Readers of the Daily Express were first introduced to sports journalist Trevor Wignall in March 1929. A front-page article, complete with photograph, proclaimed Wignall's arrival on the staff and the launch of a new column of sporting news, comment and gossip. According to both the Express and Wignall, the feature would break new ground in British sports journalism because of its proposed daily publication schedule. The paper announced, ‘Every day Mr. Wignall will review the previous day's sporting events in a column of clever and well-informed comment. Every day he will praise, criticise, command, condemn– and tell the whole truth about the sporting world.’ ‘The Daily Sportlight’ was launched two days later. Under the headline, ‘Warning To Evil-Doers’, Wignall wrote, ‘… if there are inside stories to be told … I will tell them, but in the main my object will be to keep my readers in touch with every sporting event that is worthy of comment or discussion’. On the day, a subsidiary headline, ‘Lead To Great Britain’, was followed by Wignall's assertion:

The British press had long been home to journalists who wrote columns of ‘sports notes’, making a feature out of their musings, opinions and knowledge of sport. But no sports journalist on Fleet Street was producing a daily column of comment and news under their own name when ‘Trevor Wignall's Daily Sportlight’ was launched.