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Comment by te_chris | Hacker News Reader

Oh that’s gone and got cocked up too. Discovery have paid a fortune for the europe-wide individual streaming rights, so BBC can only broadcast two streams at a time. You can only watch the individual sports streams on Eurosport/Discovery plus. This is a kafkaesque mess though - e.g. PS only has Eurosport app, but to sign up and subscribe, you have to go through discovery+, whose credentials can’t log you in to Eurosport; obviously a huge improvement over just having it all on the BBC….

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I don't understand this. The Olympics are one of the so-called "crown jewels" which are supposedly guaranteed free to watch. The Broadcasting Act 1996 voids any contract which gives a non-free broadcaster exclusive rights.

But I'm not a lawyer. Maybe it doesn't apply to Discovery because they are streaming not broadcasting? Maybe the BBC plays along because they couldn't get any feed otherwise?

Separately, the Olympics gets special legal protection for their IP [1]. The IoC is giving us the middle finger so we should give it right back and repeal this law. Even better, legalize piracy of any sports broadcast which is supposed to be freely available but isn't.

[1]: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1995/32

I don't know how much the BBC paid Discovery for the rights, but France.tv had to do the same and has the right to up to three simultaneous TV broadcasts, and what seems to be all sports streaming online (with an awful UI, but that's another matter). Eurosport/Discovery also broadcasts in France, like in the rest of Europe.

But I thought uk left Europe :(

The EU.

No, they exited the european union. They didn't actually move their entire country outside of europe.

EU != Europe. The UK left the political and economic union called the EU, they are still very much part of Europe.

Huh, I was thinking of Europe as a political entity such that "Exclusive rights to broadcast in Europe" would exclude UK, but TIL thanks

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