BBC showing tennis’s new Battle of the Sexes only provides opportunities to denigrate women’s sport | Barney Ronay

IIt’s always best to be skeptical of the constant stream of BBC bashing newspaper stories, which are often nothing more than false outrage expressed for commercial gain. Even the war on wokeness, cod ideological matters – Clive Myrie LOVES hamsters could breastfeed human robots – the bits that make you want to smear your face with green jam and cry for England, our England, with its meadows, its shadows, its chapels made entirely of beef. Even these come from a hard, transactional place.

In short, it is the licensing costs. The BBC is free at the time of delivery, but is paid for through a national levy. The BBC is also a direct commercial competitor to every other form of traditional media, all trying to find ways to survive and recoup their revenues.

There is a logical financial incentive to attack this profit-eroding free speech, which then extends to the generally polarized and hysterical nature of the entire public discourse. It can make for some confusing moments, like this week when the great Jeff Powell of the Daily Mail announced he was glad John Motson and Brian Moore are dead.

Jeff Powell is happy about this because the BBC “gathered its skirts and decided to do that hide behind them for most of next summer’s World Cup.” And yes, this is difficult to untangle at first glance.

The raising of skirts refers to an overwrought acknowledgment of public humiliation, particularly female humiliation, which in its imagery is linked to an act of unintentional self-exposure. Hiding behind skirts means avoiding responsibility by leaning on someone else’s authority, especially female, skirt-based authority, the worst form of authority there is.

As a direct result, two dead commentators are spinning furiously in their graves like powerful diamond-tipped mining drills, which in itself is potentially dangerous from a structural and geological perspective. And yes, this undoubtedly sounds bad. Perhaps this whole scene could even culminate in, as Powell triumphantly concludes, “the moment when the inevitable abolition of the television license fee was confirmed.”

But it’s still annoying to have to wade through all of this to find the real story, which is that the BBC could send a slimmed-down commentary team to the FIFA World Cup next year and possibly cover some matches from TV, to save money on an overly complex tournament.

It’s annoying because if the BBC had announced it would instead cover all 104 matches in person, it would be portrayed as a disgusting joke, another orgy of shame for three-star hotels. It’s annoying because the BBC is important. It must be regulated and criticized.

And it’s annoying because the BBC makes real mistakes that deserve to be highlighted in a less confusing way. As happened this week with the news that BBC Sport will show the festive Battle of the Sexes-style tennis match between Aryna Sabalenka and Nick Kyrgios.

It’s hard to put into simple terms how much I hate this event and wish it didn’t happen. But here we go. Sabalenka is the current number 1 in women’s singles. Kyrgios is ranked in the men’s 600s and has played six real matches in the last three years.

The match is taken to a higher level with some gimmickry. Sabalenka will have a 9% smaller field to defend because some science suggests that women move 9% slower. Both will have only one serve to minimize Kyrgios’ power advantage. And the BBC will now show this horror live from the Coca-Cola Arena in Dubai.

And actually: what, what, what? More to the point: why? And why now? The original 1973 Battle of the Sexes between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs took place at a time when women were vastly disadvantaged in sports. It can be seen as a necessary blunt instrument on the path to greater equality, heralding the first great televised golden age of women’s tennis.

But there is now tangible progress towards an idea of ​​men’s and women’s sport as equal, separate codes. What is the point of sports? To inspire and entertain. To encourage people to be active. It is clear that women and men deserve this equally. This isn’t a shootout to prove who’s the best. We have enough resources to give everyone a chance.

So why does this happen? It makes no sense as a basic event. Everyone already knows that power wins in sports, powerful women, powerful men, powerful horses.

An under-14 boys cricket team will beat a professional women’s team not because they have better skills or are more valuable. It means nothing and changes nothing. It’s incredibly boring to pit these things against each other. And of course, when you do that, it’s immediately hijacked by bad actors who only sow division.

This is the real point. However you frame it, as cheerful banter or as some kind of science experiment, this event will inevitably be toxic. If you’ve been surfing the internet for a while, the gender stuff around it is already idiotic and pre-appointed. What we have here is a huge opportunity for women’s sport to be belittled, dismissed and glorified by ‘incels’ and career misogynists, to blow its own foot off with a single publicity stunt.

As retired Australian Grand Slam winner Rennae Stubbs put it: “What’s in this for women’s tennis? If Sabalenka wins, she will beat a man who is unfit and has been completely irrelevant for a number of years. If Kyrgios wins, he and others will argue in the same vein that it legitimizes everything he already exudes.”

This is another problem. Why Kyrgios, of all the male tennis players? Kyrgios is an interesting, flawed, honest person. But it is also significant. He represents something in this world. There have been allegations of domestic violence, a subsequent assault charge dismissed by a magistrate, accusations of sexist comments and the need to publicly distance ourselves from, of all people, Andrew Tate.

In the publicity poster for the event, Kyrgios screams, bristling, with wrinkled eyes and throbbing neck veins. He looks scary and poisonous. Opposite him stands Sabalenka, bright-eyed, calm and focused. I hate this photo for its quiet cynicism. Why don’t they both have bright eyes, or don’t they both scream? Why is the staging here so clearly uncontrolled male versus female mildness?

And now, for what it’s worth, the BBC is promoting this thing, as part of its mission to educate and inform, in a way that feels completely shocking. What do you want from the BBC at this time of year? I want to watch a movie where a sweet uncle has to arrange Christmas. I want to spend half an hour in a gleaming kitchen watching a comforting middle-aged woman or a skinny man who’s been on Ozempic make something with Brussels sprouts that no one will ever worry about (“and we’ll just pour on the shaved pancetta and Maltesers”).

I definitely don’t want to watch an event that opens a direct channel between the dear old BBC and a world of toxic internet hate. You know who else is rolling in their grave here? Lord Reith, and his patrician ideas about broadcasting as a force for education. The fuss about duty and the quest to ‘imagine other ways of being’.

And yes, these were often balls, even in the golden years. An intellectual named Hugh Townsley-Sandwich discusses the glottal stop. A man with only hair, glasses and a brown asbestos shirt explains cold fusion. But if you want evidence that the BBC is now drowning, caught between two sides: commercial and benevolent, public service and public pandering, well, that’s a pretty compelling tie-breaker.

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