Revealed: BBC bid just £900k for £5m Commonwealth Games TV rights Sport Business Commonwealth Games chiefs took flak for agreeing a broadcast deal with TNT Sports that put it behind a paywall for the first time in 72 years – but City AM can reveal the BBC offered less than £1m for the rights. The BBC’s bid of around £900,000 represented a 91 per cent decrease on the [...]
Not enough bums in Brum: Why so many empty seats at European Athletics Championships? Sport Business Britain loves sport yet ticket sales for the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham have been slow. Ed Warner wonders why. British sport has a capacity problem or a bandwidth one, depending on which way you want to look at it. Too many seats in too many venues with too few bums to fill them. Or [...]
The BBC shouldn’t push Londoners to accept antisocial phone behaviour Opinion Life is already hard enough. The public don’t need commentators telling them that playing music out loud on public transport is a kind of performance art, writes Matt Kenyon A few years back, I was sitting on a Chiltern Rail train opposite a woman who didn’t realise her headphones weren’t properly plugged in, as her [...]
BBC to broadcast Alexis Ohanian co-founded all-female athletics series Athlos August 7, 2026 The BBC will broadcast the Alexis Ohanian co-founded all-female athletics meet Athlos when it heads to London next month. The event, one of a number on a series funded by the Reddit co-founder, will land at Prem Rugby team Saracens’ Stone X Stadium in September with the likes of Keely Hodgkinson, Sha’Carri Richardson, Gabby Thomas [...]
‘Brilliant and provocative’ columnist and broadcaster Rod Liddle dies aged 66 August 3, 2026 The writer and broadcaster Rod Liddle has died at the age of 66. Liddle, a titan of Fleet Street, died at hospital in Middlesbrough on Sunday evening following a short illness. The journalist, who wrote columns for The Sunday Times, The Spectator and The Sun, was previously the editor of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. [...]
The Rest Is… for the Treasury: Gary Lineker backs wealth tax for rich July 23, 2026 Gary Lineker has urged Prime Minister Andy Burnham to introduce a wealth tax on himself and other millionaires. The former England football player, synonymous with crisps, is one of over 100 millionaires to sign an open letter to No 10 calling for a 2 per cent tax hike on people with assets worth at least [...]
Romesh Ranganathan makes it hard to defend the BBC July 20, 2026 There is a lot to love about the BBC. But the new Romesh Ranganathan-fronted Corporation love-in will backfire, writes Matt Kenyon I’ve been getting sentimental about the BBC lately. Two different people have separately reminded me of Merlin; I had my first encounter with Louis Theroux’s Neil and Christine Hamilton documentary; I’ve been strangely hypnotised [...]
England semi pulls in 24m on BBC but falls short of Euros final July 16, 2026 BBC coverage of England getting dumped out of the World Cup broke 2026 records but fell short of other football matches in historical rankings. Around 24m watched Argentina’s late 2-1 win in Atlanta, making the match the most-watched live television moment of the year. The broadcast averaged 22.1m viewers on the BBC with the channel’s [...]
England 2am World Cup victory smashes records for BBC on iPlayer and website July 7, 2026 England’s dramatic World Cup victory against Mexico led to a record-breaking broadcast across the board for the BBC. Over 11m BBC iPlayer requests contributed to the largest ever day on record for the streaming service, hitting 48m requests in total on Monday, while the 3-2 win at the Estadio Azteca attracted a peak live audience [...]
Wimbledon to stay on BBC as grand slam bucks paywall trend June 25, 2026 Wimbledon will remain on the BBC until 2033 after the public service broadcaster announced a deal extension with the All England Club. The Wimbledon Championships fortnight, which this year begins next Monday, is, in part, in cahoots with the government’s so-called Crown Jewels list – officially called the Ofcom Code on Sports and Other Listed [...]