[Medianext.MX]

Really is a disgrace this deal has been renewed - it was woefully inadequate and any pay-TV/FTA joint venture should enable the FTA broadcast to at the very least show all sessions including medal events featuring their own country live.  Ideally it should extend to being able to show every medal event live and every event featuring, in our case, a British athlete, live.    What's worse though is how poor the Discovery+ coverage actually was - the live streams were so poorly curated compared to what the BBC had previously delivered, either difficult to find online or in the case of the broadcast streams they were clearly targetted to the European audience meaning events of British interest got little coverage.

This is actually a double-edge sword in the deal. Although Eurosport retains the full coverage, worth noting this will increase the number of broadcasters offering FTA coverage. For example: in the previous rights cycle, Scandinavian FTA rights belonged almost exclusively to Discovery's own terrestrial channels. In the case of Norway and Sweden, Discovery chose not to begin talks with NRK, TV 2 and SVT, but eventually placed it on its own channels (TVNorge/MAX and Kanal 5/Kanal 9); this caused protests in both countries. This new deal should allow NRK and TV 2 shared the slice of FTA rights with TVNorge, and SVT (and maybe TV4, even if they're no longer EBU Members, they are still involved with Eurovision Sport in some form) share rights with Kanal 5 and Kanal 9. In Denmark and Finland, it's status quo: DR and TV 2 will share their slice with Discovery Denmark, and Yle remains sole FTA rights holder.