Brian Barwick

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Brian Barwick is the current Chief Executive of The Football Association. He has held the post since January 2005. Previously, he spent 18 years at the BBC, and was ITV's Controller of Sport for seven years.

Born in Liverpool, Barwick gained a degree in Economics at Manchester University.

After a spell as a journalist, he joined the BBC’s sports department in 1979. During his 18-year career at the BBC he rose through the ranks becoming editor of Match of the Day, Football Focus and Sportsnight. A passionate football fan, he oversaw major events including the FIFA World Cups of 1990 and 1994, the Barcelona and Atlanta Olympic Games, the Commonwealth Games plus the European and World Athletics Championships. He was also responsible for BBC Television’s Sports Review Of The Year between 1991 and 1995. He also took the decision to axe the long running Sportsnight series and replaced it with the shortlived chatshow Onside.

In 1998 he left BBC Sport to become ITV's Controller of Sport, and during his time at ITV he oversaw the channel's biggest-ever audience of 23.8m viewers for the match between England and Argentina at the 1998 World Cup. He revamped ITV's sport coverage as well as maintaining the channel's high-profile events, such as the Champions League rights - the renewal of which he successfully negotiated. He also withstood competition from the BBC to gain the rights to show Premiership highlights although his attempt to place them early evening on Saturday's failed and the rights were lost back to the BBC after just three years. But it was not all success for Barwick, who saw ITV come under heavy criticism for its production of the 2003 Rugby World Cup, something which he resented.

While at ITV he also sacked ITV's star summariser Ron Atkinson after the pundit, made racist comments about Chelsea defender Marcel Desailly.

Barwick is a lifelong supporter of Liverpool F.C. When Barwick was appointed to the post of FA Chief Executive, Greg Dyke, the former BBC Director-General, questioned his lack of neutrality towards Manchester United stating that Barwick "hates United and all that they stand for" [1].