Football dominates talkSPORT sports news bulletins

Men’s football led 74.4% of talkSPORT news bulletins analysed in a new study, compared with 30.7% on BBC Radio 5 Live.

Research by Richard Jones, Director of Journalism at the University of Salford, has revealed significant differences in the sports covered by the two radio stations, particularly when it comes to women’s sport.

The study examined radio news bulletins from seven different days across separate months in 2025, alongside posts published by BBC Sport and talkSPORT on X during the same periods.

Football accounted for 67.7% of all sports news summaries on talkSPORT, compared with 38.6% on 5 Live, where cricket, rugby union and tennis received a greater share of coverage.

Women’s football led just one talkSPORT bulletin during the study, compared with 3.2% of bulletins on 5 Live.

Across all sports, women’s events accounted for 19% of stories on 5 Live, equivalent to roughly one per bulletin, but just 5% on talkSPORT.

The difference was even greater on social media, with women’s sport making up 17.9% of BBC Sport posts on X compared with only 1.8% of talkSPORT’s output.

The research also identified changes in radio news production, with traditional recorded voice reports becoming increasingly rare.

Just two voicers were broadcast on 5 Live and one on talkSPORT during the seven days analysed, with clips taken from live reporter contributions now used more frequently.

Boxing was the fourth most mentioned sport in talkSPORT bulletins at 4.3%, rising to second place on its X account at 14.3%.

Rugby league accounted for 2.6% of 5 Live bulletins but received no coverage in talkSPORT summaries or either broadcaster’s X posts during the selected days.

The study also found that 48.5% of BBC Sport’s X posts included video, compared with 10.8% of talkSPORT’s.

Richard said: “These findings underline how significant football always was to the agenda of our sporting press and how top-level men’s football, is now often the only game in town.”

The findings feature in Richard’s new book, Sports Journalism in the UK, published by Routledge on Wednesday 14 October, examining changes across audio, visual and written sports journalism.