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The BBC Sports Personality of the Year is an awards ceremony that takes place annually in December. Devised by Paul Fox in 1954, it originally consisted of one titular award given to a sportsperson who the public adjudge to have achieved the most that year. Since the first ceremony several new awards have been introduced, and, eight awards are presented; The oldest of these are the Team of the Year and Overseas Personality awards, both of which were introduced in 1960.

In 2003, the 50th anniversary of the show was marked by a five part series on BBC One called Simply The Best – Sports Personality. It was presented by Gary Lineker and formed part of a public vote to determine a special Golden Sports Personality of the Year, which was won by Sir Steve Redgrave. That year Steve Rider and Martyn Smith wrote a book that reflected on the 50-year history of the award and programme. In 2006, the event was held outside London for the first time and tickets were made available to the public.

The trophy for the main award is a silver plated four-turret lens camera, and for the other awards smaller imitations of the main trophy are used. All the BBC local regions now have their own independent award ceremonies. These take place before the main ceremony and are used to compile a shortlist for the BBC Sports Unsung Hero Award.

Awards
, eight awards were presented at the ceremony:


 * BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award
 * BBC Overseas Sports Personality of the Year
 * BBC Sports Personality Team of the Year Award
 * BBC Sports Personality of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award
 * BBC Sports Personality of the Year Coach Award
 * BBC Sports Personality of the Year Helen Rollason Award
 * BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year
 * BBC Sports Unsung Hero Award

History
The BBC's Sports Personality of the Year was created by Paul Fox, who came up with the idea while he was editor of the magazine show Sportsview. The first award ceremony took place in 1954 as part of Sportsview, and was presented by Peter Dimmock. Taking place at the Savoy Hotel on 30 December 1954, the show lasted 45 minutes. It consisted of one titular award for the sportsperson, adjudged by the public, to have achieved the most that year. Voting was by postcard, and rules presented in a Radio Times article stipulated that nominations were restricted to athletes who had featured on the Sportsview programme since April. For the inaugural BBC Sportsperson of the Year award, 14,517 votes were cast and Christopher Chataway beat Roger Bannister. The following year the show was renamed Sports Review of the Year and given a longer duration of 75 minutes.

In 1960 Dimmock presented the show, and introduced two new awards: the Team of the Year award and the Overseas Personality award, won by the Cooper Car Company and Herb Elliott respectively. David Coleman joined the show the following year and was a co-presenter on the show until 1983. Anita Lonsbrough became the first female recipient of the main award in 1962; females won it in the following two years as well. Frank Bough took over as presenter in 1964 and presented Sports Review for 18 years. In 1969, a new Manager of the Year award was given to Don Revie for his achievements with Leeds United; it was the only time that the award was ever presented. In the following year, Henry Cooper became the first person to win the main award twice, having previously won in 1967.

During the 1970s Bough and Coleman presided over the ceremony alongside Jimmy Hill, Cliff Morgan, Kenneth Wolstenholme, and Harry Carpenter, who also went on to present the show for much of the 1980s. Des Lynam presented from 1983, and presided over Torvill and Dean's win the following year, where they became the first non-individual winners of the main award. Steve Rider co-presented the 1986 show with Lynam, at which a Special Team Award was presented to Great Britain mens 4 x 400 m relay team. In the 1980s, Steve Davis finished in the top three on five occasions, including one win in 1988. In 1991 Bob Nudd received the most votes following a campaign in the Angling Times. However the BBC deemed this to be against the rules and "discarded all the ballots cast on forms printed in the Angling Times", allowing Liz McColgan to win the award. The following year Nigel Mansell became the second person to win the main award twice, having won his first in 1986. Sue Barker presented the show for the first time in 1994, at which Damon Hill won the first of his two awards, the second coming two years later. Frank Bruno was the inaugural winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996, and there have been ten recipients of the award.

