If the BBC had a bad year, TNT Sport had an out-and-out disaster

In 2025 Gary Lineker left Match of the Day. He had shared a social media post about Zionism that included an illustration of a rat, an anti-Semitic trope favoured by Nazi Germany.

He apologised. Lineker “stepped back” from presenting the nation’s most-treasured sports programme in May, a sad end to a brilliant hosting tenure that felt unsatisfactory all around. Supporters said he had been unjustly whacked for expressing humanitarian concerns about Palestinian people, others felt that he had overstepped, yet again, the bounds of his role and the BBC’s impartiality ethos. Some Jewish people were angry that he was allowed to leave on a celebratory final-show high note, rather than being sacked.

A wretched mess, and a damn shame. But BBC Sport had already lined up a decent solution: a replacement hosting triumvirate of Kelly Cates, Gabby Logan and Mark Chapman. Their unshowy, routine excellence has kept the show off the front pages, which is probably exactly what BBC director of sport Alex Kay-Jelski was hoping for.

The BBC began offering online goal highlights at 8pm on Saturdays; there were accusations that it was cannibalising its own product. MOTD also bedded in Wayne Rooney as a pundit: he was a little slow to start with but hit his straps when his criticism of Virgil van Dijk drew an angry public response from the player, exactly the sort of harmless juicy drama that a sports show needs.

Wazza was the subject of one of the funniest culture clash moments of the year when Amazon Prime Video series Built in Birmingham: Brady and the Blues showcased his managerial tenure at St Andrew’s and run-ins with the club’s minority owner Tom Brady.

Brady: “I treated practice...”
Rooney: “Yeah…”
Brady: “Like it was the Super Bowl. Every practice we’d do a two-minute drill, at the end of the game. I would throw a touchdown, at practice, and stand there being like ‘f---, we won the game!’ 
Rooney: “Yeah…”
Brady: “...even though it was practice. You know, and then my team-mates were like ‘f---, that’s how we’re going to do it’… This is real… Make them earn everything.”
Rooney, after a pause: “But no, they’re a good group of lads to be fair.”

Shortly afterwards, we hear Brady confess, “I’m a little worried about our head coach’s work ethic”, and they binned Wayne after 13 weeks.

Could have been worse: Brady also revealed this year that he had cloned a dead dog.

Other big names at the start of telly careers were Stuart Broad (superb on Sky, and working for Oz TV this winter) and Sir Jimmy Anderson, who has done some analysis on TNT Sports to good effect and is coming along.

Owen Farrell joined Sky Sports for the Lions tour but only did one match. He wasn’t brilliant but he was a lot better value than ITV’s new signing Eddie Jones: grumpy and taciturn, offering viewers of Ireland v England next to nothing. The only memorable thing about his appearance was his funny little hat. Let’s hear from Simon Jordan, former Crystal Palace supremo, on social media during the match: “Eddie Jones popping up on ITV like a slightly demented, malevolent Papa Smurf.”

Talksport handed Jermaine Jenas, who had been defenestrated by the BBC for being a text-pest, a lifeline as a pundit. Staff mutinied. Sounds like it was a busy year for HR at the radio station: Shebahn Aherne called fellow presenter Alan Brazila “dinosaur” live on air.

Some pundits found out the hard way that there could be consequences for opinions: Jamie Redknapp upset Lord Sirallun of Sugar, who unleashed the legal hounds because he disagreed with Jamie’s assessment of how he had run Spurs. Sky had to apologise for that, and also when Gary Neville compared Nottingham Forest’s owners to the mafia.

That wasn’t the biggest G-Nev related drama this year, though: he upset many, many people with his comments about flags and it doesn’t seem like he will ever be forgiven by many Telegraph readers and commenters.

Joey Barton was given a two-year suspended prison sentence for offensive social media posts about Lucy Ward and Eni Aluko, inter alia. The Football Supporters’ Association named Ward as the Pundit of the Year. Aluko took aim at bona fide national treasure Ian Wright, of all people, for hoovering up media opportunities in the women’s game at the expense of women.

If all of that was pretty depressing, we should not forget some magnificent moments of sporting TV this year. Rory McIlroy winning the Masters to complete the career set was agonising, electric, unforgettable and this writer cannot have been alone having a tear in the eye.

