The twenty-eighth edition of ‘Round the Sports World in five minutes’ features analysis of Thursday night’s BBC Sports Personality of the Year award and a look at the Scottish Open in snooker, where Mark Selby is carrying our money.
BBC Sports Personality of the Year (SPOTY)
- Start: Thursday, 18 December
- Venue: Salford, United Kingdom
- Coverage: BBC
- Fun Fact: Interestingly, the last four winners of SPOTY (BBC Sports Personality of the Year) have all been female: tennis player Emma Raducanu in 2021, footballers Beth Mead and Mary Earps in 2022 and 2023, and 800m runner Keely Hodgkinson last year.
Betting Tips
Northern Irish golfer Rory McIlroy leads the betting for BBC Sports Personality of the Year (SPOTY) with Betfred pricing him up as the 1.57 favourite.
It’s a six-person shortlist, with F1 World champion Lando Norris next at 4.0, then it’s England footballer Chloe Kelly at 6.5, darts player Luke Littler at 21.0, rugby player Ellie Kildunne at 34.0, and finally Hannah Hampton, also a female footballer, at 101.0.
Betfred have a separate market that’s the ‘winner without Rory McIlroy’ one, where the second favourite (in the main market) is unsurprisingly the favourite in this one: Norris at 1.4.
You can see why McIlroy is the one to beat. This was probably the best year of his career in which he finally, finally added the US Masters title to his CV, 14 years after leading the tournament going into the final round, before an implosion on the back nine cost him the win back in 2011.
In winning this year’s Masters, he completed a career Grand Slam: winning all four Majors, only the sixth player in history to do so, and the first-ever European.
But it was his exploits at the Ryder Cup as much as anything that made him the red-hot favourite. The Ryder Cup is an extremely popular event among the UK audience, and it’s a public vote to decide the winner, which could make all the difference.
He was very much the heartbeat of the Europe team, who won it as considerable underdogs over in the US in September; it’s a very rare feat for a Ryder Cup team to win on enemy soil.
Norris is fresh from winning the 2025 F1 World Championship the weekend before last in dramatic circumstances, while both Chloe Kelly and Hannah Hampton were part of the England Women’s Team, who won the Euros.
Ellie Kildunne, who plays full-back for England, was part of the side that won the Women’s Rugby World Cup on home soil, beating Canada in the final.
Luke Littler, runner-up for SPOTY last year, has since won the PDC World Championship and has now also completed the Triple Crown by winning the three most important tournaments in the sport.
Summary:
SPOTY is much-loved by the British public, an opportunity for them to vote for the British sportsperson they think has shone the brightest over the last year.
This last point is important:
Even though it's called Sports PERSONALITY of the Year, it’s actually meant to reward the sportsperson who achieved the most in a sporting context, not the most charismatic or entertaining person!
The award has been going since 1954, and the list of past winners reads like a ‘who’s who’ of British sport, including Lewis Hamilton, Andy Murray, Ryan Giggs, Jonny Wilkinson, Nick Faldo, Paul Gascoigne, Paula Radcliffe and Kelly Holmes.
McIlroy may be the strong favourite, but golfers don’t have a good record when it comes to winning it. The last one to do so was Nick Faldo back in 1989.
Scottish Open Snooker
- Start: In Progress
- Venue: Meadowbank Sports Centre in Edinburgh, Scotland
- Coverage: TNT Sports, Eurosport
- Fun Fact: Despite being called the Scottish Open, the event hasn’t always been held in Scotland! In 2020, it took place in Milton Keynes, England, and in 2021, in Llandudno, Wales.
Betting Tips
Let’s start by telling you who won’t be at the tournament.
Judd Trump, Ronnie O’Sullivan, Neil Robertson and Ding Junhui are among the big-name players who decided to skip the event as they manage their workload and take a break before the Masters takes place in the New Year.
Marco Fu misses out with an elbow injury, while Luca Brecel pulled out at the last minute for personal reasons.
So, if all those are missing, who’s fancied to pick up the coveted Stephen Hendry Trophy?
The 5.5 favourite with Ladbrokes is current World Champion Zhao Xintong, who is somewhat surprisingly, shorter than Mark Selby (6.0), who won the UK Championship the weekend before last.
Shaun Murphy (7.5), Wu Yize (10.0), Kyren Wilson (11.0) and home favourite John Higgins (12.0) are others who can’t be ruled out.
Summary
The 2025 Scottish Open is one of snooker’s key ranking events and forms an important part of the Home Nations Series, alongside the English Open, Northern Ireland Open and Welsh Open.
Staged in Edinburgh, the tournament brings together 128 professional players, making it one of the most open and unpredictable events on the calendar.
This may not be the most prestigious tournament on the calendar, but it’s still worth plenty of ranking points. With six or seven of the world’s best players absent for various reasons, it’s a great chance for some under-the-radar players.
But then again, there’s plenty of money to play for as well. Like with all snooker tournaments, the prize money at this one has gone up considerably over the years, with the winner now pocketing £100,000, the runner-up £45,000, and a beaten quarterfinalist walking away with £13,200.
It’s an open draw, which means that the best players could meet each other early in the tournament rather than later, unlike most snooker tournaments.
It’s that unpredictable nature of the event that led to China’s Lei Peifan, who was only ranked 84th in the world last year, going all the way to win it.
There was also a surprise winner when Luca Brecel took the title in 2021; Marcu Fu also won as a big outsider in 2016.
Selby won this event back-to-back in 2019 and 2020, before Gary Wilson did the same in 2022 and 2023.
Conditions at the Scottish Open are typically quick, favouring fluent break-builders and confident long potters, so it would be no surprise if a couple of the favourites weren’t knocked out early when coming up against confident, attacking players who are ‘in the zone’ and going for their shots.
Betting Tip of the Week: Mark Selby to win the Scottish Open @6.0 with Ladbrokes
Xintong is obviously a class act as the reigning World Champion, but then again, he’s not Mark Selby, is he?
42-year-old Selby, known as the Jester from Leicester, has 25 ranking titles under his belt, has been a former World Number 1 on several occasions, is a four-time winner of the World Championship, and a three-time winner of both the Masters and the UK Championship.
Proof that he’s not done just yet, far from it, was the manner in which he won the UK Championship a couple of weeks ago, beating Judd Trump 10-8 in the final.
Selby is notoriously one of the hardest opponents in the game, capable of big breaks as well as grinding out frames and playing defensively with the best of them. No one will want to be playing him this week.
