At Tokyo 2020 there was dismay among UK Olympics lovers when the BBC provided a much more restricted offering than in London 2012 and Rio 2016 after the rights to the Olympics were sold to a US pay-TV company. These days, Warner Bros Discovery holds the main Olympics rights in the UK, with the BBC sub-licencing from the broadcaster.
At Paris 2024 the howls may be even louder because of the friendlier timezone, and people’s desire to watch their preferred events as they unfold throughout the day. So how can you get your Olympics fix, and why can’t you watch all of the action?
How can I watch Paris 2024 in the UK for free?
In the UK the BBC is the official Olympic television broadcaster, but coverage will continue to be limited to showing live action on one linear and one digital channel.
Coverage – beginning at 8am daily on BBC1 and running until the 10 o’clock news – will flit from different events, showing the best British hopes and medal action as well as the most engaging events of the day. Coverage will switch to BBC2 when the news is on BBC1 and there will be a nightly highlights show at 10.40pm.
On the BBC iPlayer Olympics Extra will provide a scheduled live stream of events running from 8am until approximately 11pm.
There will also be coverage on BBC Radio 5 Live with live pages featuring clips and interviews on the BBC Sport website and app.
What is the problem with this?
At the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 – the first summer Olympics where the current deal came into effect – the BBC received a large number of complaints about the lack of live coverage after viewers failed to realise that the International Olympic Committee had sold the majority of UK television rights to Discovery.
Viewers watching the taekwondo on BBC 1 on Sunday morning were disappointed to find the BBC Sport Twitter account had announced that a Brit was into the final before the delayed television coverage had finished.
The BBC say that even when they had 24 streams, over 90% of viewing came from the main two streams.
What if I am willing to pay?
For blanket “pick and choose” coverage viewers will have to sign up for Discovery+, which will show 3,800 hours of live coverage via a network of 55+ live channel feeds. It currently has an Olympics offer – available from 17 July to 11 August 2024 – enabling fans to sign up for £3.99 a month. Sky TV customers get Eurosport 1 & 2 and can activate a Discovery+ Standard Plan at no extra cost.
On linear TV, Eurosport 1 and Eurosport 2 will broadcast live coverage from 7am to 10.30pm daily, with highlights and replays through the night. In addition there will also be seven event-curated Eurosport “pop-up” channels.
Discovery+ promises to “stream every medal and every moment”, with users able to watch across their TVs, phones and tablets, via dedicated pages for all 32 Olympic sports.
Who will we see on our screens?
On the BBC presenters include: Clare Balding, Gabby Logan, Hazel Irvine, Isa Guha, Jeanette Kwakye, JJ Chalmers and Mark Chapman. The guest lineup includes: former track cyclist and Guardian columnist Laura Kenny, TV personality Fred Sirieix, Jess Ennis-Hill, Colin Jackson, Denise Lewis, long jumper Jazmin Sawyers, rower Moe Sbihi, and triathlete Vicky Holland.
On Discovery+, presenters include Craig Doyle, Orla Chennaoui and Laura Woods. The guest lineup includes rower James Cracknell, sport climber Shauna Coxsey, Ellie Simmonds and, once he’s finished in the pool, Tom Daley.
Why can’t UK viewers watch all the sports live on the BBC?
Before Tokyo, the BBC was able to show every event simultaneously on its digital channels on 24 streams. But in 2015 the International Olympic Committee made an exclusive deal with WBD, the owner of Eurosport, Discovery and the streaming service Discovery+. The US pay-TV company won the pan-European rights in a £920m deal covering 2018 to 2024.
The deal WBD ultimately struck with the BBC at that time resulted in the corporation losing the right to air thousands of hours of the Olympics on TV, and stopped it offering dozens of live streams of events that gave viewers blanket coverage.
It can, however, continue to offer free – if more limited – coverage thanks to the UK’s code on sports and other listed and designated events, a list of events, including the Olympics, the World Cup and Wimbledon, not permitted to be broadcast solely on paid-for television services.
A new Olympics broadcasting rights deal was struck in 2023, with the rights shared between the European Broadcasting Union (the association of public service media organisations, whose members include the BBC) and the US pay-TV company Warner Bros Discovery. The deal means the Olympics will remain on the BBC from 2026 until at least 2032. It secures the same 500 hours of TV coverage and a maximum of two live events as its existing agreement.
Is the situation likely to change?
What a post-2032 deal will look like is impossible to predict, but it appears that the halcyon days when you could watch every single sporting moment for free on the BBC are unlikely to be repeated. The increase in the cost of global sports rights and a constantly changing media landscape mean there are new competitors entering the market all the time.
After more than a decade of real-term funding cuts under the last Conservative government the BBC has found itself in a weaker financial position than other global commercial broadcasters. At the same time, the rise of paid-for streaming services, which are increasingly bidding for the rights to show live sport, means it looks unlikely to be unable to compete when bidding for major sporting events.