In 2008, a peak UK television audience of 14.6 million watched Manchester United beat Chelsea on penalties in Moscow. The Champions League final was broadcast on ITV, who would hold the rights for another eight years until non-terrestrial broadcasters took the competition away.
In 2024 and 2025, TNT Sport’s viewing figures for the Champions League finals were roughly 2.5 million. Even accounting for the significant decline when English teams are not present, European football’s showpiece event has dropped off the radar of the masses. You can tell as much during its vast group stage.
But at least then everybody had the chance. For the first time since the Champions League rebrand in 1992, this year’s Champions League final will not be available to watch for free in the UK. Just like that, another drop of fan power evaporated in favour of an attempted money grab.
Uefa dictate that some attempt must be made to provide free-to-air coverage and there is reported annoyance within the governing body that TNT Sports have not acquiesced to this requirement, as they have previously. We are entering the final year of the TNT Sports contract before Paramount takes over, which may be relevant. Who cares who you annoy now.
The journey of the Champions League final as a national TV event is a wonderful paradigm for the many roadblocks placed between live football and the free-to-air audience. For 15 years it was there, on one of the four or five terrestrial channels. There is a reason that you still remember Lars Ricken’s lob in 1997 and Jose Mourinho’s Porto winning in 2004: it was very easy to watch.
Between 2015 and 2023, BT Sport charged for all Champions League content but continued to make the final available to watch for free without a subscription or sign-up; you just watched on YouTube. That was a barrier to older viewers who used television as their sole method of absorbing visual content.
In 2023, 2024 and 2025, after BT Sport was bought by Warner Bros Discovery and rebranded as TNT Sports, the final remained free but viewers needed to sign up for a Discovery+ account to get access and either watch via laptop, phone/tablet or through a smart TV. Again, not an awful faff but another layer of administration to get your free product.
And so to 2026, where supporters must either sign up for a TNT Sports subscription (for roughly £31.99 a month in most places) or access via HBO Max on a streaming platform, where the cheapest subscription is £4.99 a month. Subscribers to Sky Sports (although not through NOW packages or Virgin Media) can get access to HBO Max for free through an app on their Sky box, although they will have to link the two accounts. It really is that simple.
On TNT Sports’ part, the takeover by Warner Bros Discovery has increased staff levels and presumably costs. They did also announce the details of the package – the £4.99 covers all three European finals and a month of HBO Max – on 15 May.
But that hasn’t appeased the people that matter. Last Saturday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer sent a letter to TNT Sports urging them to reconsider the lack of free coverage. It has not yet achieved any official response or reaction (make your own jokes) but Starmer is right. If Uefa want it to be free and you understand that demand when you sign your contract, it’s a bit rum to just bin that off to try to flog some subscriptions to another brand of your parent company.
More broadly, do you ever get the feeling that we’re having the piss taken out of us here, some elaborate prank at our expense? To watch matches that men’s and women’s professional English clubs played in 2025-26, you needed five separate subscriptions: Sky Sports, TNT Sports, Disney+, DAZN and Amazon Prime. Cut to scene in Impractical Jokers: “Now tell them they will need Paramount from 2027.”
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And then, when one of these broadcasters spots an opportunity to try to claw a few extra quid because English clubs have got into European finals that they have previously shown for free, add that to the take-the-piss pile. Then they tut and shake their heads when members of the public seek “alternative” methods.
The great irony here is that the entire approach loses all goodwill and damages PR for the sake of very little gain. It creates further anger among supporters about what they understandably see as working-class fans being priced out of stadiums and then priced out of watching from home too. It treats their loyalty not as something to be celebrated but exploited. And they remember.
And it likely stops thousands of young viewers from watching an English team in a European Cup final. Then they scratch their chins as to why kids move away from the game. Good process, guys. Hope the £4.99s were worth it.
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