BBC explains why it can’t show everything at the Olympics as coverage starts today

After a big opening ceremony last night (26 July), today’s the day we get to start watching the games on telly.

Yep, with a couple of sports like women’s football having already kicked off earlier this week, the BBC will start its Olympic coverage today.

With the athletes said to be in for the chance of plenty of sex while they’re in the village and drama already having kicked off around controversial participation, not all of their competitions will be shown by the broadcaster.

The Paris 2024 Summer Olympics will see 32 different sports with 329 events to be contested in. And the BBC have had to explain why it can’t show everything to clear up any confusion.

So in the past, the broadcaster was once able to show as much of the Olympics across as many channels as it wanted.

The Olympics have begun. (Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

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You’ll probably remember back in 2012 when London hosted and the TV would pop up with Red Button, offering 24 channels of live Olympics coverage.

However, when Warner Brothers Discovery (WBD) bought the European TV rights for the Olympic Games for a reported 1,300,000,000 euros (£1,097,947,500) in 2015, that changed.

Now WBD get to show as much of the Paris games as it likes. So yes, if you’re wanting to watch more games than the BBC has, you’re going to need to pay for Discovery+ or Eurosport subscriptions.

While the BBC will have a network TV channel and a second broadcast stream - ‘Olympics Extra’ on BBC iPlayer - throughout this year’s Olympics.

“That means we can show the two most exciting or important events happening at any moment live at the same time,” it explains.

You'll have to pay for certain coverage this year. (Peter Dazeley/Getty Images)

“And because of the way the Olympics schedule works, it means there will almost never be a big medal moment or race or tearful interview we can't bring you.”

The BBC adds that it can’t pay more to show everything because it makes decision over spending ‘very seriously as it is licence fee payers' money’ being used.

Over 250 hours of live coverage will be shown on TV by the broadcaster but the Discovery+ app and Eurosport channels will have more than 3,800 hours of live coverage in total from 7am to 10:30pm every day.

This arrangement is now in place for the next five Olympic Games, taking us up to the 2032 Summer Games in Brisbane, Australia.

To see the full Olympics coverage, you can subscribe to discovery+ from £30.99 a month at get.discoveryplus.com.