EXCLUSIVE: BBC Should Broadcast More Sports to UK Audience, Says England Hockey CEO

England Hockey CEO Sally Munday says the BBC has a ‘responsibility’ to broadcast more sports than just the mainstream sports to its UK audience.

The BBC has acquired the rights to the EuroHockey Championships taking place in London in August and Munday believes England Hockey is providing the BBC with opportunities to cover the sport with the events it is hosting.

Speaking exclusively to iSportconnect the England Hockey CEO said: “We’re really pleased that the BBC have taken it (the EuroHockey Championships), drugs I believe the BBC as a publically funded body in this country, medic have a responsibility to show more sport than just the mainstream sports that are always on TV and they’ve got the opportunity to do that with us hosting these type of events.

“We’re a really popular Olympic sport and people want to see the sport and it’s great that the BBC has taken it and it’s great that there’s becoming increased competition from other commercial broadcasters for wanting to take this type of event and hopefully that bodes really well for the future.

“It’s great hosting events in this country but actually we want to showcase the events to much wider than just the people that come, medstore we’ll have tens of thousands of people coming to watch hockey at Olympic Park, but there’s an opportunity to showcase it much wider than the people that turn up live.”

Munday sees broadcast coverage as one of the most important ways of driving the profile of the sport, but admits gaining media and broadcast recognition has been one of the biggest challenges the organisation has faced.

“One of the biggest challenges we’ve faced as a sport is getting the media and broadcast recognition that the sport should get,” she said.

“We’re in a group of sports who are probably at a level where at the moment we have to fight really hard to get broadcast coverage and broadcast coverage is so important in terms of driving the profile for the sport, which engages the people and encourages them to come and play and we saw on the back of the Olympic Games just how important that TV coverage was and we need to collectively, working with other similar sports, carry on applying more pressure to the media and to the broadcasters.”

Munday is looking to use the upcoming championships in London to raise the profile of the sport, much like they did at the London 2012 Olympics.

“The goal is much wider than performance, it’s a lot about raising the profile of the sport and we know how much people want to be back on Olympic Park, we’ve increased the seating because the ticket sales have been so strong, so we’ve added seats to the stadium,” said Munday.

“The response from the British public to coming and watching hockey has been phenomenal and what the London Games have allowed us to do is to showcase the sport to people who don’t usually see it.”