The Black Collective of Media in Sport will hold its one-day conference, the D Word 3, during this year's #FootballPeople weeks.

The event on October 8th will discuss ways to increase diversity in UK sports media, journalism and broadcasting, and will bring together journalists, students, academics, diversity experts and others to discuss a pathway to greater diversity and inclusivity in the industry.

The theme of the conference is ‘The Future’ where the debate will focus on how to have a more diverse sports media and how to improve the quality of journalism and broadcasting across the industry.

Under-representation of ethnic minorities and women in sports media in the UK has been well-documented. In 2016, research looking at 456 sports media roles found that there were only 12 female newspaper reporters out of a total of 143 (8.4%) across the four major sporting events that summer - the Wimbledon Tennis championships, Euro 2016 in France, the Olympic and Paralympic games in Brazil.

There were also only eight black journalists who were not former athletes across the 456 roles and only six ethnic minority women (1.3%). In TV and radio only 19 out of 113 commentators were women.

The D Word 3 conference will explore this, as well as the evolution of sports media, the growth of digital platforms and advancements in technology.

The situation across Europe will also be analysed in a series of special sessions hosted by the Fare network.

The discussions will lead to BCOMS producing a diversity guide for the sports media to refer to for leading advice and guidance to help diversify the industry.

The initiative is funded by the Fare network and Refresh Films and organised as part of the Football People weeks. You can register for tickets for the event at BT Sport studios here.