Gregg Covers Sport

It is 7am, you are going through your usual morning routine before heading off to work or study, and you switch on BBC One hoping to catch some live Olympic action from Paris, except there is nothing. Fast forward to 10pm, you are going through your usual routine before settling in for the night, you switch on BBC One to see if you can catch the end of the day’s live action, but again there is nothing. Even if you tuned in throughout the day you would be met with a choice between only two live events. If a restaurant only had two options for dinner on their menu and charged a premium price for such a limited selection, you would immediately walk out and never return. So why is it that the nation’s public broadcaster can operate in this manner? 

The BBC have been broadcasting the Olympics since 1948, at their peak showing thousands of hours of live footage with multiple streaming options available for viewers to select the sport they want to watch, all free of charge. They were the dominant force; the Olympics were their domain. Yet three years ago saw a change to that power dynamic. Discovery muscled in and took the bidding to a height that the BBC could not match. For the first time, the Olympics were no longer majority free-to-air to the public. We would now have to pay if we wanted to watch every minute of the Games.  

This years’ games in Paris are no different, with Discovery+ hosting every second of the action, charging audiences £3.99 a month to see the world’s best athletes in action. Thus, the BBC have been left behind, no longer top of the pile, no longer the envy of every other broadcaster. Now, if you tune in at 7pm expecting to see live gold medal action in the pool or daring feats of flexibility and power on the gymnastics equipment, you will be met with highlights from the mornings action. 

This is in stark contrast to 12 years ago, when London once again staged the world’s biggest sporting event. A peak of 22.4 million people tuned in to watch Danny Boyle’s epic opening ceremony live from the Olympic stadium in the heart of London’s East End, yet that was down to a peak of 7.9 million watching as the athletes sailed down the River Seine through the heart of France’s capital in the damp rain.  

The ’legacy’ of hosting a Games is often spoken about, with the huge cost of putting on an Olympics viewed as an investment for the future. The Olympic Stadium cost £537 million to build, and was heralded as a beacon for the future, yet is now rented West Ham United for just £3.6m a year. The BBC’s fall from the pedestal of broadcasting is yet another brick to have been knocked out of the wall of the legacy of London 2012.  

BBC bosses did warn Team GB athletes that their big moment of glory may not be shown live. Speaking to the Guardian newspaper, Ron Chakraborty, head of major events and general sport at the BBC explained

“We’ve done a lot with Team GB and I’ve spoken to the individual comms leads for the sports” said Chakraborty. “We will be there for their medal moments, but we won’t be able to show every minute of every one of their athletes.”

So what can the BBC do going forward? The truth is not a lot. Their current broadcasting deal runs until the 2032 Olympics in Brisbane, that’s another two Olympic cycles where the national broadcaster in the UK cannot provide every live minute to the audience, limiting the available choice. While it is true that most people don’t necessarily have the time/desire to watch every piece of action, the option should be there for those viewers who do, especially when the license fee’s future is increasingly debated.

Discovery+’s 9 channel offering is a smorgasbord of choice for the viewers, while the BBC are left to fight over and dress up the scrappy leftovers.