BBC loses rights over Olympics coverage
Published: Friday, 07 August 2015 02:08
Written by Zoë Henry
The 2012 Olympic Games, which was hosted in London, serves as a fond memory for many people living in the capital at the time.
The festive spirit in the air was palpable as the nation rallied behind Team GB, who did very well on home soil. The BBC has prided itself on being the “home of the Olympics” for quite some time, and was widely lauded for its coverage of the 2012 Olympics.
But at the end of June 2015, they were delivered quite a blow as Discovery, the company that owns Eurosport, was awarded exclusive broadcasting rights of both the winter and summer Olympic Games in a £920 million deal.
The BBC will broadcast the summer Olympics in 2016 and 2020 as the deal has already been signed. They will also broadcast the 2018 Winter Olympics in the UK and France, but Eurosport will be the broadcaster in the rest of Europe, apart from Russia, which has been excluded from the entire deal.
But from the 2022 Winter Olympics and the 2024 Summer Olympics, Eurosport holds all the broadcasting rights across Europe. The Olympics has always been broadcast on free-to-air channels, which is required by the listed events legislation. In the UK these include BBC1, BBC2, ITV, Channel 4, and Channel 5 in the UK, but this could change.