Public service media and sport in the age of platforms: The cases of Flanders,South Africa and the United Kingdom

Abstract

In Europe and beyond, coverage of sporting events and competitions has long been a highly valued part of the programming mix offered by public service media. For PSM, sport (and particularly live sports coverage) provides a way to bring communities and/or the nation together, as well to reach audiences that are otherwise often under-served by PSM, such as lower-income groups. However, over the last decade or so, the ability of PSM organisations to utilise sport to enhance cultural citizenship in these ways has increasingly come under threat, due to a combination of budget cuts and escalating rights fees. Using examples from Flanders (VRT), South Africa (SABC) and the United Kingdom (UK) (BBC), this article details some of the main ways that PSM organisations, who continue to see sports coverage as an important part of their remit, have responded to this twin challenge. The article begins by outlining why sport remains such a key genre for PSM and their viewers. The second and main part then analyses how the PSM organisations examined here have adopted three sports media rights buying and distribution strategies, namely: increased coverage and promotion of women’s sport; a renewed focus on minority sports; and, the growing use of their online platforms to enhance the attractiveness of PSM for both viewers and sports organisations. The final part of the article highlights the need to update major events legislation (sometimes referred to as ‘listed events’ or anti-siphoning’ legislation), which, in many countries/regions with PSM, including Belgium/Flanders, South Africa and the UK, is designed to ensure that certain key national and/or international sporting events (e.g. the Olympic Games; FIFA World Cup football tournaments) remain universally available via free-to-air television.

Keywords

PSM sports rights BBC SABC VRT major events legislation listed events anti-siphoning legislation

Introduction

In Europe and beyond, coverage of sporting events and competitions has long been a highly valued part of the programming mix offered by public service media (PSM) (Evens et al., 2013). For PSM, sport (and particularly live sports coverage) provides a way to bring communities and/or the nation together, as well to reach audiences that are otherwise often under-served by PSM, such as lower-income groups. However, over the last decade or so, the ability of PSM organisations to utilise sport to enhance ‘cultural citizenship’ in these ways has increasingly come under threat (Scherer and Rowe, 2014). First, the acquisition of live sports rights has been a strategic priority for both established pay-tv operators (e.g. Sky) and various global streaming services (e.g. Amazon and DAZN), which has led to an escalation in the value of rights (Evens and Smith, 2025). Second, albeit to varying degrees, PSM organisations around the world have seen their budgets squeezed via reduced public funding and/or declining advertising revenues (EBU, 2025).

Using examples from Flanders (VRT), South Africa (SABC) and the United Kingdom (UK) (BBC), this article details some of the main ways that PSM organisations, who continue to see sports coverage as an important part of their remit, have responded to this twin challenge. Admittedly, the selection of these cases reflects the interests of the researchers, but, at the same time, they also offer insights from the experiences of a range of very different PSM. With a total annual (licence fee and commercial) income in 2024/25 of £5.9 billion, the BBC is by some way the world’s largest and most well-funded PSM organisation, and as such provides the focal point for much our analysis (BBC, 2025a: 58). Over 2024/25, the BBC invested around £400 million on sports programming (rights and production costs) (Ampere Analysis, 2025: 67; BBC, 2025a: 64), offering extensive television coverage of 40 different sports, including a host of major national and/or international events (BBC, 2025b: 55). By contrast, the regionally focused VRT operates on a much smaller scale. VRT is dedicated to serving the (around 6.5 million) Flemish community in Belgium and its total annual (government and commercial) income of around €500 million is only marginally higher than the BBC’s spending on sports programming alone (VRT, 2025a). Nevertheless, VRT also considers sport to be a ‘fundamental component’ of its public service mission and, like the BBC, offers television coverage of major national/international events, as well as numerous minority sports (VRT, 2025b). Finally, the case of the SABC highlights the experience of a non-western PSM organisation. The SABC faces the unique challenge of nation building and reconciliation in post-apartheid South Africa. At least partly as a result, the Corporation views the ‘provision of national sports, developmental and minority sport’ as an important part of its public service ‘legal mandate’ (SABC, 2019: 5). However, it is arguably even more difficult for the SABC to fulfil this aspect of its public service remit than it is for its European counterparts. The SABC serves a similar size population to that of the BBC (around 65 million), but with an annual (advertising and licence fee) income below that of VRT, at around R5.1 billion (£230 million) (Forrester, 2025).

The remainder of this article is divided into three main parts. It begins by setting out in a little more detail why sport remains such a key genre for PSM and their viewers. The second and main part then highlights the extent of the financial challenge faced by PSM and analyses how the PSM organisations examined here have responded by adopting three main (interrelated) sports media rights buying and distribution strategies, namely: first, increased coverage and promotion of women’s sport; second, a renewed focus on minority sports, often involving partnerships with commercial media organisations; and third, the growing use of their own online platforms to enhance the attractiveness of PSM for both viewers and sports organisations. The third part of the article focuses on major events legislation (sometimes referred to as ‘listed events’ or anti-siphoning’ legislation), which, in many countries/regions with PSM, including Belgium/Flanders, South Africa and the UK, is designed to ensure that certain key national and/or international sporting events (e.g. the Olympic Games; FIFA World Cup football tournaments) remain universally available via free-to-air television. This section highlights the urgent need to update major events legislation to preserve its relevance and effectiveness in the age of platforms.

