A Rugby League World Cup starts this week and you didn’t know. That’s a huge problem Sport Business Did you know the Rugby League World Cup starts this week? If you’re reading this in the north of England then the answer is probably yes. If down south then I suspect the answer is much more likely to be no. This is a huge problem. Rugby league has one of the most watchable products [...]
Track Radio raising £3m as it eyes marketing, network and programming push Sport Business Challenger sport and music station Track Radio is in talks to raise a further £3m in funding as it plots a marketing push and expansion of its DAB coverage. The start-up, which launched in May with a heavyweight broadcaster line-up including Mark Pougatch, Sonja McLaughlan and Vassos Alexander, is understood to be in talks with [...]
BBC should be aggregator of best free sports content – or risk sinking for good Sport Business YouTube serves up live sport galore so why can’t the BBC do the same, with a more selective approach that fulfils its public service remit, asks Ed Warner. I’ve no problem with paying £180 for my annual TV licence. Gets me Celebrity Traitors and Blue Lights, after all. Plus the Shipping Forecast to wake up [...]
The BBC’s bulletin cuts show how crowded sports broadcasting has become October 4, 2026 The BBC’s decision to drop lunchtime and overnight sports bulletins from its news channel has rightly had a few journalists loosening their collars. Savings must be found, but will people miss the content? It really reflects how crowded the race for sports audiences has become. Broadcasters used to be the thoroughbreds, with competitors left in [...]
‘Knock that dead’: Burnham rules out calling early election September 25, 2026 Andy Burnham has said the next election will be in 2029 as he ruled out an early snap vote during interviews with local broadcasters. In an interview with ITV North West and Yorkshire, Burnham confirmed that the next General Election would take place at the end of this parliament. Reports suggested that Number 10 was [...]
Revealed: BBC bid just £900k for £5m Commonwealth Games TV rights September 2, 2026 Commonwealth Games chiefs took flak for agreeing a broadcast deal with TNT Sports that put it behind a paywall for the first time in 72 years – but City AM can reveal the BBC offered less than £1m for the rights. The BBC’s bid of around £900,000 represented a 91 per cent decrease on the [...]
Not enough bums in Brum: Why so many empty seats at European Athletics Championships? August 13, 2026 Britain loves sport yet ticket sales for the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham have been slow. Ed Warner wonders why. British sport has a capacity problem or a bandwidth one, depending on which way you want to look at it. Too many seats in too many venues with too few bums to fill them. Or [...]
The BBC shouldn’t push Londoners to accept antisocial phone behaviour August 7, 2026 Life is already hard enough. The public don’t need commentators telling them that playing music out loud on public transport is a kind of performance art, writes Matt Kenyon A few years back, I was sitting on a Chiltern Rail train opposite a woman who didn’t realise her headphones weren’t properly plugged in, as her [...]
BBC to broadcast Alexis Ohanian co-founded all-female athletics series Athlos August 7, 2026 The BBC will broadcast the Alexis Ohanian co-founded all-female athletics meet Athlos when it heads to London next month. The event, one of a number on a series funded by the Reddit co-founder, will land at Prem Rugby team Saracens’ Stone X Stadium in September with the likes of Keely Hodgkinson, Sha’Carri Richardson, Gabby Thomas [...]
‘Brilliant and provocative’ columnist and broadcaster Rod Liddle dies aged 66 August 3, 2026 The writer and broadcaster Rod Liddle has died at the age of 66. Liddle, a titan of Fleet Street, died at hospital in Middlesbrough on Sunday evening following a short illness. The journalist, who wrote columns for The Sunday Times, The Spectator and The Sun, was previously the editor of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. [...]