The BBC Sports Personality of the Year is an awards ceremony that takes place annually in December. Devised by Paul Fox in 1954, it originally consisted of just a single award of the same name. Several new awards have been introduced, and currently seven awards are presented.
The first awards to be added were the Team of the Year and Overseas Personality awards, which were introduced in 1960. A Lifetime Achievement Award was first given in 1995 and again in 1996, and has been presented annually since 2001. In 1999, three more awards were introduced: the Helen Rollason Award, the Coach Award, and the Newcomer Award, which was renamed to Young Sports Personality of the Year in 2001. The newest is the Unsung Hero Award, presented from 2003 to 2024. In 2003, the 50th anniversary of the show was marked by a five-part series on BBC One called Simply the Best – Sports Personality. It was presented by Gary Lineker and formed part of a public vote to determine a special Golden Sports Personality of the Year. That year Steve Rider and Martyn Smith wrote a book reflecting on the 50-year history of the award and the programme. The event was held outside London for the first time in 2006, when tickets were made available to the public.
The trophy for the main award is a silver-plated four-turret lens camera, and for the other awards smaller imitations of the main trophy are used. All of the BBC local regions hold their own independent award ceremonies, which take place before the main ceremony and are used to compile a shortlist for the BBC Sports Unsung Hero Award.
Other awards have been presented in the past. Special Achievement Awards have been presented on five occasions: to jockey Lester Piggott in 1984 and 1994, disabled marathon runner Dennis Moore in 1981, comedian David Walliams in 2006, and comedian Eddie Izzard in 2009. Sebastian Coe picked up a Special Gold Award in 2005 for his work in helping Britain obtain the right to host the 2012 Olympics.
Five awards have been presented once: Manager of the Year in 1969, a Special Team Award in 1986, Good Sport Awards in 1990, an International Team Award in 1983, and the Sports Personality of the Century Award in 1999. In 2003, to celebrate fifty years of Sports Personality of the Year, two special anniversary awards were created to recognise the best team and Sports Personality from the previous fifty years. Rower Steve Redgrave was voted BBC Golden Sports Personality of the Year and England's 1966 World Cup-winning football team was chosen as Team of the Decades.
BBC Northern Ireland and BBC Wales present a trophy for athletes within their own nations at the same time as the main award, but organised within the region; the Northern Ireland award is conspicuously awarded to athletes whether they represent all of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Great Britain and Northern Ireland or even the Republic of Ireland or Europe (e.g. in golf), so long as they are from Northern Ireland. BBC Scotland ceased presenting their own award in the late 2000s, and England has never had such an award.
List of given awards Award Created Description Current holderSports Personality1954Awarded to the sportsperson "whose actions have most captured the public's imagination"Rory McIlroyWorld Sport Star1960Awarded to the sportsperson "who has made the greatest impression in the world of sport"Armand DuplantisTeam1960Awarded to the team with the most notable achievement in British sport.European Ryder Cup teamLifetime Achievement1996Awarded to a sportsperson "who has made a major impact on the world of sport during their lifetime"Thierry HenryCoach1999Awarded to the coach who is adjudged to have made the most impact on British sportSarina WiegmanHelen Rollason1999Awarded to someone who has shown "outstanding achievement in the face of adversity"Sergio AguiarDavid Stancombe1999Awarded to a young sportsperson who has made an outstanding contribution to British sportMichelle AgyemangUnsung Hero2003Awarded to someone who "has given their time and talents for free to enable others to participate in sport"Jean Paton
History Venues Year(s) Venue"BBC Awards show moves to new home ", BBC Sport website, 2006 1954–1956 1957–1958 1959 1960–1964 1965–1976 1977 1978–1987 1988–1998 1999–2005 2006–2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022202320242025 Presenters Presenter Year(s) Peter Dimmock 1954–1963 David Coleman 1961–1984 Frank Bough 1964–1982 Harry Carpenter 1968–1985 Jimmy Hill 1970s Cliff Morgan Kenneth Wolstenholme Des Lynam 1983–1998 Steve Rider 1986–2004 Sue Barker 1994–2012 Gary Lineker 1999–2023 Clare Balding 1999, 2012–present John Inverdale 1999 Adrian Chiles 2006–2007 Jake Humphrey 2008–2011 Gabby Logan 2013–present Alex Scott 2020–present
Creation and early years The BBC's Sports Personality of the Year was created by Paul Fox, who came up with the idea while he was editor of the magazine show Sportsview. The first award ceremony took place as part of a special gala edition of Sportsview held at the Savoy Hotel on 30 December 1954. The show lasted 45 minutes and was presented by Peter Dimmock. The ceremony was combined with two other awards, the sportsman and sportswoman of the year, which were determined by votes through the Sporting Record newspaper. The newspaper had presented their sportsman of the year award since 1946, to which they later added a sportswoman of the year award. The award for the 1953 Sporting Record winners had been broadcast on BBC radio in April 1954. Voting for the BBC award was by postcard, and rules presented in a Radio Times article stipulated that nominations were restricted to athletes who had featured on the Sportsview programme since April. For the inaugural BBC Sportsperson of the Year award, 14,517 votes were cast and Christopher Chataway beat fellow athlete Roger Bannister. The following year the show was renamed Sports Review of the Year and given a longer duration of 75 minutes.
