I have seen the future of sport on television. Or perhaps, more accurately, I haven’t seen the future of sport on television because the one major sporting event I most want to see, the Rugby League World Cup, is tucked away on yet another pay TV channel, Premier Sports, to which I do not subscribe, nor do I have any intention of so doing. The fragmentation of available sports has been coming for a long time, ever since The Sports Channel, later Sky Sports, came along in 1990. The more pay channels that come along, the less sport I watch.
My older reader – if I have one – will remember the pre Sky days when pretty well all the sport you wanted to watch was either on the BBC or ITV. You didn’t have to pay for it, other than via the TV Licence fee, and while it is true that many, if not most, sports were not always well-served by the two TV companies, at least in terms of quantity, I don’t remember people saying, “How I wish we had extra TV channels dedicated purely to broadcasting sport that we could end up having to fork out an arm and a leg for the privilege.” In 2026, those channels are here and while my subscription to Sky remains – and the generally rubbish TNT, which due to Virgin’s cunning payment plans, would only save me coppers if I got rid of it – I have zero interest in paying for the new channels.
The Rugby League World Cup is but one of a number of events I would watch if they were available on the channels I already have. I’d certainly watch the Dutch Eredivisie, but I am not paying the additional £8 a month it would cost for watch the amusingly named Triller TV for, here comes that word again, the privilege of watching my beloved Feyenoord. The tempting prospect of also being able to watch the World Aquabike Championships, Cycling events from China and endless Wrestling promotions has not proved sufficient incentive to persuade me to part with my old age pension.
Occasionally, I watch Rugby Union on telly and the club game is on TNT. But not all of it. The European tournaments are also tucked away on Premier Sports so I don’t watch those, either. Boxing is almost entirely shown on DAZN, with the exception of some big Pay Per View fights, which I definitely don’t pay to watch. And from next season, the UEFA Champions League will be on Paramount at an additional cost of we don’t know how much yet. My reaction to that is simple: sod that. I’m getting old, I’ll be dead soon, I have better things to do with my life.
One option might be acquiring what is known as a ‘dodgy stick’, whereby one pays a modest sum of money to a criminal – I can’t think of a better way of describing the people who sell dodgy sticks – and watch everything, including movie channels, The Full Monty, if you will, for nothing. I know loads of people who use the dodgy sticks but something stops me from getting one. That one thing is that it’s illegal and, for all I know, could be funding organised crime like drug and people trafficking and maybe even paedophiles. Of course, I don’t know if that’s the case, but then again I don’t know how the criminals offering their illegal services spend their ill gotten gains so why take a chance? To a limited extent, I’d fret about being caught, but most of all, overwhelmingly so, it’s stealing. I’ve never had much money but I’d like to think that I know what’s right from wrong. Many years ago, I bought a bicycle from someone, knowing it had been stolen. I knew I had done something very wrong and got rid of it at a significant loss in a matter of days. I was ashamed of myself. My dalliance with crime did not last long.
I have a similar outlook when it comes to music. I only ever stream music with a view to buying it. If anything, I buy more music because of what I have heard on Apple music than I otherwise would. I buy music because I want my favourite artists to be paid for their work and – and here I go all holier-than-thou again – I don’t like stealing from other people. Yes, I know that streaming platforms like Spotify operate legally, albeit by paying musicians a pittance while raking in vast profits themselves, but until they do pay artists properly, I will not use them on anything more than an occasional basis. But here’s the thing: could the Spotify business model be expanded elsewhere, perhaps into the televising of sport?
Daniel Monaghan, a researcher at Ampere Analysis, conducted a survey recently which showed that 70% of 18 to 34-year-olds admitted to watching sports via illegal methods. He said: “Over half of 35 to 44s admit to doing it, and about a third of those aged 45 to 64.” 3.7 million IP addresses accessed illegal streams to watch last season’s Champions League final, rather than shell out a subscription or one-off fee. This is not going away and as the cost of watching sport, and everything else, becomes ever more expensive, who is to say that in time vast numbers of people will adopt the old cliché: enough is enough?
I am very much in the camp of not paying anymore than I pay now for my subscription TV. If stuff I like disappears behind a new paywall, then it’s just too bad. I’m already resigned to not being able to watch Feyenoord, whose games used to be on Sky Sports, and now I will make do with the Rugby League World Cup by listening to the excellent radio coverage, just as I listened to the boxing on BBC Radio Five Live last night, rather than shelling out a fortune to DAZN. If more and more people get hold of dodgy sticks or, like me, simply won’t pay anymore – or anything at all – to watch sport on telly then something has to change. How about the Spotify of sport?
Have all sports bundled under a modest monthly fee where the viewer can pick and choose the events s/he wants to watch. If it was packaged properly, would people take out Spotify type packages, which might vary for some events, but cost far less than what the companies are charging today? I honestly don’t know, but if TV advertising revenue is declining, which it is, and more and more people shy away from the multitude of pay TV companies, then won’t something have to give?
I am not getting rid of my sports TV packaging, at least not yet, because there is just enough left to keep me interested. But who knows if there will be a tipping point, where I decide I can do other things with my time apart from slumping in my armchair watching other people run around?
In fact, I am more likely to lose, than gain, interest in something if it’s not available to view on my existing TV packages. And, as they say, what you don’t have, you don’t miss. Given that we’re a long time dead, maybe breaking the habit of watching sport on the telly is something we should all think about doing? By shelling out increasing wads of cash just helps feed the beast, as illegal streaming makes criminals of so many of us. There needs to be a compromise, I’ve suggested what that compromise could be. Our future viewing and spending habits will determine how things play out. As customers we have far more power than perhaps we realise. I’m exercising mine by not paying any more money. What would these greedy sports executives and pay TV channels do if we all went down that road? Panic, I guess, and then suggest a Spotify of sport. It’s over to you, viewers.
