiler for almost fifteen years.
Darts player Mighty Mike is one guy in bonus. Since the start of his career, Van Gerwen has won more than eighty tournaments. He has already won the World Darts Championship three times (2014, 2017 and 2019). With that alone, the Vlijmenaar raked in almost two million in prize money.
The darts world is rich in many tournaments. At the PDC, the main tournaments are the World Darts Championship, World Matchplay Darts and the Premier League of Darts. Van Gerwen also collected the necessary prize money at those tournaments.
In 2018, the business magazine Quote calculated Van Gerwen’s assets at around seven million euros. At that time, the darts player was in the hundredth place on the list for wealthy juniors.
During the corona years, however, the top darts player ended up in a form crisis. He also had to deal with the necessary injuries. As a result, no major title, so less income you would say. Nothing is less true.
“A total of ten million euros in prize money.”
The Order of Merit of darts association PDC keeps track of the prize money over the past two years. The wrecking ball from Vlijmen is currently in third place on that list with more than a million euros. Van Gerwen has to tolerate Gerwin Price and Peter Wright.
But that will change after tonight, even if you lose. If Van Gerwen loses to ‘Bully Boy’ tonight, he can still collect about 225,000 euros, enough to pass the two big earners of the PDC.
According to Business Insider Netherlands, Van Gerwen has so far collected more than 8.6 million pounds in his career, which is about ten million euros in prize money. And on top of that comes the income from the sponsorship contract with Keuken Concurrent (runs until 2026) and the necessary lucrative demonstration competitions. Van Gerwen is therefore nice and warm financially.