A huge 79 percent of people think BBC coverage of the Olympic Games has been poor or very poor out of 1,033 people surveyed between 11.25am July 28 to 09.42am July 30. Only 1.6 percent of voters thought the BBC coverage was excellent, another 1.7 percent thought it was good, while 7.7 percent said it was average and 10 percent were unsure. One of our voters said BBC coverage has been “low grade and amateurish”.

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The BBC has had to dramatically change the way they cover the 2020 Tokyo Olympic games in comparison to their broadcasts of the Olympics held in Rio 2016 and London 2012.

They are only able to stream two live events at any one time, as they lost out to private American corporation Discovery in securing broadcasting rights.

Discovery, a subscription-based channel, describes itself as the ‘streaming home of the Olympics’ and bagged the deal at £920million.

A large total of 712 voters (69 percent) said they had missed live sporting events because they were not shown on the BBC. Some people, 19 percent, said there had not been events they had missed, and 12 percent were not sure if they had missed an event they would have wanted to watch or not.

One reader said: “They tend to show the winners of events.

“Not much point showing the losers.”

Another reader joked: “Coverage? What coverage?”

The overwhelming majority of readers, 81 percent, thought that the Government should not have given the BBC a grant to outbid private broadcasters for coverage rights.

A reader commented: “The BBC had five years to sort this out – they are a £5billion revenue company, world class apparently. Why did they not raise this issue four years ago?”

On the other hand, Olympic fans that said the Government should have given the BBC financial aid, made up 13 percent of the vote. A small six percent of people were not sure if they would have supported this government decision or not.

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Since the Olympics began on July 23, British fans have complained continuously about BBC One’s limited footage of sporting events, they say the majority of airtime is instead spent on interviews and presenters chatting.

The majority, 67.6 percent, of voters said there were too many guest interviews on the BBC Olympics shows. Just 7.4 percent said there were a good amount of guest interviews, while 2.5 percent said they want more.

One reader commented: “If there was a gold medal for endless yattering, the BBC would win hands down.”

A second voter said: “Do we really need ALL this studio dialogue, which I find quite emetic, let’s see some sport for god’s sake!”

Another added: “The coverage is awful – the presenters spend more time interviewing themselves — this is a multi-sport broadcast not a chat show.”

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A significant number of voters, 22.5 percent, said they were not sure what their opinion was of the guest interviews, indicating that many people may have switched off or changed channels when guest interviews commenced.

When the BBC broadcasted the London 2012 Olympics, an incredible 51.9 million people tuned in for at least 15 minutes, and the Rio 2016 Olympics BBC coverage brought in an impressive audience of 45.24 million. But this year worldwide viewership of the games is said to be at a 33-year low.

Most voters (52.6 percent) said they intend to watch less of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics than they watched of the Rio 2016 Olympics, 22.8 percent of voters said they would watch about the same amount as they had in 2016.

An enthusiastic 3.8 percent said they will watch more of the Tokyo games than they did of the Rio games, and 20.8 percent of people said they had not watched the Rio games.

More than half (52 percent) of participants said they do not consume any Olympics coverage through social media, 14 percent said they consume loads, and 34 percent said they just receive a little.

Similarly, 34 percent of voters said they had not watched any of the Olympics this year, 45 percent said they had seen a few hours, 17 percent had watched numerous hours, and 4 percent said they had seen almost all of it. 

This data confirms research conducted by YouGov which suggests that most people have not taken an interest in the Olympics this year and are therefore not likely to seek out coverage of the games on any information platform.

One voter said that the BBC coverage is “abysmal” and that they have “lost interest already”.