It’s just too hot and too early to get worked up about football, so the two highlights of the late-summer calendar are the US PGA golf tournament, in St Louis this time, and the US Open tennis from Flushing Meadows. Both compelling, vivid spectacles and — unless you have a lot of money and free time — best enjoyed from the sofa.
But not this time. The PGA is being screened online by something called Eleven Sports, with the first two rounds also free on Facebook. Eleven Sports was founded by the Leeds United owner Andrea Radrizzani, who I’m sure is a thoroughly splendid fellow. It has already bought La Liga, Serie A and the Chinese Super League among others. But you try finding your way round its bloody website.
The US Open has been bought for £30 million by Amazon in a five-year deal and will be streamed to Prime subscribers. Amazon also has a £50 million five-year deal for the UK rights to the ATP World Tour, an endlessly thrilling showcase for the best of world tennis. I don’t like Amazon much: I don’t like its white delivery vans clogging up the streets of our cities because people can’t be bothered to go to the shops; and I don’t like the way its vast warehouses and predatory pricing are killing our high streets; and I don’t like the brutal way it treats its warehouse workers. But perhaps that’s just me…
And now I really don’t like it, because I can’t watch my beloved US Open. OK, the market is a fabulous thing, I get it; but sport will run into problems if everything is sold to the highest bidder. The consumer has to come into it somewhere. Will anyone argue that Test cricket has got better or more popular since it was hoiked off terrestrial TV? I don’t think so.
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