PSM, sport and cultural citizenship

By providing coverage of a mix of national and international sports events, PSM organisations can fulfil their public service remits and enhance cultural citizenship in several interrelated ways. First, in an era of increasingly fragmented audiences, live television coverage of major sporting events remains one of the few forms of content able to bring the nation together for a shared viewing experience. For example, in the UK, England’s defeat by Spain in the UEFA men’s Euro 2024 final attracted a peak BBC audience of 17.8 million viewers (an audience share of 63%), plus the game was also streamed 7.6 million times on the BBC’s online platforms, the BBC iPlayer and BBC Sport (BBC, 2024). Similarly, in Flanders, VRT’s coverage of Belgium’s defeat to Morocco at the 2022 FIFA men’s World Cup was watched by just under 1.7 million viewers (an 88.2% TV audience share), with 437,000 Flemish viewers also following the match via VRT online platforms (Brussels Times, 2022). Just as, if not more significantly, in South Africa, the country’s 2019 men’s Rugby World Cup victory, led by the team’s first black captain, Siya Kolisi, was able to be ‘witnessed by all South Africans’ via SABC, following a last-minute deal with the rights holder, pay television operator, DStv (SABC, 2020: 62). Albeit not as dramatically, sports coverage on PSM can also provide the focal point for a shared cultural experience that spans the entire duration of major national/international sports competitions or events. In the UK, the BBC’s television coverage of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games reached an audience of 36.1 million, 59% of the UK population (BBC, 2024b). Similarly, SABC coverage of the 2024 African Cup of Nations (AFCON) football championships reached over 20 million viewers (SABC, 2024: 41). And, VRT has also proudly declared that during 2024 Flemish audiences ‘turned to VRT’ for coverage of a host of major national and international sporting events, including the (summer) Olympic Games and the UEFA European Championship (VRT, 2025c: 14).

A second way that PSM enhances cultural citizenship is by providing access to sports coverage for viewers that are unwilling, or unable, to pay for subscription services. This is a significant proportion of citizens. A survey commissioned by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), an alliance of PSM organisations based mainly, but not exclusively in Europe, found that while 44% of television viewers enjoyed watching sport, two-thirds of sports fans in Europe did not have access to premium sports channels (Oxford Economics, 2024: 10). The popularity of sport on PSM also suggests that many viewers enjoy watching sport, even if they do not subscribe to pay-TV services. For instance, in the UK, in 2022, PSM (the BBC and commercially funded PSM, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5) accounted for just six per cent of all sport broadcast on television, but delivered around 60% of the total viewing of sport (McCaskill, 2023a). The enduring popularity of the BBC’s flagship Match of the Day programme, which provides weekly highlights from the English Premier League, is testament to the value attached to sports coverage on PSM by large numbers of viewers. Despite the growth of pay-TV in the UK over the last 25 years, in the early 2020s, Match of the Day (and other football highlights programmes on the BBC), still accounted for two-thirds of all (domestic) Premier League football viewing (BBC, 2021). Since 2021, the availability of ‘near-live’ highlights of Premier League matches (without a subscription), via pay-TV broadcaster, Sky’s YouTube channel, has seen a decline in Match of the Day’s average audience, from around two million to just over 1.5 million weekly viewers, but the programme continues (annually) to reach over 50% of the UK television audience (Ampere Analysis, 2022: 38). Outside Europe, in countries where disparities of wealth and income are often even more acute, PSM provision of sport can be a just as, if not a more important, source of cultural citizenship. In South Africa, SABC provides free-to-air coverage of a host of international and national sports events, including: the 2022 FIFA World Cup and 2024 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) football tournaments; local Heritage Cup and (French) Top 14 rugby; and NBA basketball (SABC, 2023: 41–42). Most significantly, in 2024, SABC’s live coverage of the South African men’s national football team – the Bafana Bafana – at the AFCON in Ivory Coast reached 21.8 million viewers, more than double the 10 million viewers who watched via South Africa’s leading pay-TV service, DStv, which also offered live coverage of AFCON matches (Seleme, 2024). For supporters of PSM, these viewing figures highlighted the importance of providing sport on free-to-air television. As put by SABC sports presenter, Xoliswa Zondo, ‘had the national broadcaster not acquired the rights to air AFCON games, over 20 million people would’ve been denied the privilege of seeing Bafana games’ (Seleme, 2024).

