It hasn't and it shouldn't be. But when the media get to choose candidates and the public get to choose a winner from these candidates, results like this are always likely to occur.



Was Ryan Giggs the best player in the Premier League last season? No, in my opinion he wasn't even the best player at Manchester United. However, the fact he won his 11th title, overtook Sir Bobby Charlton as leading appearance maker for United and scored his 150th goal for the club, was what made his fellow professionals vote for him.



It was given entirely on sentimental grounds, in 1998/1999 he was awesome for United, yet missed out on POTY to Ginola (IIRC).



If United hadn't won the PL and he hadn't have won the POTY, he wouldn't have been nominated for SPOTY, but sentiment has made this possible.







Football is the most popular sport in the world. Which makes it more surprising at the very low number of SPOTY winners that have been footballers.

Footballing SPOTY



2009 Ryan Giggs

2001 David Beckham (for dragging England from the edge of a potential World Cup play-off match)

1998 Michael Owen (for having a pretty decent World Cup)

1990 Paul Gascoigne (see 1998 Michael Owen reason)

1966 Bobby Moore



I think the fact that England have won 1 title in the time that SPOTY has been running has been a factor.

Aye probably.



I thought Cavendish should've won the award tonight. A truly outstanding performance on the Tour.

I'm an Athletics fan anyway so my comments are biased about tonight's result. Quite a few deserved standing ovations tonight for Eddie Izzard and the Army Major as well as for Seve and Jessica Ennis.

By comparison to what ?



By comparison to the coverage that commercial radio give RL for instance ?



I think you'll find that local BBC Radio gives several hours worth of coverage to RL every week during the season.



As for the BBC's television output - its still light years ahead of anything that is produced in the UK by its rivals - the way that ITV is going they will soon have no production facilities left in this country and their commisioning editors seem to have the ability to choose the stuff that the BBC reject every time, as for Sky, buying American popularist trash series twelve months after they've been shown in the USA is not cutting edge TV production, its like publishing Heat magazine, you just take everyone elses copy and bundle it into your front cover every week.

Why do some people think Rugby League is bigger than it is? It gets about as much exposure on the beeb as is relevant to it's market.

His major achievment is to have the team and the players not embarass themselves and look like overpaid, spoiled, whingeing t@'s, or have their parasitic WAG's dominate the newspapers rather than the results.



A truly monumental achievement given what he had to work with.

Shouldnt he get a life time achievement award to recognise the facts you stated above......

If that were the criteria Wiggins should have won - truly immense performance especially when it really hurts and on his own up the climbs

There is some unfounded assumption that I somehow favour ITV/Channel 4 over the BBC. The fact is that I rarely watch terrestrial TV at all (unless there is something of particular interest) and I am far from a habitual or compulsive viewer, in fact I could class my viewing habits as relatively fickle. I prefer the output from such channels as Discovery, MTV, DMAX, History and Sky movies.



Radio can be excluded from this argument as, although funded by the Licence Fee, I am not forced to pay to listen to it. In this aspect I have consumer choice.



When I mention the Beebs RL output it is a very poor imitation of the coverage on Sky (excluding the two muppets Sky insists on employing in the commentary box). The amount of annual coverage and quality is pale by comparison.



Now I know the counter argument here is that Sky owns the rights to broadcast Super League but why is it the BBC didn’t dig deep with my cash to offer a counter bid? Because it is a minority sport that doesn’t deserve THAT amount of dosh spending on it. Agreed?



It all boils down to value for money – I may pay ‘x’ amount for Sky but in return I get several hundred channels – with the BBC I am forced to pay £160 (?) p/a for 5 TV channels, two of which are not even worth mentioning.



Now if it’s a case of quality over quantity do you honestly believe that there isn’t a program of equal quality being broadcast simultaneously to every BBC output?

The output from BBC Radio is worthy of inclusion in the debate, its funded by the licence fee so you can't exclude it from your argument merely on the grounds that it doesn't suit your argument - truth is that BBC Radio is funded from your licence and as such it offers a huge wodge of RL coverage, probably more than Sky do on their specialised TV sport channels.



TV coverage on RL is absolutely governed by the fact that Sky hold all of the cards for all SL coverage, the BBC can only show what Sky tell them to show, we all know that, so to complain that the BBC hardly show any at all is a bit pedantic - if you want to blame anyone then blame the RFL, they negotiated the contract.



As for your hundreds of satellite channels, its personal choice, I'm sure there are probably some people out there who really did watch every episode of Lost and sat on the edge of their seats when they did so, and in the case of Damo probably thought it was a factual documentary - those people will think that Sky One is probably the best channel in the world.



Personally I thought Sky One lost it when they stopped producing Sky Search For A Star.

I've never seen SPOTY, just the endings, I turn it on to see who wins it. Is it a public vote? How do you vote? Online? Or is it just aload of people we never see that decide?