BBC Wales has announced plans to extend its online and mobile sports service to keep pace with changing audiences and to reflect Wales’ biggest ever year of sport.
The broadcaster will create seven new digital roles to support its unrivalled coverage of Welsh sport this year, including Euro 2016, the Rio Olympics and Paralympics, Pro 12 rugby, the World Half Marathon Championship and the Six Nations. As part of the changes, the BBC Two magazine programme Sport Wales will come to an end later this year.
The announcement comes on the back of audience data showing that sports fans are increasingly turning to mobile services and social media for their content. Usage of BBC Wales’ online sport service has more than doubled in the last two years - and users are increasingly turning to online and mobile services to keep up to date with sport news. The enhanced online service will complement the BBC’s coverage of a wide range of sports on television, Radio Wales and Radio Cymru.
The change in emphasis will result in some staff changes across BBC Wales’ sports department - with 12 posts closing as well as the seven new roles being created.
Commenting on the changes, Geoff Williams, BBC Wales’ Head of Sport, says: “The changes we’ve announced today will enable us to keep pace with changing audience expectations around the type of sports content they want and the way they want to access it.
“We’ll be increasing our overall investment in sport during 2016 and we’re also going to focus it on what matters most: outstanding journalism on every device and high-quality live coverage of the biggest events.
“We believe these plans will add extra depth to the BBC’s coverage of a wide range of sports, including Euro 2016, where we’ll be shining a spotlight on the Wales football team as it competes in its first major finals for over 50 years. We’re also looking forward to working with our network colleagues to bring unrivalled coverage of next month’s IAAF World Half Marathon Championship on the streets of Cardiff.
“Given the scale of the investment required for major live events and online coverage, we’ve taken the difficult decision to bring Sport Wales to an end on BBC Two Wales. While the quality of the programme can be in no doubt, it is also clear that it has suffered from the fact that audiences are changing and accessing sports content in different ways.
“I believe these changes will result in a much higher profile for Welsh sport across the board and particularly amongst younger, hard-to-reach audiences who, proportionately, are more likely to access our content online or via social media.”