A third way that PSM utilise sport to build cultural citizenship is by providing representation for regional identities and/or minority groups. Given its regional focus, for VRT, providing coverage of sporting events that are particularly popular and/or culturally significant in Flanders is a key priority. To this end, VRT offers live coverage of several major international and national cycling events, including the Tour de France and the Tour of Flanders. VRT also offers coverage of international sporting events with a particular focus on Flemish athletes. For example, a peak audience of just over one million Flemish viewers watched on VRT as the Antwerp born cyclist, Lotte Kopecky, won bronze at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games (VRT, 2025c: 14). In the UK, different sporting events are of major importance to particular national audiences. Consequently, BBC television coverage of Rugby Union test matches involving Wales is often watched by more than two-thirds of the Welsh population (BBC, 2021). In a similar vein, in 2023, for the first time, BBC Northern Ireland provided live coverage of the All-Ireland Gaelic football championships, a sport followed predominately by the country’s Catholic nationalist community (BBC, 2022a). The BBC’s coverage was watched by almost one million viewers in Northern Ireland (Tunney, 2023). In South Africa, decades after the end of apartheid, the popularity of different sports continues to be divided along racial lines. Due largely to its popularity amongst black South Africans, the largest (but still the poorest) ethnic group, football is the country’s most popular and widely practised sport, while rugby and cricket tend to be more popular amongst white South Africans (Desai, 2022). By providing coverage of major events from each of these sports, the SABC represents the different groups and interests within the country. For example, in 2024, the SABC declared that its live coverage of the South African cricket team’s T20 men’s World Cup final (vs India), as well as rugby internationals against Ireland, was testament to its ‘commitment to inclusivity’ and serving its ‘diverse audience needs’ (SABC Sport, 2024). In a similar vein, in 2025, when the SABC announced its planned live coverage of a host of different major international football events, including the 2026 Women’s and 2026 Men’s Africa Cup of Nations, as well as the 2026 FIFA World Cup, it stressed that it would offer ‘unparallelled commentary, in all African languages’, including English, Afrikaans, Xitsonga and Sesotho, thus ‘ensuring that all South Africans are represented’ (Klate, 2025).

Alongside the intrinsic goal of promoting cultural citizenship, PSM also have a more pragmatic reason for providing coverage of national and international sport. Faced with increased competition from global streaming services, PSM in most, if not all, countries are experiencing declining audiences (Ampere Analysis, 2023). Amidst ongoing policy debates over the future funding and remit of PSM, sport provides a clear way for PSM to demonstrate their continued relevance and value to audiences. For example, in the UK, no doubt with PSM coverage of major sports events in mind, such as the 2022 FIFA World Cup, in 2023, 65% of viewers agreed that PSM ‘deliver on broadcast events that bring the nation together for a shared viewing experience’ (Ofcom, 2023, p. 25). In addition, with falling engagement with PSM ‘particularly prominent among younger age groups’ the ability of sport to reach younger audiences is increasingly valuable (Ampere Analysis, 2023). Ofcom (2025a) reported how during 2024 there was evidence that the BBC’s efforts to improve engagement with younger audiences were ‘starting to have an impact’, with the Corporation’s share of all broadcaster viewing increasing from 29% to 34% among 16–24-year-olds following ‘a particularly strong year for sport’ (Ofcom, 2025a:7).

Challenges and opportunities

Over the last decade, PSM looking to utilise sport to enhance cultural citizenship, as well as their own status with viewers and policy makers, have faced the twin challenge of escalating rights fees, particularly for premium events, combined with reduced, or at best, static levels of funding. In the UK, the value of the BBC’s licence fee income has declined by around a third since 2010, due largely to successive below inflation increases to the annual cost of a television licence (Savage, 2025). This has resulted in a series of reductions to the BBC’s sports rights budget. In 2010, the BBC cut its spending on sports rights by 15% and committed itself to limit expenditure on sports rights to an average of 9p in every licence fee pound received (BBC, 2010: 32). In 2015, the BBC announced further reductions in spending on sports rights, with an additional annual saving of £35 million targeted by the Corporation (Slater, 2015a). Against this backdrop, the BBC has been, as put by then Director of Sport, Barbara Slater, ‘on a mission to do the very best with the budget we’ve got’, even though that means ‘difficult choices’ over how to spend limited resources (McCaskill, 2023a). During the mid-2010s, this meant the BBC losing the live rights for numerous popular sports events to the pay-TV broadcaster, Sky, including Formula One motor racing and the Open Golf Championship, (Slater, 2015a; 2015b).

In Flanders, VRT has faced similar difficult choices. Having already experienced reduced public funding over the last decade, in 2022, VRT agreed a ‘transformation plan’ with the Belgian government, which amounted to a reduction in its annual budget of €25 million and the loss of around 10% of its staff (Carter, 2022). Combined with rights inflation, such cuts have led VRT to significantly reduce its sports coverage. During the 2000s, it has gradually lost the rights for various major football competitions and cycling events to pay-TV broadcasters (Telenet and Proximus) and free-to-air commercial broadcasters (VTM and Play Media). Specifically, over the last decade or so, VRT has lost the highlight rights for Belgium’s domestic football league (since 2011) and the live rights for UEFA’s major European club competitions: the Champions League (since 2006); the Europa League (since 2024); and, the Conference League (since 2024) (De Moor, 2023). Commercial rivals, most notably Discovery/Eurosport, have also acquired the pan-European rights for key cycling events, including the Italian based races, Milaan–Sanremo and the Giro d’Italia (Sporza, 2017). VRT continues to cover most major UCI World Tour cycling races, including the Tour of Flanders, Paris–Roubaix and the Tour de France, as free-to-air coverage of these events is protected by Belgium’s listed events legislation (see below). However, VRT has lost its exclusive rights to cover cyclo-cross, a hugely popular form of off-road cycling. Due to budget constraints, VRT has been forced to share the rights for various major cyclo-cross races with pay-TV operator, Telenet, while the rights to others have completely migrated to pay-TV.

