UK Sport is urging the BBC to increase coverage of Olympic sports between the Games

The chairman of UK Sport has called on the BBC to show more of Team GB’s “fantastic athletes” between the Olympics, saying there is a huge public need for more coverage on free-to-air television.

Nick Webborn said he expected millions of people to tune in to the BBC’s coverage of Milan Cortina 2026, which starts on Friday, but urged the broadcaster, as a publicly funded body, to show more Olympic sports between each summer and winter Games.

Webborn also cited new research commissioned by UK Sport, which found that 69% of the public wanted Olympic sports to be shown more regularly on free-to-air television, while 66% of respondents called for more Paralympic sports to be shown.

Asked whether the BBC should do more, Webborn said: “I think so. We found that almost 70% of the British public would like more Olympic and Para sport between the Games on free-to-air, and we are in discussions with the BBC about how we can do that.”

Webborn said he met BBC sports director Alex Kay-Jelski in the summer to plead his case. “Our discussions were positive, but in terms of details it wasn’t like we were going to deliver X, Y or Z,” he said. “But the conversations are positive and I think they realize we have some great athletes.”

Webborn’s comments reflect a growing frustration in the Olympic ecosystem, with several sports privately believing that the BBC should pay more attention, both on its TV channels and on its website, to Team GB’s medalists and future stars – especially as it is funded by the taxpayer.

For example, eyebrows were raised in athletics circles when the Keely Klassic – the opening meeting of Olympic 800m champion Keely Hodgkinson – was only on the red button last year, while BBC2 aired a repeat of Flog It! instead of. Last year, Aquatics GB also had to step in to stream the World Aquatics Championships on its website because the BBC no longer covers the event.

However, Webborn is confident that Team GB’s athletes, who are funded by UK Sport, will captivate the country again at the Winter Olympics, especially as they will take place in a much British-friendly time zone than the previous two Games in Pyeongchang and Beijing.

“Britain is the leading non-alpine country for winter sports and that is a great achievement,” he said. “British people do love winter sports. I think they love it. And having these magical moments, especially in our time zone, will really get them excited again.

“It’s great that we’ve had Paris and Milan Cortina to really get the British people back involved with our sport and getting to know the athletes better. And we’ve got a great range of events coming to Britain that will inspire and excite the British public too.”

Webborn, who took over as UK Sport chairman last year, is the most senior disabled official in British sport. He reflected on how much sport had helped him after he dislocated his neck playing rugby in the early 1980s.

“I spent nine months at Stoke Mandeville in the spinal injury unit. The nights were crazy, I was sleeping with 24 other people who were kind of moaning and whatever, with all the problems they had.

“But the great thing about it was that it introduced me to recovery sports and then to elite sports. I did archery and table tennis. Then there was the International Stoke Mandeville Games that summer. And I got to see all these people doing remarkable things that I hadn’t seen before.”

Webborn, who has worked at 13 Paralympic Games and has decades of experience in providing performance support to British athletes, said: “I started to come to terms with myself as a disabled person and all the insecurities that come with that. And you would see people who had embraced it and were living it.”