Who else thinks this?

[ajsimmo]

Are you suggesting then that all professional sport is wrong if they earn decent money.
Tax payers don't fund football, the revenue comes from TV rights, the big sums you talk of are nothing at present, tv pays about £4.8 billion at present, it's currently estimated that it will rise to £16 billion.

Hence the reason its on mainstream (when they can get it) because it is the majority who dictate what's on TV (thankfully not the woodworkers guild of Grumpyville! (before you shoot me down, it's a joke guys).

 

[Blackswanwood]

Yes but stick it on it's own channel, not on all the main channels at the same time with the assumption everyone wants to see a bunch of grown men running around kicking a ball, but I suppose simple things please simple minds. Also it is not a sport anymore since it became just a big business to make money where instead of capital investment in say machinery they now rent ball kickers and foreign managers to run the business and pay silly money for someone to kick a ball, they have gone mad.

Judging by the viewing figures when umpteen other channels are available for those who want something else you are in a minority with that view. It's on BBC and TV for a couple of weeks every couple of years - get over it!

 

[stuart little]

Watching something like the Tour live is a bit of an anticlimax for me. It’s over way too quick. I love the TV coverage and usually watch live.

Eurosport Player - full stage coverage, NO adverts all for less than £1/wk !!

 

[Essex Barn Workshop]

Never mind - Lions V Japan tomorrow, channel 4.

Didn't watch that on Ch4, got tickets and drove from Essex to see it! Great weekend in Edinburgh. While I was there, also managed to watch lots of football too! Never too much sport on TV for me, and there's always a off switch or a channel changer available.

 

[Lons]

Nor is a bunch of football watchers.

Hmm... As an example, 20 teams in the premier league and the average crowd attendance before the pandemic was 38500 at each match so that's more than 770,000 individuals enjoying every live match, just in one league. Add to that all the lower leagues, non league and part time / Sunday matches and there are millions every single week. Looks like a decent cross section of the population to me.

Edit.
Add to those figures the millions who watch on TV or stream and the numbers are very significant indeed. Without doing the research I'd suggest far in excess of any other sport and probably even the crappy soaps and fly on the wall stuff.

 

[Lons]

I haven't sat through the enforced viewing of a tv chanel for many years

Neither have I. No one is forced to watch any channel, everyone has the choice of switching to another or switching off. Maybe it's different in Greece.

 

[doctor Bob]

Division 3 of the bundesliga can be a bit of a challenge but nice to have it on in the background if no other sport on. Hallescher v FC Madgebrg, rivetting................

 

[thomashenry]

That's the problem - if we don't like football we can't watch things on catch up as they aren't shown in the first place. (I doubt the Olympics will get the coverage of the football, and the rugby certainly won't.)

I don't think that's true. Since the 2003 tournament, I think ITV has broadcast almost, if not every RWC game live.

 

[Ithica]

The Tokyo Olympics audience will be huge, if only to see how the IOC deals with, and the coverage of, the trans gender issue in sport. How will interested parties react. National federations world-wide are continuing to wrestle with this issue and Tokyo will be the first global event to platform the subject. The NZ Hubbard weightlifting issue is just one example.

 

[stuart little]

There is way to much coverage of people kicking a ball around on Tv at the moment and it is the euro's, has no one told them about brexit? Yes it is one of my pet hates, I hate football and avoid like it is covid. Who else thinks the same or is everyone stuck watching them kicking a ball around, then running around pretending to be an aeroplane that then has undercarriage failure.

Just seen on ebay:- Football erasers!!!

 

[Trainee neophyte]

Neither have I. No one is forced to watch any channel, everyone has the choice of switching to another or switching off. Maybe it's different in Greece.

By enforced, I meant that you get to watch what the chanel scheduler thinks you should watch, at the time of their choosing. You can channel surf as much as you like, but if all the advertisers have agreed to show adverts at the same time, you get to channel - hop from ad to ad. Or watch football, or other football, or perhaps cricket if you are lucky. It's a limited choice designed to give you the illusion of freedom, whilst keeping you firmly locked in the reservation.

In Greece you get to choose between which group of overweight, middle aged men are dancing with improbably glamorous young ladies while someone abuses a clarinet in the background. Marvelous television for all the family. Something like this:



The internet has access to most of the television and films ever made, without any advertising at all should you choose that option. Why settle for what someone thinks you ought to be watching?

 

[Nelly111s]

My TV has an off switch.

 

[Lons]

By enforced, I meant that you get to watch what the chanel scheduler thinks you should watch, at the time of their choosing. You can channel surf as much as you like, but if all the advertisers have agreed to show adverts at the same time, you get to channel - hop from ad to ad. Or watch football, or other football, or perhaps cricket if you are lucky. It's a limited choice designed to give you the illusion of freedom, whilst keeping you firmly locked in the reservation.

I rarely watch adverts anyway, if live TV I make a cuppa, go to the bog or switch off the sound and don't take any notice but most modern TVs, recorder boxes and SKY etc have pause and rewind buttons, no need to watch ads or what the schedulers want you to watch. Most people I know record or stream and watch programs when more convenient then you just skip the ads.
The days of 3 or 4 channels and no choices disappeared a very long time ago.

"In Greece you get to choose between which group of overweight, middle aged men are dancing with improbably glamorous young ladies while someone abuses a clarinet in the background. Marvelous television for all the family. Something like this:"

I'm glad I'm not in Greece then.

 

[Trainee neophyte]

I'm glad I'm not in Greece then.

Luckily there is more to life than poor television. There's also woodwork.

 

[Dangermouse 2nd]

Hate football, quite like looking at the players though , lol

 

[Spectric]

the trans gender issue in sport

It is only an issue if you let it be, just use the rules that mother nature chose and then you have male & female and each category has the right angle faction but the important point is that the right bodies compete fairly against fellow competition. How would you feel as say a female boxer that comes up against a big strapping guy who has just decided to be a woman, totally unfair. Even a group for them cannot work because you have the same issues, but I agree that the problem does crop up because you do get massive masculine woman who are female and therefore compete as one against other more feminine woman, there is a tennis player in this category and is definately female as she has had a baby so cannot be questioned.

The days of 3 or 4 channels and no choices disappeared a very long time ago.

At least in them days there was a good reason not to find something to watch, now with so many channels there should be no excuse.

 

[Noel]

Best match so far. Poor Mbappe but Swiss were good.

 

[Blackswanwood]

Best match so far. Poor Mbappe but Swiss were good.

Best day of the tournament - Spain were luckier than the score suggests.

 

[Transit80]

Sunday league football is a classic example of unhealthy men with no talent playing a game beyond their ability. There were always one nutter per side who's sole ambition was to inflict injury. Usually it was the fat bloke warming up with a *** and a hangover.

How true!!, and as a goalkeeper I have suffered from such people, long time ago now but Id had enough at 32.

 

[Glitch]

Tennis fans should be happy with TV coverage yesterday. 10 hours on BBC2 and over 5 hours on BBC1 at the same time.

That's a good reason for a moan.

Off to Wembley today so don't care how many hours of sport are on TV.
If England win I'll probably watch it again on TV