The Law That Stops Some Sport Disappearing Behind a Paywall

What the rule actually does

The regime does not say a listed event must be shown free to air. It says the live rights must be offered to broadcasters meeting a test: free to view, and received by at least 95% of the population.

That distinction is the whole design. Nobody is compelled to buy or to broadcast. What is removed is a rights holder’s ability to sell exclusively to a pay platform without the qualifying broadcasters having had the chance.

The effect is to change the market rather than the outcome. A federation may still take the highest bid — but the bidding must include broadcasters whose business model requires them to give the event away.

Two groups, two different protections

Group A — including the Olympic and Paralympic Games, Wimbledon, the Grand National and the Epsom Derby — is protected for live coverage. These are events the regime treats as national moments that should be watchable as they happen.

Group B — including the Six Nations, the Commonwealth Games, the Open, the Ryder Cup and home Test cricket — may be shown live and exclusively on a pay platform, provided there is adequate secondary coverage: a delayed transmission or a comprehensive highlights package, free to air.

The two-tier structure is a compromise, and a reasonably honest one.

Group A says: this belongs to everyone, live.

Group B says: you may sell the live rights, but the country must be able to see what happened.

Why it was built

The list dates to the mid-1990s, when pay television grew rapidly and it became clear that a rights market with no constraints would move the most valuable sport behind a subscription.

The concern was not commercial. It was that events which function as shared national occasions — watched by people who follow no sport at all — would become available only to those who paid, and would stop performing that function.

That is a claim about what sport is for in public life, and it is why the regime exists in statute rather than in a broadcasting contract.

What it costs the sports

The regime is a genuine transfer, and it should be described as one.

A listed sport receives less money than it otherwise would. Exclusive live rights on a pay platform are worth more than non-exclusive rights or a highlights deal, and the difference is substantial.

That money would have funded the sport — coaching, facilities, the grassroots. So protecting free access to the elite event reduces the resources available to develop the people who might one day appear in it.

Cricket is the standing example on both sides. Removing home Tests from Group A protection produced a large increase in revenue for the English game and a marked decline in the sport’s casual visibility — and the argument about whether that trade was worth it has run ever since.

The pressure the model is under

The framework was written for a world of terrestrial broadcasters and a 95% reception test that made sense when television arrived through an aerial.

It fits streaming badly. A service that reaches most of the country over the internet, free at the point of use, is not obviously covered by a rule written about transmitters — and the audience for the events themselves is increasingly not watching a broadcast at all.

Reviews of the regime have concentrated on exactly this: what “available to 95% of the population” should mean, whether digital-only services can qualify, and whether protection should extend to clips and highlights on other platforms rather than only to scheduled programming.

Whatever the answers, the underlying question is unchanged and is the same one running through most of sport’s commercial arguments — including the OWGR’s control over access to golf’s majors and the IOC’s revenue distributions: who is entitled to what a sport produces, and who decides.

For events on both lists, see the Ryder Cup format, the Grand National’s safety changes and Six Nations bonus points.