By Tom Degun

May 18 - The BBC have announced that the 2010 Sports Personality of the Year event will be held in Birmingham after the city won the right to host the awards ceremony back from Sheffield where they took place last year.



The prestigious event will now be held at the LG Arena in Birmingham on Sunday December 19.

The awards ceremony, which was established in 1954, was held outside London for the first time in its 53-year history in 2006 when Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre [now the LG Arena] hosted the event.

The 2006 BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards, which was won by world eventing champion Zara Phillips, also marked the first time that tickets for the event were made available to the general public.

They sold out within an hour of being made available.

The same venue in Birmingham hosted the event in 2007 before the awards ceremony moved to the Echo Arena in Liverpool in 2008 and then Sheffield in 2009 where a record crowd of over 10,000 watched Manchester United’s Ryan Giggs crowned at the Sheffield Arena.

However, Birmingham has now been confirmed as the venue for the 2010 awards ceremony and BBC director of sport Barbara Slater revealed that she is delighted that the event is returning to the city for the first time in three years. 

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."



Last year’s event pulled in 7.2 million television viewers as Giggs beat Formula One champion Jenson Button and heptathlon world champion Jessica Ennis to the honour.

This year’s Sports Personality of the Year will again be presented by the trio of Sue Barker, Gary Lineker and Jake Humphrey while live coverage from the venue will feature on BBC One, Radio 5 Live, BBC Red Button and the BBC Sport website.

Programme, ticket and voting details will be announced nearer the time.

Manchester United and England football Wayne Rooney has been installed by bookies as the early favourite to win the 2010 crown at 4/1 ahead of 2010 Grand National winning jockey Tony McCoy who is at 9/2 and tennis star Andy Murray who is currently 5/1 to scope the prize.

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Related stories
December 2009: Giggs beats Button and Ennis to BBC Sports Personality
April 2009: BBC Sports Personality to be held in Sheffield
October 2006: BBC Sports Personality in Birmingham sells out in an hour