Sports Personality of the Year awards to come to Liverpool. (Garston and Halewood Liberal Democrats)

Garston and Halewood Liberal Democrats <info@garstonld.org.uk>

Sports Personality of the Year awards to come to Liverpool.

February 24, 2008 8:04 AM

The BBC has announced that the BBC Sports Personality of the Year event will be held at The Echo Arena Liverpool and will be covered live on BBC ONE on Sunday 14 December.

The state of the art venue is a 10,600 seat entertainment and sporting venue and is part of the Arena and Convention Centre Liverpool, the venue for the launch of the city's Capital of Culture celebrations.

With tickets for the previous two shows selling out within three hours, the increase in the size of the venue will also allow an increase in the total size of the audience. Last year 8,000 people were able to view the show live and the move to Liverpool, for this year's event, will allow even greater numbers to experience the unique atmosphere.

Roger Mosey, Director of Sport, said: "It feels right to be taking Sports Personality of the Year to the great sporting city of Liverpool, and it's particularly exciting to be part of the Capital of Culture events. We've had a great time in Birmingham in the past two years and we'd love to go back there in future, but this shows our commitment to taking the event to venues outside London and to allowing as many people as possible to see their sporting heroes."

Arena and Convention Centre Liverpool chief executive Bob Prattey said: "This is a major achievement for the city of Liverpool and for our venue. It is entirely fitting that a city with such an illustrious sporting history and pedigree should host these awards during its year as European Capital of Culture.

Echo Arena general manager Tim Banfield added: "We are delighted to be hosting this year's awards ceremony, which will bring invaluable exposure to Liverpool at a time when the city is going through an unprecedented period of renaissance.

"The Echo Arena is at the heart of this renaissance and is arguably the finest venue of its kind in the UK, if not Europe."

Liverpool City Council leader Warren Bradley said: "ACC Liverpool has been a genuine partnership project which has seen the city council work closely with Liverpool Vision, English Partnerships, the North West Regional Development Agency and the European Objective One Programme to deliver a major project for the benefit of the whole city.

"The BBC Sports Personality of the Year event is a terrific coup for us and will be a highlight of our year as European Capital of Culture."

The BBC Sports Personality of the Year event, supported by Robinsons, recorded viewing figures of 8.6m people watching Joe Calzaghe win the 2007 BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award.

Programme, ticket and voting details will be announced nearer the time.