With change needed to ensure lesser followed sports get their time in the spotlight, is it time to abolish the Crown Jewels and ditch the BBC for some coverage?

What I know about aquatics could be scribbled with a waterproof Sharpie on a pair of skimpy Speedos. I do know, though, that swimming is one of the cornerstones of the Olympics, trusted by the IOC to take the place of athletics as the anchor sport in the prestigious final week of the Games at LA28. I know too that if you stick a major champs on terrestrial tele, I’ll be sure to tune in and watch.

The 2025 World Aquatics Championships concluded last weekend in Singapore. If you’re a Brit relying on mainstream media – and especially the BBC – for your sports news, these Worlds will likely have passed you by unnoticed. No TV coverage on the national broadcaster’s platforms and precious few items on the BBC Sport website and app. When I tuned into radio coverage of one evening session on the Beeb’s app, it had just 108 listeners.

For the record, Great Britain sent a squad of 67 athletes to Singapore, finishing 15th in the overall table with five medals across artistic swimming, diving and the races in the pool. Although down on the ten medals GB secured at the Paris 2024 Olympics, there were sufficient strong performances in Singapore to give heart for the team’s three year run into LA.

Aquatics medal table

Taking a less parochial perspective, China topped the medal table, just as it did in Paris. Australia pushed the United States into third place. In the pool, as across a slew of Olympic and Paralympic sports, the pressure is already building on Team USA to deliver in front of a home crowd primed to celebrate no less than golden success in 2028.

Confronted by the BBC’s decision not to bid for the rights to broadcast Singapore 2025, Aquatics GB deserves enormous credit for securing those rights itself and ensuring live coverage and magazine packages on both its own website and via the Eurovision platform. This was an initiative from an aquatics governing body without precedence globally, and provided comprehensive access for British fans. The tragedy is that it was necessary at all.

A new way forward for the BBC?

Britain’s public service broadcaster has form in shunning aquatics championships, just as it has been scaling back its commitments aggressively across sport. As flagged in last week’s Sport inc., the BBC has not even signed up to show next years’s home Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, where swimming will of course feature prominently once again.

The BBC’s arguments for reducing sports broadcast are well-worn and revolve around the cost-to-eyeballs ratio, plus its ability to turn money spent on dramas and documentaries into income from lucrative worldwide syndication deals – not an option with sport.

For the biggest sports events, subscription channels can elevate broadcast rights deals to levels that drive out the BBC. There is a ‘crown jewels’ list of events, ultimately determined by politicians, which have to be free to access by the British public – from the FA Cup final and Olympics to the Grand National. This ensures that a roster of high profile sporting occasions is available to the Beeb, to do with what it does best. Perhaps, though, it is lower profile competitions that really need politicians’ protection.

Politically challenging

Britain has been investing consistently in Olympic and Paralympic medal hopes since 1996 through National Lottery and Exchequer funding of athletes and the governing bodies that manage their development. UK Sport also pursues an ambitious strategy of securing the right to stage big events on British soil. Successful athletes and events only have societal value, however, if they are highly visible. Surely this is where a public service broadcaster must come in.