In 1999 the show was renamed Sports Personality of the Year, and Gary Lineker joined the show as a co-presenter alongside Barker. Barker and Lineker were supported by John Inverdale and Clare Balding that year and the ceremony introduced a further three regular awards; Coach of the Year, Newcomer of the Year, and a Helen Rollason Award for "outstanding courage and achievement in the face of adversity". Additionally in a one-off award Muhammad Ali was voted as Sports Personality of the Century. On 1 November 2003, BBC Books published "BBC Sports Personality of the Year 50th Anniversary" (ISBN 056348747X), written by Steve Rider and Martyn Smith, to mark the golden anniversary of the show. In the lead up to the anniversary show on 14 December 2003, a series of five half-hour special programmes, entitled Simply The Best – Sports Personality, were broadcast. Hosted by Gary Lineker, the episodes were shown on BBC One for five consecutive nights from 8–12 December 2008 and each covered one decade of Sports Personality. At the beginning of each special programme the public could vote for a past winner. The five most popular winners were announced at the start of the anniversary ceremony as a shortlist for one of two special 50th Anniversary awards. From the shortlist, Steve Redgrave was voted Golden Sports Personality of the Year by the public. The England World Cup winning team of 1966 won a Team of the Decades award, voted for by representatives from every previous winning Team of the Year.

In 2006, for the first time in its 53-year history, the event was held outside London in Birmingham's National Exhibition Centre (NEC). As part of the move, tickets for the event also became available for the public to purchase for the first time, with 3,000 tickets being sold within the first hour. That year Adrian Chiles joined the show and co-presented alongside Barker and Lineker for two years. The 2007 ceremony was the first of a two-year sponsorship deal with Britvic's brand Robinsons and the capacity of the NEC was increased by 3,000 to a total of 8,000. The event sold out, but the sponsorship deal was shortened to one year after complaints by ITV and RadioCentre caused the BBC Trust to rule in June 2008 that "Editorial Guidelines were breached and the editorial integrity of the BBC compromised by giving the impression to licence fee payers via Sports Personality of the Year that part of a BBC service had been sponsored." They decided that the 2008 awards should not be broadcast as a sponsored event and no new sponsorship deal was negotiated after the Britvic deal expired. In February 2008, the BBC announced that the 2008 Sports Personality of the Year event would be held at the Echo Arena, Liverpool. One of the reasons for the move to Liverpool was allow greater numbers to view the show live, as the 10,600-seater venue in Liverpool had a bigger capacity than the NEC. That year Jake Humphrey replaced Chiles as co-presenter. For 2009, the show was rumoured to be held in either Cardiff or Glasgow. However, it was announced on 30 April 2009 that the show would be staged at The Sheffield Arena.

Trophy
The trophy for the main award was created in the 1950s for a cost of around £1,000 and first presented to the inaugural winner, Christopher Chataway, in 1954. It is a silver plated four-turret lens camera, with each winner engraved upon individual shields that are attached to a plinth underneath the camera. Originally the trophy had one plinth, but two more have since been added to create room for more shields. A replica trophy was made in 1981 and sent to Australia in case Ian Botham won the award while playing cricket over there—which he did. The original trophy is still used for the ceremony and it is engraved sometime after the show, before being kept by the winner for eight or nine months. The trophies for second and third place, and for the other awards are currently smaller imitations of the main trophy, but have in the past been silver salvers. For the two special awards celebrating the 50th Anniversary, and for the Sports Personality of the Century award, similar miniature trophies were presented but they were gold in colour.

Regional awards
The three BBC national regions of BBC Wales, BBC Scotland and BBC Northern Ireland all hold their own individual sports personality awards. Respectively they are BBC Wales Sports Personality of the Year, BBC Scotland Sports Personality of the Year, and BBC Northern Ireland Sports Personality of the Year. The twelve local BBC English Regions also have their own award ceremonies. These ceremonies are held locally to the region, and in advance of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year ceremony. Fifteen regional winners make up the nominees for the BBC Sports Unsung Hero Award.