Hunch. England footballers Beth Mead and Mary Earps won the viewers' vote in 2022 and 2023, while every world prize winner in the four earlier years came from cycling or tennis.
The winner market resolves on the same BBC Sport report: YES if it names Harry Kane BBC Sports Personality of the Year 2026, and NO if someone else wins or he is not on the final list. If the BBC page does not open, Guardian and Sky Sports reports of the same night settle it together.
We looked for cases where a British sports star won the top world prize of their sport and stood in the BBC vote of the same year. We counted from 2006, when a panel began to pick the final list, and used six world prizes, from football’s Ballon d’Or to cycling’s Vélo d’Or. We found four such years, from 2012 to 2017. Chris Froome, a cyclist, stood in two of them.