Sky Sports commentator Gary Taphouse’s advice to get a career in sports media

Sky Sports football commentator Gary Taphouse has been offering advice to our students on how to forge a career within the sports industry.

Gary has been a commentator for Sky Sports since 2005, commentating on more than 1,000 Premier League games, as well as having covered multiple World Cups and European Championships.

In addition to his work at Sky Sports, he is also a freelance football commentator for IMG Media, Input Media and Pitch International.

He is also an associate lecturer with UCFB, and has been for the past seven years, helping our BA (Hons) Multimedia Sports Journalism students on their match commentary module.

Gary was on the panel at our Sports Media and Journalism Premier Event Conference, held at our Wembley Campus.

He spoke about what advice he would give to students wanting a career specifically within sports media.

He said: “I think the best piece of advice I can give is that you need to prove to people that you can do the job.

“So that means when you get in touch with someone, you say click here and you can see me doing the job.

“What experience can you get? How can you use the university’s facilities to prove to people that you can do the job?

“Whether it’s presenting, reporting, commentating, etc. Use the facilities to film yourself, record yourself, have a look back. What do I like about it? What don’t I like about it? What can I improve upon?

“Record it again, show it to people and get their feedback and then it’s something you can show to people within the industry.

“‘Here’s an example of me doing it.’ That’s the best advice I can give to anybody because experience in our industry is everything.”