Newspapers Some newspapers were completely dedicated to sport. E.g. Sporting Life, a daily paper that covered all sporting events. After the Second World War, dailies and Sunday papers expanded their news reports with some bringing out late editions of their paper giving up to date sporting results. They often devoted sections on their sports pages to the popular sports such as: football, cricket, horse racing, boxing and rugby. Journalists specialised in sports reporting such as Neville Cardus reported on just cricket for the Manchester Guardian. Specialist sports photographers such as Tony Duffy developed in the 1950s and 1960s.

Magazines Sporting magazines developed over time at first just reporting on the events in sport to keep their readers up to date. This then turned to providing specialist information in the 1950s to their readers about how to improve their own skills in that sport as well as this there was an increase in advertisement space. Examples of these magazines were: The Cricketer magazine started in 1921. The Football Pictorial and Illustrated Review started in 1935. The Sport Weekly Magazine started in 1938. After England won the World Cup in 1966 many more appeared. The most successful was Shoot started in 1969.

Comics Comics featured fictional sports stars who appealed massively to boys. The most notable of these comics were: The athletic runner Alf Tupper first appeared in the Rover in 1949 and continued to appear for the next 40 years. The character Roy of the Rovers launched his football career in 1954 in the Tiger; in 1976 he went on to have his own weekly comic. The character Billy from the comic strip Billy’s Boots began his football career in the Scorcher in 1970 and in 1974 moved to the Tiger.

Radio The radio played an important role in developing the popularity of sport from the 1930s onwards. In 1948 the BBC began broadcasting Sports Report at 5pm on a Saturday – this provided football results and reports on the top matches. Other events such as horse racing, Wimbledon and the University Boat Race also attracted huge numbers of listeners.

Television Television coverage of sport developed in the 1960s when the BBC and ITV both began broadcasting Saturday afternoon sports programmes. The 1966 World Cup Final when England beat West Germany 4-2 attracted 32.6 million viewers. BBC programme Grandstand ran from 1958 until 2007 and covered all sporting events. In 1964 the BBC launched Match of the Day to focus just on football. In the 1960s ITV created World of Sport and in 1968 added to this with The Big Match.

Cinema From the 1920s until the 1960s (when TV took over), the cinema showed newsreels in between films, which covered sporting events and details about the lives of sports personalities. The newsreels were the main source of news and sport for the millions of cinema goers. It was especially through the cinema that many sports stars became very well know and their celebrity status was born.

How did different types of media affected sport before 1970?