Love Sport Radio – The station giving fans a voice

Publication date: 15/03/2023

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Love Sport Radio was responsible for broadcasting relevant and interesting sport content 24 hours a day. It had an audience of around 40,000 people and 74% of them fall in the 15-34 age bracket, which was a significantly younger listenership than competitors Talksport and BBC 5 Live.

While Love Sport Radio was known for its sports content, it also attracted advertisers from various industries, including betting sites and casas de apuestas, as they are known in Spanish-speaking countries.

Your team. Your voice.

Welcome to Love Sport: Britain's No1 sport station for you, the fans.

From grassroots to global, Love Sport want to hear your views on your sport.

Love Sport naturally turn our attention to football and the Premier League. But Love Sport regularly cover cricket, rugby, tennis, golf and even delve across the pond for a Stateside Show on all things NFL, NBA and MLB.

The EFL enjoys it's fair share of coverage, too. Along with more than 40 club-specific fan shows across the week, a bumper Saturday of dedicated post-match reflection on England's second, third and fourth tier guarantees your club the airtime it deserves.

Love Sport Radio Presenters

Presenters came from a range of backgrounds and included comedians, former Olympic athletes, and ex professional footballers:

Ian Stone - After dinner speaker, comedian, author and broadcaster.
Luther Blissett - Luther Loide Blissett OBE DL is a former professional footballer and manager who played for the England national team during the 1980s.
Martin Allen - Martin James Allen is an English football manager and former player. He played more than 100 games as a midfielder for both Queens Park Rangers and West Ham United before finishing his playing career with Portsmouth and Southend United.

Loving Sport on: Posh Boys on Drive

While the madness in the dog may have subsided in recent years, Martin the Manager still lurks somewhere beneath Martin the Broadcaster (who, by the way, is a joy to behold).

Years of experience in football have formed a treasure trove of tales, which he happily regales throughout the week with the Posh Boys, adding to expert insight on topical chat from within the game.According to the man himself, “You feed the horse, rub it, kick the thing sometimes and sometimes you cuddle it. But if that horse doesn't want to jump that hurdle, it doesn't matter how good a jockey you are. But God did they jump high today.”

Plenty more where that came from, on weekdays, 4pm to 7pm.
David Connolly - David James Connolly is a retired professional footballer who last played as a striker in League Two for AFC Wimbledon. He has previously played for the Republic of Ireland.
Paul Mortimer - He started his career at Fulham before signing for non-league side Farnborough Town in 1986. A year later, he joined Charlton Athletic in the First Division.
Iwan Thomas - Iwan Gwyn Thomas MBE (born 5 January 1974) is a British sprinter who represented Great Britain and Northern Ireland at the Olympic Games in the 400 metres, and Wales at the Commonwealth Games. Thomas is a former European, Commonwealth Games and World (4 × 400 m relay) champion.

Sporty Rise…

Love Sport Radio began to be broadcast nationally via SDL in 2020 having started in March 2019 being broadcast locally across North London. The former Editor of the Sun, and current LoveSport Chairman and Chief Executive, Kelvin MacKenzie, is the former founder of talksport radio and so clearly knows what he is doing. He raised £3.5 in order to take on his old station.

He has been known to take a swipe at his former company, upon LoveSports burgeoning growth he commented that:

“There’s clearly a gap in the UK market for a fresh, young sports voice, and the latest audience figures unquestionably reflect this. Our listeners are more interested in Harry Kane, while our competitors are reaching for their walking cane.”

MacKenzie has been a vocal advocate of opening up the radio licencing of FM and AM radio in the UK, arguing that the £10k a year paid by the current FM incumbents is far too low. He argues that it is ridiculous for Globals Classics FM (5.4m listeners), News Corp’s talkSPORT (2.9m listeners) and Absolute Radio (2.3m listeners) have to pay £10,000 a year for a FM licence which reaches almost every radio in the UK. Meanwhile LoveSport was forced to pay £35,000 for an AM licence covering just London with an approximate 11m population.

… and COVID fall

Unfortunately due to the onset of the Covid19 pandemic the station ceased to broadcast live in April 2020. At the time the station told listeners it was taking a break and has been playing non stop music ever since. As of 10pm New Years Eve 2020 the station is no more.

Kelvin told Radio Today at the time that “Covid killed the radio star. Commercial revenues collapsed in March, The radio business, especially small radio, is taking a terrible hammering.”

After closing down Love Sport’s most recent AM frequency in London, 1584 KHz now carries programmes by Asian FX radio.

Read an article about Love Sport Radio in Spanish.

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