The Sports Personality of the Year awards show has become one of the most popular entertainment events in recent years. Founded in 1954 by BBC executive Paul Fox, the original awards show consisted of just one award — the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award. Now, roughly eight or nine awards are given annually at the show, with additional awards given for other notable achievements. For instance, in 1999 the show did a one-time Sports Personality of the Century Award, which was awarded to Muhammad Ali.
When and where will this year’s event take place?
The event will start at 7:00 p.m. and be held on Sunday, December 15 at P&J Live in Aberdeen, Scotland. This recently-built venue can hold up to 10,000 people. At home, fans of the event can tune in on BBC1.
The event will be hosted by Gary Lineker, Gabby Logan, and Clare Balding. This will be the second time the awards show has been held in Scotland. It was previously held in Glasgow in 2014.
To get a better idea of how popular this event is, the first round of tickets for the event sold out in five minutes. The second round of tickets went on sale shortly after. This show is the quickest sell-out Sports Personality show in more than ten years.
How are athletes nominated?
The BBC Sports Personality of the Year production team composes a long list of the best athletes from the year, including listing their achievements, which they present to an independent panel in November. That panel will decide the shortlist for the awards, taking into account a variety of factors such as the athlete’s impact on the national and international stage and their impact outside of the sport.
Who is the favorite to win Sports Personality of the Year?
Among all of the main candidates for the Sports Personality of the Year award, cricketer Ben Stokes seems to be the favorite to win, according to sites like Skybet, thanks to his incredible performance at the Cricket World Cup. Other nominees for the award include Raheem Sterling, Katarina Johnson-Thompson, Lewis Hamilton, Alun Wyn Jones, and Dina Asher-Smith.
Voting will take place during the event on Sunday, December 15. The public will be able to vote either online or by phone, but more information will be released during the course of the show.
Who’s performing at the event?
Sports and music have long gone hand in hand. Just think of marching bands or live performances at sports events like the famous halftime show at the American Super Bowl.
To break up the awards show and offer some more entertainment for fans, the Sports Personality of the Year show will feature popular Scottish musicians like Lewis Capaldi and Emeli Sandé.
Capaldi is a Scottish singer-songwriter. Earlier this year his single “Someone You Loved” topped the UK Singles Chart for seven weeks in addition to reaching the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US. His debut album, Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent, was released earlier this year and also held the top spot of the UK Albums Chart for six weeks.
Sandé, also a singer-songwriter, was raised in Aberdeenshire. This will be her second time performing at a Sports Personality of the Year event. She last performed at the 2012 show, where she sang her hit single at the time, “Read All About It.” Sandé has released three albums, with her most recent album being Real Life, which came out in September.
For those attending the event, there will also be pre-show entertainment hosted by comedian Des Clarke before the show starts at 7:00 p.m. Singers Nina Nesbitt and Rio Donkin are expected to perform at the pre-show, as are the cast of CBBC’s Almost Never. Nesbitt is a Scottish singer-songwriter known for her single “Stay Out,” which topped the charts in 2013. Donkin was the winner of the 2018 Got What It Takes? Competition.
Tune in to BBC1 on December 15 for some incredible musical performances and to find out who wins Sports Personality of the Year.