In South Africa, the financial pressures faced by the SABC have been even more severe. Most recently, despite a R3.2 billion government ‘bail out’ in 2019, by 2023, the Corporation was again ‘technically insolvent’ (Jacobs, 2023). By 2025, having provided another R700 million of additional funding, the South African government was publicly admitting that the Corporation was ‘severely underfunded’ and required a new funding model (Illidge, 2025). Against this backdrop, the SABC has frequently complained that ‘the exorbitant cost of sports rights’ combined with ‘limited potential for revenue generation’ makes investment in ‘premium sports content […] prohibitive’ (SABC, 2023: 23). As a result, the South African sports rights market has long been dominated by the country’s leading pay-TV broadcaster, MultiChoice/DStv, which offers live coverage of the most popular national sports events and competitions, including the Currie Cup (rugby), PSL (football) and the SA20 (cricket) via its (linear television channels and online) brand, SuperSport (Smith, 2016).

PSM and women’s sport

In response to escalating rights fees and reduced budgets, PSM have adopted several interrelated sports media rights strategies. First, over the last decade, PSM in Europe and beyond have made a deliberate and concerted effort to begin to redress the media’s historic underrepresentation of women’s sport (Liston et al., 2024). By markedly increasing their coverage of a range of different women’s sports, PSM have been able to promote the cultural citizenship of (female and male) viewers while also demonstrating to policy makers and regulators the distinctiveness of their output in comparison to their commercial counterparts. For PSM, the cost of the rights to cover women’s sports have also been relatively affordable, while for many women’s sports organisations the exposure offered on free-to-air television (and online) by PSM has been viewed as a valuable means to increase public exposure to commercial sponsors and/or new audiences.

The BBC’s coverage of women’s sport, and particularly women’s football, is perhaps the best illustration of the symbiotic relationship between PSM and women’s sport. Since the early 2010s, the BBC has significantly increased its coverage of women’s football, most notably successive women’s FIFA World Cups and UEFA European Championships. With this coverage, the BBC has helped build the profile of women’s football and, in turn, has itself enjoyed steadily increasing audiences. For example, 28.1 million people watched the BBC’s coverage of the 2019 FIFA World Cup, compared with 12.4 million for the 2015 FIFA World Cup (House of Lords, 2019: 28). Even more impressively, England’s successive victories in the finals of the 2022 and 2025 Women’s European Championships achieved peak television audiences of 17.4 and 16.2 million, respectively, making each match the most-watched programme of the year (BBC, 2022a; BBC Sport, 2025). For the BBC, the rights to international women’s football have also proved particularly good value for money. In a joint deal with FIFA, the BBC and ITV secured the rights for the 2023 FIFA World Cup for £9 million, ‘a fraction’ of the price they paid for the rights to the men’s World Cup (McCaskill, 2023b).

The popularity of international football on the BBC has prompted interest in acquiring the rights to women’s sport from UK pay-TV broadcasters, chiefly Sky. In 2021, the BBC and Sky agreed a joint 3-year deal for the live rights to top-level English domestic women’s football, the Women’s Super League (WSL). At around £8 million per season, this ‘landmark’ deal was the biggest broadcast rights deal for any professional women’s football league in the world (Wrack, 2021). In 2024, the deal was renewed for a further four seasons, for almost double the fee, at around £13 million per season (Dixon, 2024). With increased coverage of a host of women’s sport, including football, cricket and netball, Sky now provides many more hours of women’s sport than the BBC. In 2024, Sky Sports broadcast 5039 hours of women’s sport, compared to the BBC’s 556 (WST, 2025:15). However, the public exposure provided by PSM remains invaluable for women’s sport. In 2024, the BBC accounted for only 7 per of the total number of hours women’s sport broadcast on UK television, but this represented 37% of the total viewing (WST, 2025: 16). Increased public exposure has also been vital to the wider social and cultural impact of the BBC’s coverage of women’s sport, including increased attendances at women’s sports events and rising levels of public participation. Between 2016 and 2023, attendance at women’s sports events in the UK increased from 0.4 million to 2.6 million, including record-breaking attendances for WSL matches (WST, 2024: 47). Furthermore, in 2022, the English Football Association’s participation tracker – a monthly online survey run across adults aged 16 and over – showed that 43% of surveyed grassroots women’s football participants felt ‘inspired to start playing football’ by watching the England Women’s team at the UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 (UEFA, 2023: 27).

Over the last decade, both VRT and the SABC have also increased and enhanced their coverage of women’s sport. In Flanders, VRT’s coverage of the 2024 Paris Olympic provided a focal point for its coverage of women’s sport, with the Corporation proudly declaring that ‘more Flemish viewers than ever tuned in to women’s sports, especially our women’s basketball team at the Olympic Games in Paris’ (VRT, 2025c: p 5). VRT’s coverage of women’s cycling has also proved particularly popular. In 2023, fuelled by the success of the Belgian rider, Lotte Kopecky, VRT’s coverage of the UCI Cycling World Championships achieved a 66% audience share (UCI, 2023). Cycling Vlaanderen, the official cycling federation in Flanders, has reported that the number of girls under 18 with permits to participate in cycling competitions of all kinds (road, field, BMX, mountain biking, and indoor) quadrupled between 2019 and 2022, with this increased participation linked to the success of Lotte Kopecky (Oxford Economics, 2024: 41). For the SABC, a commitment to women’s sport has become an increasingly prominent feature of its output. The ‘theme for SABC Sport for 2023’ was ‘Game Change HER’, celebrating the year of women in sports (SABC, 2024: 71). To this end, SABC Sport provided coverage of a host of major international women’s sports events, including the FIFA World Cup, the Rugby World Cup, AFCON and the Netball World Cup (SABC, 2024: 71) Hosted by South Africa, the latter provided a number of matches featuring in SABC2’s top 20 most viewed programmes of the year (SABC, 2024: 49).

