Matt Smith (broadcaster)

Matt Smith (born 1967) is a British broadcaster, who worked with ITV Sport between 2001-2015. He currently presents some of BT Sport's European football coverage and sports news bulletins on BBC News.

Early life

Smith is a Modern Languages and Political Studies graduate from Sheffield City Polytechnic, where he studied from 1985-89.^[1] During that time, he spent a year in Italy as part of his studies.^[1] He was then offered an internship with the Associated Press in Rome, before moving on to the Financial Times as a television producer.^[1]

Career

Radio

After leaving the Financial Times, Smith joined the Business Unit at BBC News, and presented business reports on John Inverdale's programme on Radio 5 Live. He got his first sport-presenting role on Chris Evans' Radio 1 Breakfast Show.^[1]

Smith has presented BBC Radio Four's final ^[2] children's programme, Go 4 It.

Until May 2008, he presented Weekend Breakfast on Radio 5 Live with Rachel Burden,^[3] along with occasional cover on the Drive 4pm-7pm weekday show.

Television

At the BBC, Smith worked initially on Midlands Today, Breakfast, and BBC News 24,^[1] before moving onto Football Fever, World Snooker,^[1] and international events including the Sydney Olympics^[1] and Euro 2000, before joining ITV in the summer of 2001.

Smith was one of the presenters on the ITV Sport Channel.^[1] He hosts coverage of UEFA Cup live matches and UEFA Champions League highlights. In the past, he has presented The Championship highlights programme every Sunday on ITV, and UEFA Champions League Live matches on ITV4 until ITV lost the respective contracts. He has also occasionally presented ITV Granada's weekly football show, Soccer Night.

During the 2002 World Cup in Korea and Japan, Smith hosted a panel-based show featuring debate and World Cup highlights every evening during the tournament.^[1] At Euro 2004, he was the senior reporter based with the England team.^[1]

Smith has also hosted On The Ball and Speed Sunday, and has reported at ITV's boxing coverage. He is also the main presenter of ITV's Darts coverage since the sport returned to the channel in 2007 after a long absence, presenting the Grand Slam of Darts, European Darts Championship, UK Open, The Masters and The Players Championship alongside Chris Mason and Alan Warriner-Little. He also presented Snooker for ITV4 and was the main presenter of ITV coverage of IPL Cricket from 2010-2014 until they lost the rights to Sky Sports.

He also deputised for John Dykes for Matchday Live, the Barclays Premier League matchday programme that is broadcast around the world, for the weekend of 13/14 December 2014.

Following the departure of both Gabby Logan and Jim Rosenthal from ITV, Smith has gone from being ITV's fourth-choice sports presenter to second, behind Adrian Chiles. He now regularly appears on ITV4 as well as the main ITV channel however he is leaving ITV at the end of the 2015 football season as ITV lost the rights to Live UEFA Champions League & Europa League and will be replaced by Jacqui Oatley who will cover European Qualifiers, African Cup of Nations, International Football and Darts, essentially presenting everything Matt Smith was to that point. While at ITV, Smith covered 4 World Cups, 3 European Championships, hosted coverage of FA Cup Finals, Champions League Finals, Europa League Finals, England Internationals, European Qualifiers, International Friendlies, African Cup of Nations, IPL Cricket, Snooker and PDC Darts.^[4]

Since September 2015, Smith has been presenting BT Sport's Europa League coverage alongside Jake Humphrey.

Personal life

Smith is a fan of Liverpool.^[5]

References

External links