How to watch the Paris Olympics and why the BBC is showing less live coverage
The games will begin with the opening ceremony on Friday, July 26, and will be shown across the BBC’s platforms and on Discovery+.
The Paris Olympics are set to begin on Friday but the BBC will be showing less live coverage than in previous years.
Viewers will still be able to watch the action from the Games unfold for free on BBC One from 8am to 10pm on Saturday, with coverage switching to BBC Two during the news.
BBC iPlayer will also be showing Olympics Extra coverage of events from 8am to 11pm.
But the corporation will not be able to provide the level of coverage it did at the 2018 Winter Olympics and during previous games, where it offered live red button coverage of every sport.
This is due to a new TV deal secured by Warner Brothers Discovery (WBD) in 2015, when the company bought the European TV rights for the Olympic Games for 1.3 billion euros.
The new deal means that Discovery+ will be providing blanket pick-and-choose live coverage of every sport, but it has struck a deal with the national broadcaster to allow it to show the games on one linear channel and one digital channel.
The deal was in part thanks to UK law, which classes the Olympics as a protected event, meaning it has to be available on free-to-air television.
It came into effect during the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, when the BBC received a large number of complaints about the lack of live coverage.
Viewers were further annoyed when the BBC Sport Twitter account tweeted that a British competitor had made the final of the Taekwondo, before it had been shown on the delayed BBC One coverage.
The deal is in place for the next five Winter and Summer Olympic Games, up to and including Brisbane 2032.
In a statement on its website, the corporation said it did not raise its bid because: “Quite simply because we take decisions over our spending very seriously as it is licence fee payers’ money that we are using.
“As much as we’d like to, we can’t buy everything we want.”
Discovery+ will have more than 50 live channels covering the games, with an offer for the Olympics allowing viewers to sign up for £3.99 per month between Wednesday, July 17 and Sunday, August 11.
Eurosport channels will be showing live coverage from 7am to 10.30pm daily, with seven pop-up channels being created to provide extra coverage. There will also be highlights and replays of events shown throughout the night.
Sky TV customers get Eurosport 1 and 2, and can activate a Discovery+ Standard Plan at no extra cost.
BBC Radio 5 Live will also be providing live coverage, while the BBC Sport website will have clips of the action and interviews.
The BBC coverage will begin at 5.45pm on Friday, July 26, with the opening ceremony beginning at 6.30pm on BBC One, which will see each country arrive on Paris’s River Seine.
Presenting the corporation’s TV coverage will be Clare Balding, Gabby Logan, Hazel Irvine, Isa Guha, Jeanette Kwakye, JJ Chalmers, and Mark Chapman.
They will be joined by the likes of Fred Sirieix, whose daughter is a diver for Team GB, the UK’s most decorated female Olympian Laura Kenny, British long jumper Jazmin Sawyers, Olympic gold medallist Moe Sbihi, and Olympic bronze medallist Vicky Holland.