PSM, minority sports and rights partnerships

A second response from PSM to increased rights competition and reduced budgets has been to continue their long-established provision of minority/niche sports (Boyle and Haynes, 2009: 38–40). PSM often highlight how they can offer sports organisations far greater public exposure for their sports than subscription services, which enables them to attract commercial sponsors and grow their sports. For example, the EBU emphasises how, as of 2021, free-to-air television has the potential to reach a total European population of 800 million, compared with a potential audience of 170 million for premium sports channels. (Oxford Economics, 2024: 29). To maximise this potential competitive advantage in the sports rights market, the EBU’s Sport Division, Eurovision, agrees collective rights deals with sports organisations on behalf of its members and can also co-ordinate production and/or distribution with EBU members, including VRT and the BBC. In 2023–2024, Eurovision’s ‘rights catalogue’ included the rights to a host of different sports, including athletics, swimming, cycling and skiing (EBU Sport, 2025). Commercial rivals of PSM may view the collective buying of rights by the EBU as anti-competitive (Evens and Smith, 2025: 151–2.) but for many minority sports the combination of public exposure and efficiency offered by Eurovision is an attractive proposition. For example, European Athletics has had rights agreements with the EBU since 1981 and over that time has seen significant growth in television audiences and sponsorship revenue, as well as grassroots participation (Oxford Economics, 2024: 27).

Albeit often more due to budgetary concerns than a preferred strategy, PSM have also attempted to retain at least some of their coverage of minority (and/or popular) sports via rights partnerships with other PSM or commercial organisations. The BBC has utilised this approach across numerous sports, including Six Nations rugby, FA Cup football, the WSL and, most notably, English cricket. In 2017, the ECB, the governing body of English and Wales cricket, agreed a landmark 5 year deal with Sky and the BBC, worth £1.1 billion, which meant that, while Sky would continue to show the vast majority of England’s (men’s and women’s) international cricket fixtures, the BBC would offer exclusive coverage of two men’s and one women’s T20 internationals, plus ten men’s matches and eight women’s matches from the ECB’s new city based competition, subsequently named The Hundred (Dudley, 2017). This deal signalled the return of international cricket to free-to-air television for the first time since 2005. By migrating from free-to-air PSM to pay-TV, the ECB markedly increased the revenue it received from the sale of its rights (Evens et al., 2013: 116). However, without free-to-air coverage, England cricket suffered much reduced public exposure and a significant decline in levels of participation (Bull, 2019).

For VRT, coverage of minority sports is also an important part of its sports content strategy. VRT is committed to an ‘active programme policy’, whereby ‘lesser known sports’, such as handball, athletics, gymnastics and volleyball, are promoted by being scheduled alongside more popular cycling events (VRT, 2025d). VRT’s has also increased its coverage of disabled sport, most notably via extensive coverage of the 2024 Paris Paralympic Games, which included a daily ‘full-fledged talk show’ aired on VRT1, Een dag in Parijs, reviewing each day’s action (VRT, 2025c: 9). As part of its commitment to prioritise coverage of minority sports, including disabled sport, the SABC also provided extensive coverage of the 2024 Paralympics (SABC, 2024: 63). For the SABC, however, it is partnerships, mainly with its main commercial rival, MultiChoice, that have become a defining feature of its rights strategy. As put by the SABC, ‘strategic partnerships based on value sharing have allowed the [SABC] to maintain its focus on key sporting events and codes’ (SABC, 2025a: 25). In 2024, the SABC agreed sublicensing deals with MultiChoice to offer live coverage of several popular domestic sports competitions, including the MTN8 (football) tournament, Currie Cup rugby (semi-finals and final) and select matches from the PSL, South Africa’s domestic football league (Wood, 2024). In each case, the SABC emphasised the availability of its coverage to ‘the broader South African audience’ for the benefit of both sports organisations and sponsors (Moloi, 2024).

PSM, sport and online platforms

A third key sports strategy employed by PSM has been to utilise their respective online platforms to deliver both live and recorded sports content. For over a decade, the BBC has used its online platform, the iPlayer, and/or its web site/app, to stream live coverage of major events also being covered via its broadcast channels, most notably the 2012 London Summer Olympics, as well as successive FIFA World Cup and UEFA European Championship football tournaments. While still significantly less popular than traditional broadcast coverage, online streaming has become an increasingly popular means for viewers to access BBC coverage of such events. During the 2022 FIFA World Cup, matches were streamed a ‘record breaking’ 104.7 million times on the BBC iPlayer and BBC Sport Online (BBC, 2022a). In Flanders, VRT has adopted the same approach, with live coverage of major international/national sports events offered via its streaming platform VRT Max and sports web site/app, Sporza. VRT Max’s coverage of the 2024 Paris Olympics and Paralympics helped ensure ‘the most impactful sports summer in years’ with 12.7 million hours of stream time (VRT, 2025e).

