aThe 2020 Tokyo Olympics caused disappointment among British Olympic fans when the BBC offered a much more limited coverage than London 2012 or Rio 2016, after the Olympic rights were sold to US pay-TV companies. Warner Bros. Discovery currently holds the primary rights to broadcast the Olympics in the UK, from which the BBC sublicenses it.
The cheers may be even louder in Paris 2024, due to the friendlier time slots and people’s desire to watch their favorite sports throughout the day. So how can you watch the Olympics? Why can’t you watch everything?
How can I watch Paris 2024 for free in the UK?
The BBC is the official television broadcaster of the Olympics in the UK, but coverage will remain limited to showing live action on one linear and one digital channel.
Starting each day at 8am on BBC1 and airing until the news at 10pm, the programme will cover a range of events, bringing you Britain’s best hopes and medal hopes as well as the most exciting events of the day. When the news is broadcast on BBC1, the broadcast will switch to BBC2, which will air the evening’s highlights show at 10.40pm.
BBC iPlayer’s Olympics Extra will provide regular live streams of the event from 8am until around 11pm.
It will also be broadcast on BBC Radio 5 Live and the BBC Sport website and app will have a live page featuring clips and interviews.
What’s wrong with this?
The 2021 Tokyo Olympics are the first Summer Olympics under current contracts, but the BBC received numerous complaints about a lack of live coverage because viewers were unaware that the International Olympic Committee had sold most of the UK television rights to Discovery.
Viewers watching taekwondo on BBC One on Sunday morning were disappointed to see the BBC Sport Twitter account announce that a British athlete had progressed to the final before the delayed television coverage had finished.
According to the BBC, even when it had 24 streams, more than 90% of viewership came from the two main streams.
What if I am willing to pay?
To watch comprehensive ‘selective’ coverage, viewers will need to sign up to Discovery+, which offers 3,800 hours of live coverage across a network of over 55 live channel feeds. There is currently an Olympics offer where fans can sign up for £3.99 per month (available from 17 July to 11 August 2024). Sky TV customers can watch Eurosport 1 and 2 and activate the Discovery+ standard plan at no extra cost.
On linear TV, Eurosport 1 and Eurosport 2 will show live coverage from 7am to 10.30pm each day, with highlights and replays throughout the night, plus there will be seven Eurosport ‘pop-up’ channels curated to coincide with the event.
Discovery+ promises to “stream every medal and every moment,” allowing users to watch on TV, phone or tablet through dedicated pages for all 32 Olympic sports.
Who will be on our screens?
BBC presenters include Clare Balding, Gabby Logan, Hazel Irvine, Isa Guha, Janet Kwakye, JJ Chalmers and Mark Chapman. Guests include former track and field athlete and Guardian columnist Laura Kenny, TV personalities Fred Sirix, Jess Ennis-Hill, Colin Jackson and Denise Lewis, long jumper Jazmyn Sawyers, rower Mo Sbihi and triathlete Vicky Holland.
On Discovery+, presenters will be Craig Doyle, Orla Shenaoui and Laura Woods, with guests including rower James Cracknell, sports climbers Shauna Coxsey and Ellie Symonds and, once the pool is over, Tom Daley.
Why can’t UK viewers watch all sport live on the BBC?
Before the Tokyo Olympics, the BBC was able to broadcast all the events simultaneously across its 24 streaming digital channels, but in 2015 the International Olympic Committee signed an exclusive deal with WBD, which owns Eurosport, Discovery and streaming service Discovery+. The US pay-TV company won pan-European rights in a £920m deal running from 2018 to 2024.
As a result of the deal WBD finalized with the BBC at that time, the company lost thousands of hours of television rights to the Olympics and stopped offering live streams of dozens of events that provided viewers with comprehensive coverage.
But the British Rules for Sporting and Other Designated EventsA list of events that are not permitted to be broadcast exclusively through pay-TV services, such as the Olympics, the World Cup, and Wimbledon.
A new Olympic broadcasting rights deal was signed for 2023, with rights shared between the European Broadcasting Union (a coalition of public service media organisations including the BBC) and US pay-TV company Warner Bros. Discovery. The deal will see the Olympics broadcast by the BBC from 2026 until at least 2032. It will secure the same 500 hours of television coverage as the existing deal, as well as up to two live broadcasts.
Could the situation change?
While it’s impossible to predict what the deal will look like after 2032, the halcyon days of being able to watch every moment of sport on the BBC for free seem unlikely to return. Rising global sports rights fees and an ever-changing media landscape mean new competitors are constantly entering the market.
More than a decade of substantial funding cuts under the last Conservative government has left the BBC in a financially weaker position than other global commercial broadcasters. At the same time, the rise of pay-for-play streaming services, which are increasingly bidding for live sport rights, makes it unlikely that the BBC will be unable to compete for major sporting events.
