Gian van Veen rose up the rankings with his run to the final of the World Championship with the Dutchman earning enough prize money to now sit 3rd in the world, and book a spot in the Premier League in the process. The ‘Giant’ hasn’t played too many World Series events before, but having shown bottle on some big stages last year - I don’t think this will affect him too much.

While van Veen did lose the final of the World Championship 7-1 to Littler, he’s set himself up to have a big year with other majors sure to be in his view. There is definitely an argument to say that he is currently the only player out of the rest of the field that can lay an appropriate challenge to the increasing dominance of the two Lukes, as van Veen showed in his dismissal of Luke Humphries in the quarter-finals of the World Championship.

Van Veen’s confidence to have that run to the final of the World Championship came from his triumph in the European Championship just a month prior - his first ever major success. That result appears to have taken away a lot of the nerves that van Veen used to show on stage, and I think this extra composure will serve him well to go deep in the first World Series event of the year.

I think Danny Noppert can count himself very unlucky not to be involved in the Premier League this year after a very solid campaign, in which he showed that he has progressed beyond being a standard mid 90s average player. He’s been invited to this World Series event despite not making the cut for the Premier League, showing just how good of a player he is.

Noppert enjoyed a solid World Championship campaign and was only knocked out by an inspired performance from one of the stories of the tournament in Justin Hood. Across Noppert’s last 10 matches across various competitions, he’s averaged over 100 in seven of them - suggesting that he is a much better player than even the version of Noppert that won the UK Open back in 2022, also showing that he can compete with the elite players in the sport for major titles.

Noppert has always been a solid player and I think he navigates the first few rounds with relative ease, I also think he’ll be motivated to show why he perhaps should have been included in the Premier League lineup with the form he showcased consistently throughout last year. 

Noppert reached the semi-finals of the Grand Slam and the European Championship towards the end of the last year, only to be knocked out by Luke Littler and Luke Humphries - though in a shorter format game, I give Noppert a chance at turning either of those two over, who he’ll have to beat at some point to win the Bahrain Darts Masters.

Nathan Aspinall is another player that can be a little disappointed at missing out on Premier League inclusion. The Asp always does well in the Premier League and is a crowd favourite - though he will still regularly get invited to World Series events due to the size of his darting profile. He’ll also be eager to get back in the Premier League, and look to start his year off positively here.

Nathan Aspinall won three European Tour events last year, which obviously aren’t as difficult to win as the major events, but show a consistency in his game that he can still regularly battle through to semi-finals and finals in events like this. Aspinall lost to Kevin Doets in the round of 16 at the World Championship, it was an average campaign from Aspinall and he was below par in that clash against Doets, but he can take confidence from his performance across the rest of the year.

I always like backing the Asp when he’s got a point to prove, he’s a real scrapper and always finds a way to stay in games, which makes him a really watchable player and a great option to back as an outright here at 16/1. Aspinall has won a World Series event before, with that triumph coming in the US Darts Masters back in 2019.