There's plenty of ranking money at stake at this year's Betfred World Matchplay, here official PDC stats analyst Christopher Kempf takes an in-depth look...
When Rob Cross rose to within £2,000 of breaking the fabled one-million-pound mark on the PDC Order of Merit, he did so thanks to his triumphs in darts' two most prestigious events: titles won at the 2018 World Championship and 2019 World Matchplay earned him £400,000 and £150,000 respectively, resulting in a secure position as world number two for more than a year during an increasingly competitive era in darts.
But when Cross was whitewashed in sets by Kim Huybrechts 18 months ago, he suffered the largest single drop ever (at that time) in ranking money as £385,000 vanished from his ledger.
Now the second bill is due; Cross must now defend 30% of his ranking money in one tournament. Failing to reach the semi-finals will likely put the former World Champion outside of the top 10 for the first time since his debut year.
Gerwyn Price, Michael van Gerwen and Peter Wright - the world's top three players, all of whom are separated from the rest of pack by a vast chasm of nearly £500,000 - look set to expand that gap even further.
Price, who lost to Stephen Bunting in 2019 after one of the only three deciding legs that have ever occurred in this tournament, is defending no ranking money at all. MvG has less than 1% at stake after a second-round loss to Glen Durrant, and Wright could lose at most £15,000 of his nearly £1million in accumulated income.
While Price will remain world number one after this tournament, Wright and van Gerwen could rejoin the millionaires' club with a deep run in the tournament - and that wide gap between those three and the rest of the top ten will not be threatened even if world number four James Wade wins the Phil Taylor trophy.
Five other players - Michael Smith, Gary Anderson, José de Sousa, Dave Chisnall and Dimitri Van den Bergh - could ascend to that fourth spot by winning the World Matchplay.
Van den Bergh is simultaneously defending his 2020 title and not defending any ranking money from 2019; his 2020 appearance was his first.
Similarly, De Sousa will be presented with an excellent opportunity to lock in a substantial payday for two years on his ranking should he advance to the final (as he is now accustomed to doing in long-format events) - but even before the tournament has begun, his advantage over his nearest OoM competitor is a comfortable £60,000, and as the leader of the averages stats in 2021, he will be favoured to dominate his quarter of the draw.
Smith, on the other hand, reached his second ranking TV final at this point two years ago and has 14.5% of his ranking money on the line; a possible second-round clash with de Sousa looms for him.
Unimpressive 2019 showings in the early stages of the tournament make OoM progress more feasible for Anderson and Chisnall; but as both were in the bottom half of the 2021 qualifiers in terms of averages, substantial overperformance of their usual stats will probably be necessary.
A critical match in the careers of two players will take place on Monday, as Daryl Gurney (defending 13% of his ranking after a 2019 semifinal finish) and Ian White (who has reached one quarterfinal in nine World Matchplay appearances) clash for the right to remain in the top 16.
White, having dominated Pro Tour events for the past several years, is struggling in 2021 to replicate those results, and Gurney similarly has not enjoyed the success of his breakout 2017 season, in which he reached the quarterfinals of all seven televised ranking events.
The winner of this one match (provisionally) pushes the other out of the top 16, and will raise questions about that opponent's future viability on the big stages.
Callan Rydz, one of the few players in the Order of Merit era to qualify for the World Matchplay without having reached the top 50 beforehand, will receive an automatic 14% boost to his ranking position just by setting foot in the Winter Gardens. Having drawn an out-of-form Glen Durrant in the first round, moreover, he is favoured to collect an additional £5,000 and replace two-time quarterfinalist Darren Webster in the top-50 roster. By failing to qualify this year, Webster will provisionally fall to within ₤15000 of the approximate year-end cutoff for tour card retention.
The guaranteed £10,000 earnings for an appearance in Blackpool will put Ryan Searle - the second-hardest player of 2021 against whom to break throw - on the cusp of a top-32 position on the Order of Merit and a possible seed at the World Championship.
While Adrian Lewis and Jeffrey de Zwaan, who conversely will shed £10,000 from their rankings as they failed to qualify this year, are not at risk of dropping out of the top 32 barring a deep tournament run from Searle, Ross Smith or Damon Heta, they are increasingly using less-favourable qualifying routes to get access to TV tournaments.
If no money was added to the OoM until December, Lewis would have to qualify for the World Championship on the Pro Tour Order of Merit, making him unseeded for the first time in his career.
With so many veteran players (Lewis, Whitlock, Beaton, van Barneveld) absent from the 2021 World Matchplay, the focus will naturally fall on the two qualifiers (Luke Humphries, currently the second-highest OoM earner this year, and Rydz) born after the first staging of the Matchplay in 1994, and the defending champion born a month before the inaugural event.
It's tempting to project into the future, based on the career trajectory of Cross and Van Gerwen, that these players could be the dominant men of darts five or ten years from now, and imagine that this World Matchplay could be the catalysing event for their ascent.
Follow Christopher on Twitter @ochepedia.