BT Sport announces new sports chat show

As BT gears up for the launch of its new sports channels later this year, the company has announced that Clare Balding – the award-winning broadcaster who was highly praised for her work fronting the BBC London 2012 Olympics and Channel 4 Paralympics coverage – will present and co-produce a weekly sports magazine show featuring interviews with major sporting names and discussion of crucial sporting issues.

Simon Green, head of BT Sport, said: “We are thrilled to have signed a broadcaster of Clare’s calibre for BT Sport. She excels at presenting a variety of different sports and she showed last summer what an accomplished live performer she is. We wanted to give Clare an opportunity to anchor her own weekly show, which we see as a flagship programme for BT Sport. Clare shares our desire to highlight more women’s sports on our channels, so she will be a perfect choice.”

Balding – who will continue to present widely for Channel 4 and BBC – remarked: “I’d like to thank BT for giving me the opportunity to present my own magazine style programme in which I can interview iconic sports stars and discuss newsworthy and stimulating topics. I’m enthused by BT’s vision for sports coverage in the future and particularly their support of women’s sport, an issue about which I feel very strongly. This is an exciting new venture for me and I can’t wait to get started.”
BT Sport has the rights to show 38 live games a season from the Barclays Premier League, including 18 of the top clashes, for three years from August 2013. The channels will also exclusively show 69 live rugby union games a season from the Aviva Premiership, and broadcast up to 800 hours of live tennis thanks to a deal with the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA).

The new channels will be based at the iCITY development at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, London.