Feature: Sport On The Radio
With the launch earlier this year of Team Talk, sports fans now have a choice of three national sports-dedicated stations, suggesting that despite the potential threat of webcasts and interactive digital coverage, there is still confidence in the demand for sport on the radio.
An example of this is expected to come thanks to the time difference between the UK and World Cup host countries Japan and Korea. Research carried out for RAB suggests that 36% of football fans will use radio to follow matches, compared to 15% during the last World Cup, as “deskbound” fans find alternative ways to TV for following the action.
The BBC’s Radio 5 Live commands the largest reach of the three- 6.4 million in the first quarter of this year, according to RAJAR. This represented a year on year increase of 13.3%. talkSPORT also saw a good quarter, an 8% year on year increase taking its reach to 2.4 million. Team Talk has not had a particularly auspicious start, with a maiden weekly reach of less than half a million, but it’s probably too early to judge after only months on-air.
In keeping with sport’s traditional place as the preserve of men, it is unsurprising to discover that the ratio of weekly reach to men compared to women for BBC Radio 5 Live is around 2.4:1 and for talkSPORT 3:1. However, this nevertheless means that talkSPORT reaches over half a million women every week, so it should still be worth consideration as a means to target this group.
Listeners to talkSPORT are spread more evenly across the adult age range than those listening to 5 Live. Peaks occur in the 35-44 year old bracket, where 558,000 are reached each week (according to Q4 2001 RAJAR data), and the 55+ age group, where just under 500,000 are reached. However, as the reach figures for 15-24s, 25-34s and 45-54s all come in above the 380,000 mark, the station could be used to target across the board, age-wise. talkSPORT is also a more even match for 5 Live when it comes to hours per listener, averaging 7.7 compared to the BBC station’s 7.6.
Subscribers can access ten years of media news and analysis in the Archive