Gallery: Weekend In Sport
Premier League football dominated the festive period and continued to entertain across the last weekend of 2023. But it is a teenage darts player that is grabbing the headlines as Luke Littler eyes a famous victory at Alexandra Palace…
In the Premier League, a hectic festive period ended with Liverpool top of tree.
Jurgen Klopp’s men ended the Christmas period with a 4-2 home win over struggling Newcastle United. The dominant display saw two goals from Mohammed Salah, and one each from Curis Jones and Cody Gakpo.
Alexander Isak and Sven Botman were on the scoresheet for the Magpies but it was not enough to take any pints back to St James Park.
Before Christmas, Liverpool signed a multi-year deal with Orion Innovation to become the Red’s official digital transformation partner.
Meanwhile, Manchester United continued to struggle as 2023 came to a close.
The Red Devils, that saw Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos group complete its minority investment into the club on Christmas Eve, ended its festive schedule with a 2-1 defeat against Nottingham Forest.
Marcus Rashford had equalised after Forest took the lead but a late Morgan Gibbs-White winner condemned Erik Ten Hag’s side to another bruising defeat.
The star of sport this Christmas has come in the form of 16-year-old darts player Luke Littler.
The teenager stormed through to the PDC World Darts Championship semi-finals with a 5-1 victory over Northern Ireland’s Brendan Dolan.
The 16-year-old followed up his 4-1 win over Raymond van Barneveld with another dazzling display at Alexandra Palace.
Littler is now favourite for the trophy after Michael van Gerwen was beaten 5-3 by England’s Scott Williams.
talkSPORT acquired the radio broadcast rights to the Paddy Power World Darts Championship before the tournament kicked off prior to Christmas.
Emma Raducanu made a winning return at the Auckland Classic in her first match after eight months out with injury.
The Briton started strongly but had to fight through a tense deciding set to win 6-3 4-6 7-5 against world number 134 Elena-Gabriela Ruse.
Raducanu led 5-2 before twice failing to serve out the match and missing two match points on Ruse’s serve.
But the 21-year-old broke again for a 6-5 lead and eventually closed out the match on her fourth match point.
Back in December, Warner Bros. Discovery and ATP Media, the broadcast arm of the ATP Tour, renewed their agreement to broadcast the ATP Tour in France for the next three seasons.
Ospreys produced a gutsy second-half comeback to edge a nail-biting Welsh derby against Cardiff.
Keelan Giles scored the first and last of four tries as Ospreys overturned an 18-5 half-time deficit at Bridgend.
Great Britain missed out on the United Cup quarter-finals as Australia qualified from Group C with a 2-1 victory over the United States.
Hosts Australia reached the last eight asStorm Hunter and Matt Ebden beat Jessica Pegula and Rajeev Ram in a mixed-doubles decider.
Earlier, Pegula beat Ajla Tomljanovic to level after Australia’s Alex de Minaur beat Taylor Fritz.
Australia’s win meant GB were edged out, finishing third in a tight group.
The tournament follows international tennis in November, when the Billie Jean King Cup and Davis Cup took place. The BBC secured the rights to broadcast those tournaments.
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