By Drew Christie
2022 will be a great year for sport, with major events around the globe including AFCON, the Winter Olympics and Athletics World Championships. Plus we’ll see the UEFA Women’s Euro, Commonwealth Games and Rugby League World Cup taking place here in the UK.
BCOMS is determined that the diversity of those watching and participating should be reflected by those who tell the stories of these amazing events.
2021 was a positive year for BCOMS. We were able to grow our work through developing partnerships with major players like ITV Sport, BT Sport, F1, the Football Association, Arsenal and Chelsea.
We were able to hire our first full-time staff member – Operations Manager, Andrew Ducille – after more than a decade of having to rely on voluntary labour.
Our Masterclasses went from strength-to-strength, thanks to partnerships with Nike and Facebook in the South, while we kicked off our first Masterclass for the North and Midlands with the support of BBC Sport.
While a personal highlight was seeing our partnership with Chelsea lead to BCOMS offering two young, talented sports journalists the opportunity to supercharge their rise in the industry with a NCTJ training bursary – which you’ll be hearing lots more about as the year progresses!
It’s wonderful to see such positive developments, though we know that there is so much more to do.
I really hope that the partnerships BCOMS has, the new ones we forge – and the return of the D Word conference – will help make 2022 an even better year for the UK sports media on the route to the goal of a diversity that’s truly reflective of the world we live in.
Drew Christie is the inaugural Chair of the Black Collective of Media in Sport (BCOMS). Now a freelance producer, Drew has worked for the BBC, Endemol, Abu Dhabi Media and Sport360 in his 20+ year career. You can follow him on Twitter @MrDrewChristie.
