BBC’s new director of sport has a litany of problems to fix

He is the television novice whose appointment to one of the BBC’s biggest jobs at the age of just 40 stunned staff there.

But it has taken Alex Kay-Jelski less than six months to stamp his authority on the corporation, culminating in the impending exit of arguably its worst headache.

Whether Gary Lineker has been forced out of his £1.35 million presenting role by the BBC’s new director of sport or has chosen to step down depends on who you ask.

In the end, all that matters is the outcome, even if it was merely a case of Kay-Jelski finding himself in the right place at the right time.

It did not look to be that way in his early days in charge following the re-emergence of a column Kay-Jelski wrote while sports editor of The Times in which he appeared to compare women worried about transgender participation in female sport to racists.

Those women included BBC pundits Martina Navratilova and Sharron Davies, and Kay-Jelski was forced to issue a statement saying that he “had no intention of being disrespectful to any former or current athletes” and had been “calling for kindness in the debate”.

He added: “I am not a campaigner and I will not be advocating for any position in my role at the BBC. Anyone who works for the BBC is expected to leave their views at the door and approach issues with impartiality.

“Under my leadership, BBC Sport will report these issues impartially.”

Soon after, Kay-Jelski was confronted with the most serious issue any company executive can face – and one that directly affected Lineker’s future.

That he sacked former footballer Jermaine Jenas following complaints about messages the man tipped to succeed Lineker as host of Match of the Day sent to a female colleague showed that Kay-Jelski was not prepared to tolerate such behaviour on his watch.

Then came last month’s bizarre episode triggered by reports citing a leaked email quoting Kay-Jelski and the BBC’s director general, Tim Davie, announcing Lineker’s seemingly imminent exit from its flagship football programme.

The prospect of Lineker leaving that very weekend was immediately dismissed by the corporation, albeit it refused to deny the email itself had been genuine.

News that Lineker was to step down from Match of the Day at the end of the season and leave the BBC altogether after the next World Cup in 2026 was also inevitably leaked before Tuesday’s official announcement, though it appeared to leave the door open to him staying beyond his new 18-month contract.

It also revealed that a deal had been struck for Lineker’s lucrative The Rest is Football podcast to appear on BBC Sounds, albeit only once a week and two days after it is aired on other platforms.

Kay-Jelski’s biggest priority now is finding a successor – or successors – for the corporation’s star football presenter, something Telegraph Sport has been told could involve a roster of replacements.

He must also decide whether to tinker with the format of a show that still attracts millions of viewers each week despite (or perhaps because of) it being somewhat stuck in the past.

That would make any lurch to youth a major gamble, one the BBC experimented with via the Jenas-fronted MotDx, a Match of the Day spin-off for Gen Z that was axed after four years.

Presenters, pundits and format changes are worthless unless a broadcaster has the rights to the relevant sporting events and Kay-Jelski’s other biggest challenge from day one was stopping the haemorrhaging of major events that took place under predecessor Barbara Slater.

He has made an encouraging start by snatching the Women’s Rugby World Cup from ITV ahead of next year’s tournament in England – a deal that may have been in train before he arrived.

But what would really represent a coup, and end any concerns about his prior lack of rights negotiation experience, would be retaining a share of the Six Nations when the BBC and ITV’s current contract expires next year.

Slater was increasingly defeatist about keeping hold of those rights at the end of her tenure amid mounting fears some or all of the competition will disappear behind a paywall, telling Parliament’s culture, media and sport select committee: “The Six Nations, like anything, we will have to assess the affordability at the time. Because it is very difficult for the BBC, on that trajectory of income, to continue to afford everything that we have.”

Slater told the same committee that relations between Lineker and the corporation were “really good”, despite him having plunged it into one of its worst crises with his Nazi jibe about the then Government. She added: “We love Gary and Gary loves the BBC.”

After this week’s news suggesting that love had somewhat died, maybe Kay-Jelski is in the right place at the right time after all.