ORIENT TO THE OCHE

Matt Porter was the chief executive at a League One club aged only 26 - now he's running professional darts

- Nick Callow

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 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