Tony Jones (born 26 May 1958) is a football (soccer) broadcaster based in England.[1] He has contributed to all the commercial UK broadcasting outlets - Sky Sports, five, Channel 4 and ITV - commentating on everything from the UEFA Champions League to the English non-League.
He was part of the Hostbroadcastservices (HBS) team at both the 2010 and 2006 World Cups, and his voice has been heard on games distributed overseas by IMG among others.
He has won a Royal Television Society award for his sports reporting, and has also been responsible for producing several programmes.
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Jones began his career in ITV in 1982 at Anglia Television in Norwich, where he joined a sports department that included Gerry Harrison, an established network commentator who was to later hold an executive position with IMG.
Jones commentated on football and produced a number of programmes - including an insight into the horse racing industry and the arrival in England of Sergei Baltacha, a Ukrainian who was the first footballer from the old Soviet Union to play in Britain during the Glasnost era of the late 1980s. He also won a Royal Television Society award for his journalism.
For the ITV network, he was a regular contributor to the Football League review shows The Championship and Football League Extra. He has also worked on ITV's FA Cup, Europa League and UEFA Cup programming.
Jones worked with Channel 4, commentating on the Copa Libertadores with Tim Caple.
Jones commentated on Five's Football Italiano show. With five Jones has also covered live UEFA Cup games and international fixtures.
Jones has been covering games for Sky Sports since 2002, starting with the German Bundesliga.
In 2004, he became part of their team of commentators for Football First - covering the English Premier League for audiences both in the UK and overseas.
He has been a regular member of their UEFA Champions League commentary team.
Jones also commentates on Premier League matches for Premier League Productions, a venture of IMG Sports Media who produce, package and broadcast the live production of games for the Premier League for its international broadcast partners worldwide. The same productions are also shown domestically for highlights packages on Sky Sports and for full match non live coverage.
Jones has covered Spain's La Liga and Italy's Serie A for Al Jazeera Sport+3.
Other credits include three FIFA World Cups, and Euro 2008 in Austria and Switzerland, where he commentated on games through to the semi-finals.
In October 2009, Jones was commentator (co-commentator David Pleat, the former Tottenham Hotspur and Luton Town manager) when the Ukraine v. England FIFA World Cup qualifying fixture became Britain's biggest internet pay-to-view sports broadcast. Around 500,000 watched the game - produced by the Perform Group and their partners Kentaro, an international football agency.
Although his work is mostly associated with football, Jones has covered several other sporting events, including water-polo at the FINA World Swimming Championships and archery at the 2010 Commonwealth Games.
His journalistic career started at the Cheshire Observer newspaper, and his first radio work followed at Liverpool's Radio City.