Pro road cycling may not be held in high regard because the top level racing is free to watch for joe public, unlike the cheese rolling (thanks scaredypants) which costs a fortune for a season ticket or a Sky package.
Our mass media and Joe Public don’t value free stuff as it can’t be any good otherwise it would cost a fortune.

There is so much whinging from anti footballists. There is a lot of talk today as its the 1st day of the football season, so fairly big sporting news. Radio 5 spend a large chunk of their budget securing the rights to live commentary of the premier league, so hardly a surprise they will be promoting what’s on their station. Take a look at what sport is on TV right now and you’ll see there is pretty much something for everyone.

SS1 – Test cricket
SS2 – Championship football
SS3 – Currie cup Rugby
SS4 – Sport unlimited followed by Tennis
Eurosport – Moto GP

Edit: Cycling is on the up. Hence the fact that ITV showed live coverage of the final weekend of the TDF on ITV 1 and they are now showing the Vuelta.

It’s as if the haters are more obsessed with the game than the fans. Such a cruel cruel irony for them that they have to seek out what they hate.

It used to annoy me with all the footie chat at work that I couldn’t be part of.
Now I’m just genuinely jealous of not having any interest in such a well catered for spectator sport.

For footie fans it must be the same feeling I get at the start of an F1 race….but every week and some weekdays too!

Lucky gits!

Gonna try again to get into it, but know I’ll have to go through the cringing “fast show” character phase.

Not interested in football, and I do get annoyed by how omnipresent it is, and also the assumption in much of the media that all blokes love it- advertising especially (“While you’re watching the game with the lads, she’s…” etc etc.)

But you can’t really escape or begrudge the fact that an awful lot of people do like it, really really like it, so it’s not too surprising that it’s on the TV all the time.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79QDhBtmDdk&feature=youtube_gdata_player[/video]

So you think that the Massive interest in football, is caused by the coverage it gets,

Rather than the coverage being a response to the interest that’s already there ?

No, as I said previously it is self perpetuating the more coverage the more interest because there is little else available – but that’s not a bad thing if it does not exclude other sports from public sector broadcasting (SS** is irrelevant if you can’t afford Sky).

I don’t hate football, but I do hate what it has become and its suffocating dominance.

Can a footy aficionado answer this one – has the season got longer? I may be mistaken but I seem to remember it starting in Autumn rather than August.

My point is that if we expose people to a wider variety of sports we may well find some hidden talents. Kate Walsh (Team GB Women’s Captn) swapped to hockey after being refused progress in football, from all reports she was a reasonably good footballer but has made an exceptional hockey player and the captain of her national side. I am sure that there are more examples.

Well the BBC coverage of the Olympics was pretty comprehensive. They’ll get some decent stats from that about demand for various sports and that will influence future programming. Anyone know what the stats are like?

I’m pretty much completely ambivalent about fussball, rugby, cricket, tennis and horse racing.
I don’t worry about this at all and I do pity all those who seem to get so worked up about.
Wanders off.