Sport

May 2016. Tears cascade at the King Power Stadium as Andrea Bocelli serenades a sea of ecstatic, incredulous Leicester City fans. We’ve achieved the impossible, our team of giant-slaying underdogs have toppled the phenomenally rich “top six” Goliaths of modern-day football, defying odds of 5,000/1 to lift the Premier League trophy. It’s surely the most historic football moment I will ever experience. At 18, my life as a football fan has peaked.  

Women’s football is “a success story but it’s only just beginning”, argued Dawn Airey, Chair of the Barclays FA Women's Super League and former Channel 5 Chair. “If you can’t see it, you can’t be it. We want young women to see you can play football at a very high level and make a really good career out of it.”

Free-to-air access, she said, was “absolutely critical”, adding that women’s football has to balance “revenue and reach. We need to drive money into the game but we absolutely want engagement, and to get engagement you need that fee-to-air opportunity.”

The Euros is a football tournament like no other before it.

Delayed a year by the pandemic and rerouted to multiple venues around Europe, it will be – at best – problematic, and, in some cases, impossible for fans to follow their teams. The UK broadcasters covering the tournament – with games split between the BBC and ITV – face the same difficulties.

On 12 March, Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta tested positive for coronavirus, sending his team and staff into self-isolation. The following morning, the Premier League threw in the towel – it was obvious that it was no longer possible to play football during the Covid-19 epidemic.

The rest of football and pretty much all sport followed. At a stroke, the schedules of the UK’s specialist sports broadcasters had been emptied.

Data is pervasive in today’s professional sports world. It’s difficult to remember a time when football on TV didn't have information on pass completion percentages and shot counts, when tennis didn’t have Hawk-Eye, and when cricket didn’t have its Hot Spot infrared imaging system.

In much the same way as retail, healthcare, or financial services, the industry has embraced digital transformation, and with it, an appreciation of the power of data.

Welcome to the great British summer of no sport. There will be no Wimbledon, no Euro 2020 football, no Open golf and no Olympics, which leaves the sport broadcasters on the canvas.

Punch drunk they may be, but no one is throwing in the towel. The challenge is to fill the hours of telly set aside for sport this summer and to attract the bumper audiences being enjoyed elsewhere on TV during the lockdown.

Live sport has not disappeared entirely – Taiwanese basketball and baseball anyone? – but there is not much of it about.

There’s a perfect storm this summer – and it’s taking place on our televisions. The rise of women in sport has been gathering pace for years. Now – thanks to commercial pressure, the push for equality and some incredible momentum provided by the sportswomen themselves – they find themselves in their strongest-­ever position..

Taking place at Chelsea FC’s Stamford Bridge in London, all money raised will go towards Unicef’s work in providing care and protection for children around the world.

The match will see ex-football legends and celebrities such as Jamie Redknapp, Mark Wright and Ben Shepherd playing for the England team, and going head to head with the Soccer Aid World XI team.

Produced by Initial, part of Endemol Shine UK, the match will be broadcast live on ITV on June 16th and hosted by Dermot O’Leary.