His career started in London in 1976 when he began working for the Fleet Street Sports Agency until 1978, when he moved to Liverpool and worked in Radio City as a football commentator. In 1982, he moved to Manchester to work in Piccadilly Radio as Sports editor and Football commentator. In 1984 Keys moved back to London, where he joined the ITV network as one of the main anchors of the breakfast show called TV-am. While working at TV-am he also commentated on football matches for ITV and cycling for Channel 4, including two Tours de France. Keys was one of the presenters for the Sports Channel on British Satellite Broadcasting in spring 1990. When BSB merged with Sky in 1991, the channel was renamed Sky Sports. He presented TV-am for the last time on 28 December 1990 before leaving for Sky Sports. He presented Sky Sports coverage of Premier League football since the league's inception in 1992. He was the presenter of the flagship Super Sunday and also presented Sky's Monday Night Football, which coincided with Sky gaining rights for the UEFA Champions League. Later he fronted all of Sky Sports' Champions League coverage. In 2008, Keys also presented the UEFA Euro 2008 for Al Jazeera Sports.
Departure from Sky Sports
In January 2011, Keys left Sky Sports after making derogatory comments about female assistant referee Sian Massey. His off-air comments about Massey and the fitness of women to officiate at football matches were recorded and leaked. Further clips were leaked showing co-presenter Andy Gray and Keys behaving in a sexist manner. Keys apologised for the "prehistoric banter" and said: "Such comments were made off-air to work colleagues, and were, of course, never intended to be broadcast." He added that "If off-air conversations of television and radio presenters were recorded, there would be no one left working. That is not to defend what happened." Keys later joined talkSPORT radio, where he presented on Saturday evenings. Later in 2011, Keys returned to television broadcasting launching the boxing channel Boxnation with boxing promoter Frank Warren.
Al Jazeera, beIN Sports and Talksport
In June 2013 Al Jazeera agreed a contract with former Sky Sports football presenters, Richard Keys and Andy Gray. They both present from Doha in Qatar and present football including the Premier League, UEFA Champions League, and FA Cup. Coverage started for the 2013-14 season while they continued to present their TalkSport show from Qatar. Keys along with Gray is now the face of the BeIN Sports channels which broadcast all 380 Premier League games per season mainly on their flagship "Super Saturday" programme.
In 2003, Keys has received an Honorary title from Coventry University for outstanding services to sports broadcasting. In 2012, Keys and Andy Gray received the best sports programme prize for their talkSPORT show at the Sony Radio Academy Awards. He has also received a variety of best sports presenter awards from different publications.
Charity work
Keys and Geoff Shreeves have helped to raise money for Nordoff-Robbins. In addition Keys and his ex-wife Julia Keys are patrons for the Willow Foundation, a charity for people with special needs, founded by the former Arsenal goalkeeper Bob Wilson in memory of his late daughter. In 2002, Keys and Gray raised £64,000 for charity in the ITV show Who Wants to be a Millionaire.
