Former professional ice hockey player, broadcaster and Olympic medallist Cassie Campbell-Pascall will be hosting a new sports podcast for BBC World Service launching this month, the broadcaster announced.
Amazing Sport Stories is an adaption of the BBC’s Sport Insight articles, which tell in-depth stories from the world of sports. The series will be released in mini-seasons of three to four episodes, with standalone episodes that each focus on an individual story.
“This is a sports podcast where we don’t care about score lines and fixtures, we care about the human instinct to try to be the best,” said BBC World Service sport commissioning editor Anna Doble. “These stories capture the emotion, struggle and sometimes plain craziness that those ambitions involve.”
Stories that will be looked at for the first season include a 12-year-old girl who fought for her right to play ice hockey with the boys, the story of 14 Black American football players who were kicked off their team in the 1960s for planning a protest against racism, and other stories from countries like Iran and Zambia.
“At the heart of every episode of this podcast is an amazing, unputdownable story,” said BBC World Service podcast commissioning editor Jon Manel. “Some are about glorious achievements against all odds, others are about mystery and wonder and then there are heart-wrenching tales of hope turned to dust. With the BBC World Service’s global reach, these stories come from all over the world.”
Amazing Sport Stories is produced by Mags Creative, an award-winning podcast production and promotion agency which has worked on podcasts for a number of other platforms including Podimo, Spotify, Amazon, and more. The podcast will be available to listen to on BBC Sounds and all other major podcast platforms from 30 October. The series will also be broadcast on BBC World Service radio.
BBC World Service’s podcast portfolio includes hits like the Global News Podcast and The Documentary Podcast, both of which were the most popular podcasts from the BBC across global plays and on third-party platforms, according to its Q2 2023 report.
