At 26, most football fans are worrying about which pub to meet their mates at on a matchday. Matt Porter isn’t most football fans.
By that age, he was already running his boyhood EFL club, Leyton Orient, as chief executive – responsible for trying to keep the lower-league side afloat.
Not a supporter of the League One outfit but feel like you know the name? That might be because Porter, who is now 45, is more widely recognised as the chief executive of the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC), overseeing events including the Premier League and the World Championship at the Alexandra Palace.
FOOTBALL. DARTS. GOLF?
“Football is still my first love,” says Porter, who now serves at Orient as a non-executive director.
“But it doesn’t affect me today as much as it used to, you know? Obviously, if we ended up getting relegated or something, the pain would be huge, but there’s just too much else going on in my life for it to get to me the way it used to.”
Porter’s journey started at age 16 when he launched his own Orient fanzine, All Aboard The Wagon Train – “a long story”, he tells FFT – and quickly progressed to writing for local papers. After graduating from university, he joined the London club as press officer.
Five years later, in 2006, chairman Barry Hearn offered him the chief executive role at the club, which he took without hesitation. “I told him I’d be honoured,” recalls Porter. “Barry said, ‘That’s the only answer I need.’”
If that sounds like a lot of fun, Porter is quick to remind us that defeats dealt an even bigger blow once he held a key position at the club he’s supported all his life. “If we lost a match, I would be in a foul mood,” he grimaces.
“There are still marks on the back of the office door at the stadium from where I used to go in and kick it.” But his role also gave him any fan’s dream opportunity to help make things better.
“It’s about identifying problems and putting them right,” he says. “Fans are entitled to be annoyed, but it’s the role of the manager and players to make sure it doesn’t go wrong. My role was to help them have the best chance to make that possible.
“Experience is the biggest teacher. You learn from your mistakes – you can’t learn anything if you don’t make any mistakes.
“Experience is the biggest teacher. You learn from your mistakes – you can’t learn anything if you don’t make any mistakes. I made a priority for man management to be a big part of my job.
We created the right culture internally, so people wanted to come to work, were treated well, and enjoyed it.” That culture helped Orient punch above their financial weight, reaching the 2014 League One Play-off Final despite operating on a fraction of rival clubs’ budgets.
That was the same year Porter left his post – not his decision – before making a return in 2017, albeit in a scaled-back role. Meanwhile, Porter became chief executive of the PDC in 2008, when it was a small, UK-based operation.
“In football, the only thing that matters is the result,” he says, comparing the two industries. “You can hide a million sins by winning matches.
"In darts, the result is almost the least important thing. People come to enjoy themselves. It’s a social experience, a spectacle, and it’s gone global now.”
He’s not exaggerating. Since Porter took on the role, darts has exploded, with tens of thousands packing into stadiums for live events and millions of TV viewers worldwide.
Prize pots have soared, with world champions – including Luke Littler and Michael van Gerwen – becoming household names. Balancing both of those worlds has honed Porter’s management skills.
“I realised that in order to succeed at a young age, I needed people to want to work with me,” he says. “Even if you’re doing something different,” he concludes. “The lessons you can take from working in football – teamwork, culture, understanding people – translate everywhere. That’s what makes it exciting.”
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