As well as the Gary Lineker crisis, Slater oversaw the slow demise of live coverage of Britain’s most popular sporting events
Match of the Day was broadcast without any commentary on the day of the BBC’s Gary Lineker crisis Credit: Match of the Day/BBC Sport
She is the first BBC executive who presided over one of its darkest days to quit her job.
For Barbara Slater, announcing her impending retirement less than six months since the Gary Lineker crisis always carried the risk of it becoming the defining legacy of her 14-year reign as the corporation’s director of sport.
But even before the unprecedented furore sparked by Match of the Day presenter Lineker comparing the Government’s flagship illegal immigration bill to Nazi Germany, her record as the first woman to reach such heights was chequered.
The 64-year-old’s tenure at the BBC - 40 years in total - coincided with the death throes of the slow but savage demise of the national broadcaster’s portfolio of Britain’s most popular sporting occasions.
Analysis by Telegraph Sport last year found that out of 22 elite events across a range of sports, the BBC no longer held exclusive live rights to any of them. They had a share of those rights for just eight.
The loss of the biggest of them took place on Slater’s watch, including the complete surrender of those for Formula One, The Open Championship, the Grand National and other major race meetings. They were compounded by the BBC being forced to share coverage of Wimbledon and the Six Nations – the latter in an increasingly one-sided deal with ITV – and most notoriously of all for former Olympic gymnast Slater, its relegation to junior partner alongside Discovery in the broadcast of the biggest sporting event of the lot.
Of the share of major live rights the BBC still holds, most must be shown free-to-air by law either in full or in part, including football’s World Cups and European Championships, and the finals of the FA Cup, Wimbledon and rugby league’s Challenge Cup.
Slater long lobbied the Government to add more events to the so-called ‘Crown Jewels’ list, to little avail, leaving her fighting an uphill battle against the millions - sometimes billions - of pounds lavished on sports rights by pay-TV networks.
At the same time, Slater’s tenure has seen the BBC fail to capitalise fully on its status as the public’s go-to broadcaster for events of national significance to secure a slice of recent iconic sporting occasions.
It did manage a notable success in getting four live England cricket matches – albeit only two men’s and two women’s T20s – back on free-to-air television. But it has been outmanoeuvred by its terrestrial rivals when it comes to more major coups.
Channel 4, in particular, pulled off a succession of masterstrokes by securing the rights to the 2019 Cricket World Cup final, Emma Raducanu’s 2021 US Open final triumph, the climax of the same year’s Formula 1 World Championship, and the England men’s football team’s Euro 2024 qualifiers, Nations League matches and international friendlies. The BBC was humiliated when it bought the highlights to the Raducanu match, only to be forced to hand them back.
Aside from the return of live cricket, there was not one word on any of this among the more than 700 from the BBC announcing Slater’s departure, in which it hailed the vital role she had played in championing women’s sport.
Neither was there any mention of the Lineker crisis or the ongoing row over impartiality that saw him stood down from Match of the Day, only for the star’s fellow presenters and pundits to boycott the programme in solidarity.
Slater was forced to apologise to staff for the rancorous fallout from the affair, with sources telling Telegraph Sport at the time she looked “visibly worn out” amid rising fury at management’s handling of it by the corporation’s rank and file.
A BBC insider said it would have been harsh if she ended up being “thrown under the bus” for a decision that had come from the very top and culminated in a humiliating about-turn from director-general Tim Davie.
However, other sources highlighted how Slater had taken the editorial direction towards “talent over journalists” in recent years. There was a strong feeling among some that the corporation indulged freelancers like Lineker who abided by different rules to staff journalists.
Slater’s announcement came as the BBC braced itself for the damning findings of an internal review triggered by the Lineker crisis.
Her focus, meanwhile, was on it being 40 years ago this week since she “first walked through the doors at Broadcasting House” as a trainee assistant producer in the Natural History Unit before moving into BBC Sport, where she rose up the ranks to become director of sport in April 2009.
Her crowning moment came three years later when the BBC showed wall-to-wall coverage of the 2012 Olympics in London and she was made an OBE soon after for services to sports broadcasting.
After everything that has happened since, that is now unlikely to be how she is best remembered.