For PSM, online coverage of major sports events also serves a wider strategic objective, namely attracting large numbers of viewers to their online platforms. This is perhaps most evident in the case of SABC and its online platform SABC+. In 2024, SABC + reached 1 million registered users ‘driven by sport’, with around 60,000 additional users being registered ‘for each major game’ (SABC, 2025a). From July 2024 to March 2025, the SABC Sport channel on SABC + achieved nine million total screen views and 4.5 million unique views, attracted by the Currie Cup rugby Championship and MTN 8 (football) Final (SABC, 2025b: 47) Coverage of major international events proved just as popular, with the 2024 AFCON match between South Africa and Nigeria attracting 1.2 million viewers via SABC+ (SABC, 2024: 71). By streaming major sports events, SABC + has secured ‘a strong foothold in the competitive streaming market’ (SABC, 2024: 70–1).

PSM have also used their online platforms to provide additional live coverage and exposure for minority sports. In 2017, the BBC announced ‘the biggest increase of live sport in a generation’, whereby, in partnership with host of relatively small sports organisations, including British Swimming, British Basketball and the WSL, it would make available over a thousand additional hours of live sport via its BBC Sport app and the BBC iPlayer (BBC, 2017). Similarly, the SABC has utilised SABC + to offer extra coverage of ‘local leagues, youth tournaments and community sports, reinforcing its dedication to accessibility and inclusive national representation’ (SABC, 2025b: 49). While, in Flanders, VRT Max and Sporza offer coverage of a range of niche sports, including specialist cycling based events, such as Turbo Cross. In December 2024, live coverage of Turbo Cross in Diegem contributed to a ‘record month’ for VRT Max with 81,000 streams (on Sporza and VRT MAX) (VRT, 2025e).

For PSM the provision of on-demand video clips via their own web sites/apps and/or social media has also become a key part of their sports coverage. For the BBC, on-demand short clips of key moments (e.g. wickets, boundaries etc.) are a key feature of its coverage of international cricket. With pay-TV broadcaster, Sky, providing exclusive live television coverage, the BBC offers a combination of text updates and video clips via BBC Sport Online. In the summer of 2023, the BBC’s Sport website received nearly 500 million page views for the men’s and women’s Ashes across both series, nearly 60 million video views and 194 million views on social media platforms in the UK (BBC, 2023). The BBC also delivers a continuous stream of sports coverage via social media platforms, including X, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Similarly, for VRT, sports news and on-demand video distributed online via the Sporza.be web site and (Sporza and Sporza Soccer) apps, as well as social media, is an increasingly important part of its sports content strategy. For example, Sporza has built a following of over 200,000 users on TikTok (Sporza, 2025). For the SABC, the distribution of content from SABC Sport via its social media profiles on Facebook, X, Instagram and TikTok has proved increasingly popular. Since 2022, SABC Sport has seen consistent ‘engagement growth’ via social media, with the number of viewers engaging with SABC content increasing from just under one million to over four million per month by early 2025 (SABC, 2025b: 48).

The popularity of online sports coverage from PSM undoubtedly reflects wider changes in audience behaviour, particularly younger audiences. For example, in the UK, between 2011 and 2021, the average reach of television sports channels amongst 16–34-year-olds, fell from 20 to 15%, a trend ‘broadly mirrored’ in BBC’s own coverage of major sport events (BBC, 2023b: 49). However, younger audiences (16–34) are more likely to view BBC Sport coverage online, with younger viewers consuming 15% of their ‘BBC TV viewing in sport’ via the iPlayer, compared to 6% for all audiences (BBC, 2023c: 27). The importance of online distribution of sports content (live and on-demand, including clips) for PSM is therefore only likely to increase.

The evolution of major events legislation

Since the 1990s, the growth of pay-TV has prompted policy makers in numerous different countries to introduce legislation designed to preserve coverage of major sporting events on free-to-air television, including the UK, Belgium and South Africa (Oxford Economics, 2024, p. 38). While there are national variations in how major events legislation operates, typically the relevant government department in each country maintains a list of sporting events considered of national interest, and the rights to broadcast these events must be offered to free-to-air broadcasters on fair and reasonable terms. A small number of high-profile international events, such as the FIFA men’s football World Cup and the Summer Olympic Games, are included on the lists of virtually all countries, including the UK, Belgium and South Africa, but the sports/events listed also reflect national/regional preferences and traditions. In the UK, the list includes Wimbledon tennis and the Grand National horse race (for full list see Woodhouse, 2022). In Belgium, the French community and Flanders have separate lists, with the latter featuring several events not included on the French list, such as the Tour of Lombardy (cycling) and the Belgian and World Cyclo-cross Championships (for full list/s see European Union, 2007). South Africa’s list is dominated by leading domestic competitions from the country’s most popular sports: football, rugby and cricket (for full list see ICASA, 2021).

