ABSTRACT
Sport has been an important feature in the history of British radio broadcasting (Booth, 2008). Sport can draw large audiences, and in contemporary radio commands a significant amount of airtime and resource from both public service and commercial radio stations. The BBC’s sport and news channel Radio 5 Live consistently reaches over 6 million listeners a week (Rajar, 2013), its major rival TalkSport scheduled 130 live football commentaries in 2013 and both stations share the rights to coverage of the 2014 World Cup from Brazil (Reynolds, 2013). The coverage of sport on radio has been developed in two main formats: live running commentaries from outside broadcasts and news reporting on sport. One might also add more general sports features, documentaries, talks, quizzes, phone-ins and even comedy hybrids, but in terms of the mainstay of sports coverage live running commentaries and news bulletins are the most readily recognized forms of radio sport.
