Brekkie Boy

The foreign office advises against travel to both countries at the moment so they would be risky choices, and Commonwealth Sport probably can't afford to take the risk at the moment - although a few years ago a return to India felt like a risk but now they look like they may be the saviours of the games.

The capability may be there but not sure the will is. Hopefully Glasgow have shown though budgets had got out of control and they've delivered a scaled down games for around the same cost of the European Sport Championships of 2018 and 2022 - which if scaled up to reintroduce more events could deliver a more respectably sized games for less than half the budget of Birmingham 2022. London is perhaps the best bet for 2034 following a similar model, sadly probably using a revamped Crystal Palace for athletics rather than the London Stadium.

Not great when it opens with a 20+ year old song by a fictional character from a soap on the other side of the world.

P.S. Also quite ironic that this weekend the BBC have been showing Calvin Harris performing to a packed out Hampden Stadium whilst TNT will have a concert of an act last relevant 40 years ago.

The games basically only exist so Australia can win something! They paid Glasgow £100m for that privilege! As we enter the final day I suspect the fact the games took place at all means they're considered a success. In the likes of swimming and track cycling the viewing experience is the same as always, although both have lost their counterparts in terms of diving and road racing. The athletics though has felt like a real non-event - even with Josh Kerr winning last night there was so little atmosphere in a stadium of just 10,000 people. It's felt like there hasn't been any big moments - the track finals have been all somewhat forgettable. For me it's really missed the team sports (Rugby 7s and hockey) and the racquet sports. Rugby 7s would surely have been a more useful inclusion than 3x3 basketball and holding at Ibrox or Celtic Park surely profitable too. I think it misses the events showcasing the city too like triathlon, marathon and road cycling. Of course road closures cost money but considering locally to me there seems to have been roads closed every weeks for months recently due to variou works in the grand scheme of things closing city centre roads for a morning or two shouldn't be that pricey. It also gets the locals close to the action and presumably boosts the economy of traders along the route too. It's a shame they weren't on the BBC and that is purely at the hands of the organisers. From comments this week it seems they were shocked the BBC weren't willing to pay the same fee as Birmingham 2022 for event that had halved in size and scope, with many popular sports cut. I doubt TNT made the knockout bid some suggest they did given there was seemingly little interest elsewhere. TNT's coverage has been mixed - their cycling and boxing coverage has truly been excellent, whilst their athletics is adequate at best and the swimming commentator and gymnastics host were really poor. Their biggest failure though is their "360" channel which joined events really late which just misses the atmosphere and the build up. They should have probably stuck to the tried and tested Eurosport model of scheduling events in full, although the HBO streams have been excellent - easy to use, ad free and ultimately if you had to pay it's only a fiver. The lack of wrap around coverage though means I feel like I've missed out on much - you don't end up watching a sport you've no interest in because it's pushed front and centre.

The further along we get in this process the clearer it is Brisbane would not have won an open bidding process - far too much being built from scratch to fit in with Agenda 2020. This has to be the most expensive retirement gift in corporate history.

There are many annual sporting events which rely on temporary seating erected and dismantled every year so no reasthat couldn't be a solution.

The CBC Event page suggests it'll be at the arena. All in all though awarding the rights to TNT have seen these games strangled at birth. Virtually no hype about them and little awareness they're happening. Even with them being on a smaller scale if they'd been on the BBC off the back of the World Cup and Wimbledon they'd have been advertised to tens of millions of people in recent weeks.

Burnham plotting his way into number 10 will certainly aid this.

No doubt Trump would have put pressure on if they hadn't. TBH the "neutral athlete" inclusion made a mockery of the ban anyway.

Free to air coverage will be limited to daily highlightson Channel 5 with no free live to air coverage. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/may/15/channel-5-secures-commonwealth-games-highlights-deal-bbc-ends-72-year-run Like the Olympics the live coverage from TNT will be available on all tiers of HBO Max without the need for a subscription to TNT.

The Games of the North! Doesn't quite have the appeal of Northern Italy though. Guess it would basically be a question of who co-hosts with Manchester. Liverpool perhaps best positioned but think the government want it to be a truly Northern games rather than North West. If you were just looking at two cities co-hosting going a bit further south with a Manchester-Birmingham bid would probably have the most existing facilities.

The football season is a much bigger competitor in the UK than anything a month earlier.

Why would the Championships be in September? That usually only happens if they're in the Middle East or Asia - if they're in Europe it's generally July or August. Very arrogant of Coe to expect West Ham to vacate in September - he'd know more than most the deal with the Olympic stadium is athletics gets to use it outside of the football season.

Axing the sliding sports and putting some indoor summer events into the Winter Games would be about as dumb as they can get. I'd say Bobsleigh is one of the first sports you think about when you think about the Winter Olympics and it's one that goes beyond the traditional mountainous countries when it comes to participation. Nobody wants to see the Jamaican Bobsleigh team replaced by a Jamaican Handball team. These for me have been the most successful Winter Games in a generation and they need to be preserved as best we can, not torn apart.