From its inception, major events legislation has been subject to regular public and political debate (see Evens et al., 2013). Rather than revisiting the contours of this debate, the intention here is to focus on key areas where the legislation requires updating to remain an effective means of safeguarding universal access to television coverage of listed events. To this end, the UK has made some progress via the 2024 Media Act. In South Africa, between 2018 and 2020, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) undertook a review of its major events regulations, but this was concerned more with long standing issues than the impact of the rise of streaming. While, in Flanders, major events legislation has been subject to little meaningful policy debate for over a decade.

Closing the streaming loophole

The reform of major events legislation in the UK was driven by a desire to prevent the possibility of a (domestic or international) streaming services from acquiring the exclusive rights to cover a listed event, that is, the so-called streaming loophole. The main concern was that the rise of streaming could lead the UK’s main PSM – the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Channel 5 – to lose the protection afforded to them when bidding for the rights to listed events. This was because for a broadcaster to ‘qualify’ to provide exclusive coverage of a listed event its service had to be both ‘free-to-view’ and able to be received by 95% of the population (via a ‘broadcast platform’ and on a ‘TV set’) (Ofcom, 2018: 3). By 2018, with viewers increasingly watching online, the 95% threshold was, as noted by the BBC, ‘becoming increasingly difficult to meet’ (BBC, 2018: 2–3). In response, following a recommendation from Ofcom, the UK government proposed to make ‘qualification for the listed events regime a PSB-specific benefit’ (DCMS, 2022a: 25). Subsequently, the 2024 Media Act changed the definition of ‘qualifying services’ so that only services (provided for free) by PSM may qualify, including on-demand services, such as the BBC iPlayer (Ofcom, 2025b: 7). Commercial rivals to PSM, including Sky and WBD, opposed this change on the grounds that they too could offer access to coverage of listed events via widely available (online) services free at the point of use (House of Commons, 2023). However, it is unlikely that commercial services would be able make coverage of listed events as accessible as PSM, even if made free at the point of use. Since 2016, despite making its live (broadcast and online, including via You Tube) coverage of the final of the UEFA Champions League available for free, pay-TV operator, BT Sport (now TNT Sport), has not been able to match the audiences previously achieved by ITV (Variety, 2008). The UK’s change to major events legislation was also explicitly designed to support and strengthen the position of PSM, ‘in recognition of the role they play in distributing content which is both distinctively British and of interest to British audiences’ (DCMS, 2022a: 25).

In Flanders, listed events are required to be made available via ‘free access television’ that can be received by ‘at least 90% of the population’ (European Union, 2007: Art 2.). In 2023, VRT (online and broadcast) reached just under 90% of the Flemish people on a weekly basis (VRT, 2024) and as such it is debatable whether the Corporation can continue to rely on major events legislation to protect it from competition for the rights to listed events from commercial rivals, including global streaming services. South Africa’s major events legislation offers the SABC little more protection. In South Africa, subscription services are not prevented from acquiring the live rights to listed events. Instead, the 2005 Electronic Communication Act states that ‘subscription services may not acquire exclusive rights that prevent or hinder the free-to-air broadcasting of national sporting events’ (ICASA, 2018: 13). Furthermore, the ICASA’s Sports Broadcasting Regulation regulations do not require live coverage of listed events on free-to-air television, but instead permit events to be ‘broadcast live, delayed live, or delayed by free-to-air Broadcasting Service Licensees’ (ICASA, 2021: 7). These two aspects combined have meant that for well over a decade Multichoice has regularly acquired the exclusive live rights to listed events. To fulfil its public service mandate and offer coverage of national events, the SABC is then forced to negotiate with MultiChoice to sub-licence free-to-air rights. On occasions this has led to no free-to-air coverage of listed events, such as South Africa’s matches (before the final) at the 2019 Rugby World Cup. Often a combination of political and public pressure leads MultiChoice to agree to sub-licence live coverage to SABC, for example, for South Africa’s matches at the 2023 Rugby World Cup, the 2023 ICC Cricket World Cup and 2024 T20 Cricket World Cup (Broadcast Media Africa, 2024). However, this should not obscure the fact that the ability of the SABC to offer universal access to listed events is dependent on the benevolence of MultiChoice, or, perhaps in future, a global streaming service. The ICASA’s (2018) Draft Sports Broadcasting Regulations were an attempt to tackle the underlying weakness of South Africa’s major events legislation, by guaranteeing ‘full live’ coverage for certain ‘national sporting events’ on free-to-air television, including the summer Olympic Games, the FIFA World Cup and the Rugby World Cup. However, ICASA’s plans prompted a backlash from South Africa’s leading sports organisations, who rely on the sale of their exclusive live rights to MultiChoice for their main source of income (Mphahlele, 2020). The ICASA eventually dropped its planned reforms, and the final (2021) Sports Broadcasting Regulations made only minor changes.

