Sports Today

I wrote the last piece ten years ago this month, and I stick by what I wrote. However, my own sports intake has changed radically in the last ten years due to the wide availability of sports of all kinds on the internet.

First, I watch almost no sports on TV these days. I did watch the Superbowl this year but it was probably the first American football game I have watched in several years. I don’t watch hockey or NASCAR any more, I’ve never followed baseball, and the Final Four of March Madness is the limit to my basketball viewing.  I don’t even watch a lot of soccer — the occasional Chelsea game is about it.

But the availability of multiple channels (some legal, some perhaps less so) on the net allows me to follow cricket, rugby, road race cycling, and sumo all year round.  I have become a devotee of biathlon and ocean racing, and I can indulge long time favourites such as lawn bowling and curling.  My favourite online sports channel this afternoon is offering me live streaming events in tennis, billiards, sevens rugby, softball, bandy, and sports car racing, along with all the soccer, football, hockey, baseball, and basketball from around the world.  Earlier today, there were winter sports from Europe, athletics from several counties, shooting from Italy, and table tennis from the Far East.

It is a bizarre feast.