Netball Super League | Betty Glover on making her voice heard in broadcast journalism

Betty Glover’s career in sports media took off all thanks to her most cherished sport: netball.

The freelance presenter and reporter is most well-known for her radio and TV work at the BBC, where she spent the best part of eight years covering a raft of sports.

One of the ways, Glover helped to bring the game to mainstream attention was when she co-founded BBC Radio 5 Live’s weekly podcast ‘NetBallers’.

“Netball has always been my main passion,” said Glover.

“When I first started at BBC Sport one of the things that got my career off the ground was starting a netball podcast at the BBC, which at that point hadn’t really been done before, especially at a national level.

“So we did a netball podcast for 5 Live, and that’s how things snowballed.

“I try and push it as much as possible across BBC Sport, which really is not an easy thing to do when football is king. But I feel like we are really getting there.”

Glover has had to fight tooth and nail to have her voice heard throughout her career, starting at school where the PE and English Language student felt left out by her male classmates.

Glover said: “At school I felt like I was rubbish at everything except from sport. Sport was really the only thing I was interested in.

“I think it’s really hard for young girls, and in my case when I was younger, I felt I couldn’t really talk about sport.

“But I absolutely loved it, I loved playing it, being involved, loved PE at school.

“Often all the boys would be talking about football and sport – and I’d be a bit on the edge not having the confidence to speak about it.

“But it really was genuinely the only thing I’ve been massively passionate about.”

And even after Glover had graduated from Bournemouth University with a degree in Multimedia Journalism, she found her new professional environment similarly difficult.

“You will see a lot of women on your screens,” said Glover.

“Sky do an amazing job with their Netball Super League coverage. It’s better but having said that, it’s still not perfect.

“As a woman in this business, if you make a mistake, it’s really highlighted. You’ve got to work so much harder.

“To be a woman talking about sport you have to be perfect, you have to work so hard for everything to be perfect.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by BETTYWYN GLOVER (@_bettsg)

As for the future of netball, Glover is adamant the sport deserves a far bigger platform and encouraged people to narrow the gap between participation and viewership.

“We need it in the Olympics! Please!” said Glover. “If it did get to the Olympics, it’ll have so many more eyes on the sport seeing how good it can be.

“It’s so back and forth, it’s so on the edge of your seat. It’s constant in terms of drama happening.

“I genuinely believe the more people that watch it, the more people will buy into it.

“It was great having the Netball World Cup on BBC free-to-air TV – with a peak audience of 1.3m watching the final. What incredible numbers! I’d like to see more of this In the future – because the more people we can get watching this brilliant sport, the bigger it will get.

“If you play netball at school or your club and you don’t follow a netball team, just try and give it a go, because from playing the sport you’ll understand how it works so get on board and watch it!”

You might recognise Betty from her brilliant voiceover in our #SeeUsNow campaign which you can watch here and watch this space with more to come in collaboration with Betty over the next few months. Be the first to hear by following the NSL on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook and LinkedIn as well as keeping up with all the latest news and exclusive content by signing up to the NSL newsletter here.

You can catch games from the Netball Super League live on Sky Sports and BBC Sport every week here, and buy tickets to every home game including the NSL Grand Final here.