Digital (live and on demand) rights

In 2022, when launching its ‘digital rights review’ the UK government acknowledged how ‘digital rights […] have become an important element in the sale of sports rights’, but are ‘not covered by the listed events regime’ (DCMS, 2022b). However, the 2024 Media Act did not address digital rights. Instead, in 2023, in much the same way as ICASA, the UK government opted to maintain ‘commercial freedoms’ for sports organisations (House of Commons, 2023b: 2). As a result, while the UK government’s revised major events legislation prevents a commercial streaming service from acquiring the exclusive rights to cover listed events, it does not guarantee PSM access to digital, including on-demand, rights for listed events. Given the growing popularity of viewing on-demand, including clips, this represents a significant omission. In the UK, around 9% of sports fans only watch highlights (across all formats) and not live coverage of their favourite events, a figure that rises to 26% for those aged between 18 and 24 (Ampere Analysis, 2025: 108). Digital on-demand viewing is also particularly important for listed events which take place in time zones where live viewing is difficult for UK viewers. At the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, on-demand short-form clips on the BBC Sport website meant that, in some instances where a British success happened overnight, there was a ten-fold increase in audience on the live TV transmission (BBC, 2023d). Furthermore, the absence of guaranteed access for PSM to digital on-demand rights for listed events is even greater cause for concern when viewed alongside some recent rights deals for listed events, most notably the Olympic Games. Since 2018 (2022 in the UK), the acquisition of the pan-European rights for the Olympic Games by Discovery (now WBD) has meant that, even though major events legislation has ensured sub-licensing of live rights for national free-to-air coverage, the primacy of Olympics coverage previously offered by PSM has been undermined, with PSM only able to offer live coverage of two events at any one time (Ofcom, 2025b:19). This has already led the BBC to have missed live coverage of several key moments, including medal winning performances from UK athletes at Tokyo 2021 and the headline men’s singles tennis gold medal match at Paris 2024 (Waterson, 2021; Ofcom, 2025b: 19). If such restrictions were combined with the loss of digital on-demand/clip rights, the ability of the BBC to offer universal access to listed events would be significantly undermined.

What events should be listed?

Keen to avoid reopening the polarised debate on listed events, in 2022, the UK government stressed it ‘would not consider changes to the list of events’ (DCMS, 2022b). Nevertheless, there was one issue the UK government was prepared to address, namely the historic under-representation of women’s sport and para-sports. Fuelled by the active promotion and coverage of women’s sport by PSM, the popularity of women’s sport has grown significantly over the last decade. This has prompted increasing interest in the rights to women’s sports from pay-TV broadcasters, such as Sky (see above) and global streaming services. For example, Netflix and Disney have acquired US rights for the (2027 and 2031) FIFA World Cup and pan-European rights for the (2025–2030) UEFA Champions League, respectively (Islam, 2024; McCaskill, 2025). Against this backdrop, during the early 2020s, the UK government moved to incorporate more women’s sport and para-sport under the auspices of major events legislation, most notably the FIFA Women’s World Cup Finals tournament, the Women’s European Football Championship Finals tournament and the Paralympic Games (Woodhouse, 2022: 7). This welcome move for PSM in the UK mirrors similar changes in South Africa. The ICASA’s (2021) Sports Broadcasting regulations included the incorporation of several popular women’s sports events, namely the FIFA World Cup and ICC Cricket World Cup (p. 5). Adding culturally significant women’s sports events to the list of events protected for PSM coverage should be one of the most straightforward aspects of updating of major events legislation in Flanders.

Conclusion

Using the BBC, VRT and SABC as examples, this article has highlighted how PSM coverage of sport (live and recorded) is a valuable source of cultural citizenship. If anything, in an increasingly fragmented media market where access to sports coverage is often dependent on the ability/willingness to pay, the capacity of PSM to offer universally available sports coverage is more valuable than ever. Each of the PSM considered here have faced the same problem, namely a reduced budget and sports rights inflation. While operating within specific national and cultural contexts, it is striking that they have responded with broadly similar sports rights strategies. Most notably, albeit to varying degrees, each PSM has markedly increased their coverage and promotion of women’s sport. At least partly as a result, the last decade or so has witnessed significant increases in the popularity of women’s sport, which is testament to the ability of PSM to promote cultural citizenship. The BBC, VRT and SABC have also continued their long-standing focus on providing coverage of minority sports via both traditional broadcast television services and their respective online platforms. With the latter facilitating increased scale and scope of sports coverage, alongside the strategic goal of attracting more users to PSM online platforms. A potential problem for the BBC, VRT and SABC of increasing their focus on women’s and minority sports is that PSM become niche sports providers, which fail to attract audiences of sufficient size to either maximise cultural citizenship and/or demonstrate the value of PSM for the whole of society. Major events legislation is therefore more important than ever for PSM because it facilitates a blend of sports coverage that combines popular international/national events with minority sports. It is vital that major events legislation is updated and/or strengthened so as that it remains an effective means to guarantees viewers access to listed events via PSM. Of the cases considered here, the UK has made most progress, with the 2024 Media Act closing the so-called streaming loophole and effectively ensuring that only UK PSM can offer exclusive (broadcast and/or online) television coverage of listed events. A similar change in Belgium/Flanders could offer the same protection to VRT. In South Africa, despite the efforts of the ICASA, South Africa’s major events legislation remains defined by a gaping hole ready to be exploited by traditional pay-TV broadcasters and/or global streaming services, rather than a mere streaming loophole. Finally, in each country, major events legislation requires updating to incorporate the growing importance to viewers of digital on-demand coverage, including clips. To not do so risks leaving major events legislation to wither on the vine, which, would undermine both the ability of PSM to utilise sport as a source of cultural citizenship and the status of PSM within contemporary society.

Footnotes

ORCID iDs

Tom Evens

Paul Smith

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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