Sport

The sport audience is broad and diverse. The Olympic Games can touch over 80% of the UK population and an individual football match up to 24m. By contrast minority and grassroots sports can ignite the passions of niche audiences. We see five key needs for these audiences:

• ‘give me sport when and where I want it' – audiences want access everywhere
• ‘share great moments' – sport is a communal activity
• ‘tell me what's happening now' – immediacy is at the heart of the digital revolution
• ‘I want more than just the action' – great talent, context and innovation add value
• ‘my team…my sport' – tailoring content and access offers more value to audiences

We need to:

• Make our content genuinely accessible– platforms, scheduling and tone.
• Fulfil audiences' passions through a mix of sports and treatments.
• Establish a commanding reputation for sports journalism.
• Focus energies on live content and make more of events ‘owned' by us.
• Building on this there's a clear need to deliver cross-genre ingenuity to surprise and entertain audiences.

Recommendations

• We offer audiences clarity and consistency via a BBC Sport portal – a 24x7 service bringing together live video and audio, plus sports journalism and text services.
• A multi-layered approach to the range of sport we offer: major events on conventional tv and radio channels, supplemented by some sport delivered only for interactive tv and broadband – and underpinned by user-generated content on people's passions
• Sports Journalism to offer the same range and quality as the rest of BBC news. A new role of Sport Editor to be the first step to raising the profile of the genre, with a flagship sports news programme on BBC Television by 2007.
• Highlights always available on demand and tailored to audience needs
• Move away from multi-genre programming, including phasing out the Grandstand brand and scheduling live content to reflect audience need
• BBC Sport to be the custodian of major events on behalf of the whole BBC with a duty to make them even bigger
• Sport to build partnerships with other creative areas of the BBC - including links with entertainment and comedy and tie-ins with learning projects and social action

The BBC's commitment to Sport

BBC Sport is the biggest single driver of interactive TV within the UK – and it is also setting records for the use of broadband and for growth in the sport website. We believe we can combine the BBC's heritage in sport with a proposition that puts it at the heart of the digital age.