New research from the BCOMS (Black Collective of Media Sports) sports media diversity group has highlighted the lack of ethnic minorities and women amongst British journalists reporting on big sporting tournaments.

The headline findings include the startling revelation that of 51 UK newspaper reporters at Euro 2016 this summer only one female journalist was working at the tournament.

The figures were revealed at the D-word2 conference in London on Monday, which took place as part of the Football People weeks. The data covers media representation at four of the biggest global sports events over the summer of 2016 – the Wimbledon Tennis championships, Euro 2016 in France, the Olympic and Paralympic games in Brazil.

The research looked at 456 roles and found that there were only 12 female newspaper reporters out of a total of 143 across all four events (a total of 8.4%), there were just eight black journalists who were not former athletes across the 456 roles and there were only six ethnic minority women (1.3%). In TV and radio only 19 out of 113 commentators were women.

The conference was attended by 200 delegates at BT Sport studios in Stratford and heard senior decision makers in UK sports media - including Simon Green, Head of BT Sport, Philip Bernie, BBC Head of TV Sport, Alex Kay-Jelski, Sports Editor of The Times, Andy Cairns, Sky Sports News Executive Editor and Stephen Lyle, Channel 4 Commissioning Editor pledge to do more to increase diversity within the industry

Broadcasters Hugh Woozencroft, Jessica Creighton, Benny Bonsu and Jeanette Kwakye chaired the conference discussions which will be used by BCOMS to produce a guide on how to address the lack of diversity in the industry.

Leon Mann, BCOMS Founder and broadcaster, said: “The #DWord2 was a success. To see so many delegates come together – including many of the most powerful decision makers in the business – to discuss, debate and come up with solutions to address a lack of diversity in the sports media is another significant step forward in this area.

“The focus now is on the industry taking on board many of the excellent ideas generated by the conference to help change a worrying situation where we have a sports media that is totally unrepresentative of modern society in the UK.”