The BBC’s sports boss doesn’t believe the corporation needs live sport to stay relevant. Per Martyn Zielger at The Times, Alex Kay-Jelski told the Financial Times’s Business of Football Summit.
You can still be relevant, you can still matter if you don’t show the sport. No one out there can show it all. So, you just have to make sure you’re in the conversation of the things that matter.
He also argued:
The BBC might have thought, traditionally, it was up against ITV, or Sky, or various other broadcasters. Well, guess what? We’re not. We’re in a race to not be swiped, up against people selling you holidays, or clothes companies, or two-for-one chicken breasts on sale from the supermarket, or football teams, or athletes.
It’s a punchy point, and Kay-Jelski is right to a certain extent. Winning the swiping battle very much matters. This is, obviously, particularly true if you want to engage a younger audience. However, it is far from the whole story.
Live Sport Still Matters to the BBC
I don’t know how many times I have to say this, but live sport is the only thing that gets a mass, linear audience. Just the other day, the BBC was boasting that 26.3 million viewers tuned into its (excellent) TV coverage of the Winter Olympics. It also flagged how its social content got 235 million views during the competition.
Look too at Women’s Euro 2025. The final was the most-watched live broadcast moment of the year, per The Women’s Sport Trust. Not the most watched sporting moment. The most watched moment overall. The BBC said a total of 12.2 million people watched it across all of its platforms, with a peak TV audience of 11.6 million on BBC One. That’s not just incredible numbers for women’s sport, that’s incredible numbers for any TV in 2025/26. Only live sport can do that.
Of course, you’re not going to get a huge final like that every week, or even every year. However, they are crucial, and the BBC does have a responsibility to broadcast (at least some of) them. The corporation itself talks about how important this is, when trying to demonstrate its impact. Lower key but more regular events on the actual TV surely helps build a relationship with the BBC in a way other platforms cannot, too.
In the same discussion, Alex Kay-Jelski flagged the BBC’s ability to cover live sport on its website and radio stations. On this, he is totally correct. BBC 5Live is essential listening on a Saturday afternoon. Its coverage is far superior to any rival. Its live blogs are fantastic too. (There is a reason why journalists in press boxes tend to have that up on screen whilst also watching the game.) He’s also clearly not planning on abandoning Match of the Day either.
The issue, though, is the diminishing number of live events carried by the BBC on television. We don’t pay the licence fee for TikTok clips.
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