It wasn't exactly subtle.
Moments after Roger Federer slipped further into the history books, with the commas of age surrounding quivering eyes temporarily ironed away, his serenity finally betrayed....Eurosport Regrettably Have To Interrupt This Iconic Sporting Moment With A Commercial Message.
The channel have been taking viewers on a guilt trip throughout much of the Australian Open, reminding viewers that some customers would be bereft of Eurosport from February 1st, thanks to Big Sky. The commentator sounded almost apologetic after Federer's win, to tell Sky viewers that 'I hope you enjoyed that, because it's going soon, you know'.
Sky and Discovery (Eurosport's parent company) are currently locked in a stand-off regarding how much the former should pay to carry the latter's channels, with the dispute being made remarkably public last week. Discovery went public with their belief that Sky were unwilling to pay a fair price to carry their channels, saying they are paying less than they did ten years ago, with the share of Eurosport's viewers coming to the channel via Sky increasing by 20% in that time. Discovery also said that the "plurality" of TV is under threat, with Sky increasingly funneling resources to showing an inexplicable number of live Middlesborough games.
Sky responded with a statement of their own, saying that Discovery wanted £1 billion, a figure Sky believe to be unrealistic for channels they perceive to be in decline.
Eurosport in turn appealed to their viewers' loyalties, and asked them to pressure Sky by holding up their channel as the voice of plurality; the champion of the bohemian.
We believe it’s wrong for @SkyUK to charge you more & offer less. Make your voice heard @SkyHelpTeam #KeepDiscovery pic.twitter.com/Gb1EzjnJrh
— Eurosport (@eurosport) January 27, 2017
This ploy was a cynical exploitation of the sport they show, of course, as a way of Discovery making an extra couple of hundred million pounds, but it would be a huge shame for a vast swathe of viewers to lose out to Eurosport.
Eurosport is often a mooring for the antiseptic world of professional sport (the Premier League) on other channels (Sky): it reminded us all that there is always something out there that matters to someone. It has been for international sport what TG4 has been for the GAA.
It has something for everyone: Cycling is one of its jewels, and we are now in the supremely ironic position that Sky viewers will be unable to watch Team Sky without going to the kind of needless diversions that would make Dave Brailsford and his medical team proud.
The Figure Skating fan (this column assumes there is one in Ireland) could skip from the French Open to the 2017 European Championship from an ice rink in Ostrava. No other channel shows underage football tournaments with such regularity; Eurogoals had the authenticity of obscurity before the term football hipster took a dip in the mainstream; it taught the world that Biathlon was a widely-played winter sport rather than an Irish midlands town-based race; hell, it has even screened table football.
The channel also broadcasts a tennis magazine show with Mats Wilander called Game, Set, and Mats - which we know is a beacon of sports broadcasting without having to ever watch it.
While much of Eurosport's schtick is derived from screening sports that others won't, it has never stopped being relevant: fewer channels have been quite so consistent in televising great feats of cheating and doping.
Of course, Sky will say that the channels are in decline. There is no obvious commercial benefit to screening obscure sports, but there is a certain serenity to having them. It's comforting to know that there is something on the outer edges of your TV schedule that someone has given their life to, purely for the love of it.
I rarely watch Figure Skating from Ostrava (Disclaimer: I never have) but it's nice to know that it's there if I ever want to.
With Eurosport, it is better to have not particularly loved but not lost, than loved before.
There is an ephemerality to its action that makes it more authentic; I have already forgotten the name of the Spaniard I watched do some Figure Skating in Ostrava last week, but I do remember being utterly enchanted by him for a couple of minutes, before he shuffled off the ice, retreating back to Spain and the fringes of my consciousness.
I could also enjoy the Figure Skating in Ostrava without the need to compare the event to the Magic of previous Figure Skating in Ostrava, and nor did I have to worry about making acerbic and knee-jerk judgements about a Figure Skater who did not perform well to keep pace with a relentless, enervating news-feed.
Eurosport is unencumbered by the self-referentiality of Sky or the dreadful nostalgia of the BBC. Much of the Beeb's cup coverage was spent decrying the failure of managers to take the competition seriously, amid the continued devaluing of the cup. Coverage of the cup is so hopelessly beset by nostalgia that at this stage every cup tie is compared with the competition's zeniths in decades gone by, making subsequent disappointment inevitable. It is well understood that not every Premier League game will be as good as Liverpool 4-3 Newcastle.
It is increasingly a competition for pundits to work out contradictions: failure to promote youth in the league is indicative of managers who care solely about success; playing the kids in the FA Cup is indicative of managers who don't care enough about success.
The BBC's FA Cup coverage is a lament for a more innocent age, whereas Eurosport is one of the few remaining outposts of current-day innocence. Fare thee well.
Buddy Cops
Trevor Sinclair appeared on Match of the Day as a single-minded 1980s cop who doesn't play by the rules, with Lawrenson his wry, wise-cracking sidekick who knows Sinclair is a maverick, but finds him too endearing to leave.