That would have been the sporting TV highlight of many a year, but then Rory arguably topped even that as he and Shane Lowry showed incredible grit to shove the vile jeers of the ghastly Ryder Cup crowd down their throats. We had a British champion in Formula One and Martin Brundle was attacked by a unicorn. John Huntreturned to racing’s airwaves with the love and support of all after the murders of his wife and daughters. The splendid Pat Murphy hung up his Radio Five mic after 51 years at the Beeb.

At the other end of the experience spectrum, football newbie DAZN bought the rights to Fifa’s pet plastic project the Club World Cup but gave it away for free; the broadcaster has limitless amounts of Saudi money to spend, and just as well if that’s their idea of a good time. More than 16 million people watched the Women’s Euros final across BBC and ITV but broadcasters are still searching around for a way to turn that into a customer base for regular domestic football.

Other than Lineker, how was the rest of the year for BBC Sport? And how did you enjoy the rest of the play, Mrs Lincoln? Andrew Castlegot an absolute kicking from Wimbledon viewers. Andre Agassi found him exasperating on air.

The athletics coverage increasingly resembles a school sports day, everyone clapping and cheering our brave boys and girls, who on another day could well have done even better than 94th place. The BBC lost the rights to the Boat Race. It was claimed, but denied, that Beeb top brass view the event as “elitist”.

If the BBC had a bad one, TNT Sport had an out-and-out annus horribilis. The coverage of the Ashes was done on the cheap and UK customers who stayed up/got up for the 2am start in Perth were spitting feathers: solid but unspectacular on-air talent, no Aussie pundit, cycling and rugby commentators, commentary coming from London. It improved significantly by the second Test but the damage was done.

However, that wasn’t even the worst thing that happened to TNT Sports that week: it lost the Champions League rights to Paramount+. It also lost the Autumn Nations Championship rugby rights to ITV, welcome news for fans who want to watch on free-to-air. Although it should be said that rugby watchers were howling with fury at ITV in February when it bungled the match-defining moment in the Calcutta Cup, Finn Russell’s kick.

And then a few days after that, it was reported that parent company Warner Brothers Discovery might be getting sold so it’s very unclear what that all looks like next year for TNT subscribers (31 pounds per month, sir!), if any remain.

It all makes Rio Ferdinand’s departure from the channel in June seem like a well-timed exit. Brand Rio had a big year, culminating in a starring role at the World Cup draw in which he tried his hand at acting, or at least something like it, in videos with Matthew McConaughey and Salma Hayek. They are probably not worried about losing out on future movie roles to the former United centre-half. Rio was on surer footing with the launch of his Rio Ferdinand Presents YouTube channel, where he produced some revealing, intimate interviews with star names like Michael Owen, Sir David Beckham and Rooney. He got some big lines out of them and the guys seemed more comfortable talking with a former team-mate than they do on more traditional formats. Owen, for instance, showed a sharp, spiky side that was a significant upgrade on his generally stilted work on old-style TV. Rooney gave Rio a tremendous news story: “I was struggling massively with alcohol… I honestly think if Coleen wasn’t there I’d be dead.” Shame he didn’t give that to the BBC, producers there might have thought.

It all suggests that legacy broadcasters and media need a strategy to combat an emerging landscape in which big names can make their own content and play by their own rules. Piers Morgan is raising tens of millions for his Uncensored channel. Lineker’s Stick To Football, and broader Goalhanger empire, bestrides the Podcast most-listened charts like a jug-eared colossus, while Neville’s The Overlap is likewise doing brisk business and generating tons of social media clicks. There was a new entrant into this space in October: The Good, The Bad and The Football, featuring Paddy McGuinness, Nicky Butt and Paul Scholes which, at time of writing, is above G-Nev’s lot in the Apple charts and which I personally would not listen to unless drugged and/or kidnapped on account of finding PMcG a complete pill but there it is.

So changing times in the sports broadcast ecosystem, sure, but that is not to say that the telly can’t still deliver some gripping punditry, talking points and conflict in the studios as well as on-pitch drama: for instance, Jamie Carragheron Mo Salah this month. And the sheer volume and passion of the letters and comments we receive about old-fashioned free-to-air, linear coverage of all sports suggests that huge numbers of sports fans feel it matters just that bit more when it’s on the TV.

See you on the sofa in 2026.