Hugh Woozencroft
Conferences and internal events live or die on the person at the front of the room. A weak host loses an audience inside the first panel. A sharp one earns a senior speaker’s trust, draws specifics out of executives who default to script, and keeps a long day legible for the people in the seats.
Hugh Woozencroft is a broadcast journalist and sports presenter who hosts corporate events, panels and after-dinner conversations, with a parallel track in sports media diversity.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Hugh Woozencroft
- Daily live broadcasting on talkSPORT and The Times’ The Game podcast keeps his interview muscle in regular use, so executives, athletes and panellists get a host who can move a conversation without losing the room.
- ITV’s EFL Show, Women’s Football coverage and Rugby World Cup work give him the kind of cross-sport credibility that suits sponsor events, sports business gatherings and brand activations around major tournaments.
- BBC News reporting from Wimbledon, Champions League finals, the Ashes and the Boat Race built a habit of distilling complex live events for general audiences. The same instinct works for plenary moderation.
- A real specialism in diversity in sports media, anchored in his time on the BCOMS board and a 2018 BBC piece on representation, gives him a defensible angle when the brief touches inclusion, talent pipelines or culture inside sport.
Biography highlights
- Host of talkSPORT’s Kick Off show, Tuesday to Thursday primetime.
- Host of The Game, The Times’ football podcast.
- Presenter for ITV’s EFL Show, ITV Women’s Football, and ITV’s Rugby World Cup coverage.
- Former BBC Radio 5Live and BBC News presenter, including Sportsweek, Test Match Special and the 2012 London Olympics.
- Former presenter on BBC Two’s Victoria Derbyshire Show.
- Former board member, The Black Collective of Media in Sport (BCOMS); MA Sports Journalism, St Mary’s University.
Biography
Live sport on radio is one of the harder briefs in broadcasting. The picture is invisible, the action is fast, and the audience will leave the moment the presenter loses the thread. Hugh Woozencroft anchors talkSPORT’s Kick Off, three weeknights a week, across Champions League, Europa League, Premier League, Carabao Cup and FA Cup coverage. The same discipline carries into corporate hosting work.
His route in was unfussy. A master’s in Sports Journalism at St Mary’s, a broadcast assistant role at BBC Radio 5Live, and on-air work from 2013 onwards. From there: Sportsweek, Test Match Special, the 2012 London Olympics, BBC News reporting from Wimbledon, the Ashes, Champions League finals and the Boat Race, and presenting shifts on BBC Two’s Victoria Derbyshire Show. Now he combines talkSPORT with hosting The Times’ The Game podcast and ITV’s EFL Show, Women’s Football and Rugby World Cup coverage.
The second strand is diversity in sports media. In 2018, Woozencroft wrote a BBC piece on the absence of Black and minority ethnic journalists in senior sports newsrooms. He joined the board of The Black Collective of Media in Sport that year, chaired sessions at the D Word 2 conference, and stepped off the board in 2023. That work gives him a specific, evidenced position on representation inside an industry he reports on daily, useful when a brief touches inclusion in sport, talent pipelines or media culture.
For corporate audiences, the offer is honest. A working broadcaster who hosts elite live sport every week, with a credible secondary line on inclusion in his industry, available for moderation, panel chairing, awards hosting and after-dinner conversation.
Key speaking topics
- Event hosting and moderation
- Panel chairing
- Awards and after-dinner hosting
- Sports business and sponsorship events
- Diversity in sports media
- Media training and presentation craft
Ideal for
- Sponsor activations and hospitality programmes around major football and rugby tournaments
- Sports business conferences, governing body events and federation gatherings
- Corporate awards evenings, annual gatherings and internal town halls needing a confident host
- DEI events in media or sport where the brief calls for a credible insider voice
Audience outcomes
- A panel that stays on time and on point, with senior speakers drawn into specifics rather than left to read prepared lines
- A room that feels held, particularly across long-form programmes mixing keynote, panel and audience Q&A
- For diversity briefs in sport or media, a first-hand account of where progress has been real and where it has stalled
- A measured, journalistic interview style suited to executive guests, athletes and public figures