End of the World!
By Michael Weadock, November 2025
If you read my blog 'Top of the World' in September, you’ll have noticed how frustrated I was at the lack of coverage of the number of World Championship events we’ve witnessed over the past few weeks in many of our core Olympic & Paralympic sports.
To re-cap briefly, athletics was pretty well served, boxing, canoeing and rowing missed out virtually entirely and cycling and gymnastics was a TBC.
Para sport incidentally seemed to have passed everyone by, except us, which is a bigger issue and one we’ve spoken about on many occasions.
Some good news: Cycling’s track and road World Championships both received decent coverage across the BBC. Likewise, the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships had some good broadcast slots from the BBC too which showcased the medals won by British Gymnastics in Indonesia.
Some bad news: Have a listen to our recent episode of Great British Bosses with Jason Glover, Chair of GB Boxing, about how they felt let down by the BBC over their decision to ignore the World Boxing Championships in Liverpool.
Elsewhere, what really cheered me up was how the gold medal winning success of gymnast Jake Jarman was picked up by commercial radio at both a national and regional interest. Here we declare an interest because we worked closely with British Gymnastics in Indonesia to ensure radio stations knew all about who was in the British team, when they were competing and ensuring they could get interviews when necessary.
We would love to be able to support National Governing Bodies across all sports to help broaden their appeal and reach in a similar way. Our background is in commercial radio, and we are available to assist in bringing these stories to these new audiences. British Gymnastics spotted the potential and received a level of coverage from non-BBC outlets that just wasn’t there for the cyclists, for example, who performed so well in Santiago.
The latest commercial radio audience figures are out too. The numbers are huge with commercial radio listening extending its market share to 56% with BBC Radio now at just over 40%.
Commercial radio now has 8.8million more listeners than BBC Radio.
Global, who operate brands including Heart, Capital, Smooth, LBC and Classic FM reach 29 million weekly listeners. Interestingly, they have recently announced a new Sports Entertainment Division to partner with sports rights holders, sponsors and major events
But, for audio and radio support as you plan your 2026 activity which will be a huge year for our sector with the Olympic & Paralympic Winter Games, Commonwealth Games, World Indoor Athletics, World Athletics Ultimate Championships and the European Athletics Championships being staged in Birmingham, along with all those other global, continental and national events which fill our calendar and we love to shout about on your behalf, then do give us a shout and we may be able to get your athletes to new audiences exactly like we did with Jake Jarman.