The award continued to be held together with the sportsman and sportswoman of the year awards until 1958, by which time the latter awards were being organised by the Daily Express. From 1959 the BBC award ceremony was separated from the sportsman and sportswoman of the year awards.
1960s In 1960 Dimmock presented the show, and introduced two new awards: the Team of the Year award and the Overseas Personality award, won by the Cooper Car Company and athlete Herb Elliott respectively. David Coleman joined the show the following year and remained a co-presenter until 1983. Swimmer Anita Lonsbrough became the first female recipient of the main award in 1962; females won it in the following two years as well. Frank Bough took over as presenter in 1964 and presented Sports Review for 18 years. In 1969, a new Manager of the Year award was given to Don Revie for his achievements with Leeds United, the only occasion it was presented. In the following year boxer Henry Cooper became the first person to win the main award twice, having already won in 1967.
1970s and 1980s During the 1970s Bough and Coleman presided over the ceremony alongside Jimmy Hill, Cliff Morgan, Kenneth Wolstenholme, and Harry Carpenter, who also went on to present the show until 1985. Des Lynam took over as main host from Bough in 1983, and presided over figure skating duo Torvill and Dean's win the following year, when they became the first non-individual winners of the main award. Steve Rider replaced Carpenter as co-host in 1986, at which a Special Team Award was presented to Great Britain men's 4 × 400 m relay team. In the 1980s, Steve Davis finished in the top three on five occasions, including one win in 1988.
1990s In 1991, angler Bob Nudd received the most votes following a campaign in the Angling Times. However, the BBC deemed this to be against the rules and refused to acknowledge his votes, allowing athlete Liz McColgan to win the award. The following year racing driver Nigel Mansell became the second person to win the main award twice, having won his first in 1986. Sue Barker presented the show for the first time in 1994, at which racing driver Damon Hill won the first of his two awards, the second coming two years later. Boxer Frank Bruno was the inaugural winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996, and as of 2014 there have been 15 recipients of the award.
In 1999 the show was renamed Sports Personality of the Year, and Gary Lineker joined the show as a co-presenter alongside Rider and Barker. They were supported that year by John Inverdale and Clare Balding. The ceremony introduced a further three regular awards: Coach of the Year, Newcomer of the Year, and a Helen Rollason Award for "outstanding courage and achievement in the face of adversity". In a one-off award, boxer Muhammad Ali was voted as the Sports Personality of the Century.
2000s 50th anniversary (2003) On 1 November 2003, BBC Books published "BBC Sports Personality of the Year 50th Anniversary" (), written by Steve Rider and Martyn Smith, to mark the golden anniversary of the show. Leading up to the anniversary show on 14 December 2003, a series of five half-hour special programmes, entitled Simply The Best – Sports Personality, were broadcast. Hosted by Gary Lineker, the episodes were shown on BBC One for five consecutive nights from 8–12 December 2003; each covered one decade of Sports Personality history. At the end of each programme, viewers voted for their favourite Sports Personality winner from the decade covered; the five winners then went onto a shortlist for one of two special 50th Anniversary awards. From this shortlist, rower Steve Redgrave was voted Golden Sports Personality of the Year by the public. The England World Cup-winning team of 1966 won a Team of the Decades award, voted for by representatives from all previous Teams of the Year.
2006–2009 In 2006, for the first time in its 53-year history, the event was held outside London, in Birmingham's National Exhibition Centre (NEC). For the first time, tickets for the event were made available to the public, and 3,000 were sold in the first hour. That year, Adrian Chiles joined the show and co-presented alongside Barker and Lineker for two years. The 2007 ceremony was the first of a two-year sponsorship deal with Britvic's brand Robinsons, and the capacity of the NEC was increased from 5,000 to 8,000. The event sold out, but the sponsorship deal was shortened to one year after complaints by ITV and RadioCentre caused the BBC Trust to rule in that "Editorial Guidelines were breached and the editorial integrity of the BBC compromised by giving the impression to licence fee payers via Sports Personality of the Year that part of a BBC service had been sponsored." They decided that the 2008 awards should not be broadcast as a sponsored event, and no new sponsorship deal was negotiated after the Britvic deal expired. In , the BBC announced that the 2008 Sports Personality of the Year event would be held at the Echo Arena, Liverpool. One reason for the move to Liverpool was to allow greater numbers to view the show live, as the 10,600-seater venue in Liverpool had a bigger capacity than the NEC. That year Jake Humphrey replaced Chiles as co-presenter. The 2009 show was rumoured to be held in either Cardiff or Glasgow. However, it was announced on 2009 that the show would be staged at the Sheffield Arena, after the city won the hosting rights over Cardiff.
2010s