BBC event comes back to the Midlands for the first time since 2007

This year’s BBC Sports Personality of the Year award will be held in Birmingham, at the LG Arena on Sunday 19th December.

The event, which was held in the Sheffield Arena last year, and pulled in 7.2 million viewers, will be covered live by BBC1, Radio 5 and the BBC Sport website.

The show will be presented by Gary Lineker, Sue Barker and Jake Humphrey and it is expected to be a fight between Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney and Scots tennis ace Andy Murray, who can be backed at 11/2 and 13/2 respectively with Boylesports.

Other contenders for the award are Grand National winning jockey Tony McCoy, who is a 6/1 (Coral) shot, and England Twenty 20 Cricket World Cup winning captain Kevin Pietersen, who is a surprise 40/1 (BetFred) outsider.

Announcing this year’s venue, BBC director of sport Barbara Slater said:

"It will be great to bring the event back to Birmingham and to be able to offer so many people the chance to be part of the celebrations.

"Sports Personality of the Year is such a great platform to celebrate the very best in sport and this is a great sporting area of the UK.

"We've had such a good reception when we have been here before and we're delighted that two local past winners, Ann Jones and Anita Lonsbrough, are able to join us today to help launch the event."

Jones was the women's singles champion at Wimbledon in 1969, while Lonsbrough won a swimming gold medal at the 1960 Olympics.