Forty years ago, sports fans had just 16 hours of televised sport in a week, with almost none of it live. Rewatching coverage from January 1986 reveals a world where Match of the Day returned after a four-month blackout of the Football League, and Grandstand showed only a few races before England's Five Nations victory. There was no live football, only highlights and Saint and Greavsie.
Attendances were at their lowest since 1922, with empty stadiums due to hooliganism and decrepit grounds. Yet sport was more eclectic: Channel 4 covered 61 sports, including Australian rules football and croquet, described by one critic as 'like snooker standing up'. ITV signed a £10.5m deal for athletics, and the Super Bowl drew 6.04 million viewers.
Despite these numbers, sport lagged behind soaps like EastEnders, which regularly pulled over 18 million viewers. ITV's head of sport suggested women didn't watch much sport except snooker, for reasons he claimed were sexual. Meanwhile, worries about pay-TV's rise in the US were already surfacing.
Today, live sport is available around the clock, with better production and access. The golden age of sports coverage is now, not 40 years ago.
