For those who need to learn, there is a channel called Eurosport on the Sky Sports universe. Eurosport needed to show what the majority of people wanted to watch directly, but it cannot afford to.

Instead, in its very early days, it showed lots of extremely minority sports. There is nothing wrong with that. However, as an Arsenal-watching football nut, I am a typical Sky Punter.

The English Premier League is where the money is, and Sky has the majority of rights. The Champions League is equal cash fodder. In that respect, TNT, which owns the rights to it, has an advantage over SKY, but I digress.

Scotland’s Premier League and the rest of the English leagues are mild cash compared to the EPL but still generate money because many people support their local team.

Also, many of Europe’s premier leagues, such as Spain, Germany, and France, in the UK attract interest due to the quality of matches. Enthusiasm started due to the Champions League. For example seeing your team play Bayern Munich or Real Madrid. Football fans want to watch these, and SKY and TNT cover all these eventualities. The latter is formerly BT Sport, for those who don’t know.

The same goes for boxing and PDC darts, including Luke Littler. Also, cricket test matches, both winter and summer and T20 are all the stuff people are willing to pay more to watch. Sky and TNT cost about £25ish each per month to subscribe to, and a sports nut is happy even if they have just one.

Then there is Eurosport, which Warner/Discovery owns. You pay to subscribe to Sky Sports, so you get it by default like an appendix. In the olden days, you would get many fantastic Heath Robinson sports that Britain does not understand, such as Aussie Rules football or handball. You could get volleyball. These days, Eurosports is more pragmatic and knows its limits, which is a shame.

Now, it is limited to Cycling, Snooker, Tennis, and Motorsport, not Formula One. Sports that all have niches within the UK but are not quite mainstream. For example, there are many cycling nuts, but more is needed for SKY to be interested. Also, my Uncle and Auntie, now just Auntie, loved watching the ATP Association of Tennis Professionals (Mens). They also watched the WTA Women’s Tennis Association tours with equal enthusiasm. That translates into ‘any- tennis’ as there are lots of tournaments in between the grand slams: Australian, French, Wimbledon and finally US Opens,

The spirit of the old Eurosport is not dead, though. Warner/Discovery owns the rights to the Olympics till 2026 at least. That heartens me because it reminds me of the old Eurosports days. This is because the Summer and Winter Olympics in 2026 do have some ridiculous sports in both events.

Sports like dressage get air time and become things you care about due to patriotism. Yesterday, I saw a horse dance to Barry Manilow’s ‘Mandy’, and what perplexed me was that the commentator classified it as the automatic gymnastic star Simone Biles’s standard winner. It looked terrible to me. The point is that I gave it ten minutes of my attention because it was the Olympics, I was patriotic, and I was interested in whether Britain could do better.

Also, I watched the Swimming. I cared. If I watched swimming on a non-Olympic Eurosport tour event, like the equivalent of the Athletics Diamond League, I would change channels instantly. Swimming does not interest me, but Adam Peaty was god for those two weeks.

For your information, the Diamond League is where athletes meet competitively in various cities across the world, and it forms a league.

There is nothing wrong with Swimming; it is just that the Olympics generate a giant level of interest in all these minority sports. It just suddenly ‘matters’.

The Olympics gave the rise of minority sports a moment of glory. I became interested in rowing because we are good at it as a country. Racing in water is not my cup of tea, though. I care with my whole heart when it is the Olympics.

Those mesmerising medal tables. Take that, Macron! We are better than you at rowing, etc. At the time of writing, France is better than us at the medal tables.

Hello, old-style Eurosport. A month of old-style Eurosport with you every four years is enough. But I have thoroughly enjoyed your company, and you will return to standard flick-through fare.

However, the Winter Olympics are too silly to be excited about, and I will only watch for a few minutes.