Game, Set and Match. BBC

It has been announced that the BBC has agreed a deal with the All England Club to extend exclusive coverage of the Wimbledon Championships until 2024. It is a rare bright spot for the BBC's sport department in the face of an ever decline portfolio. It is now nearly 10 years since Grandstand came to an end because of a lack of sports even though the London Olympics were on the horizon. The All England Club is one of the few sporting bodies that values the BBC name in covering it's event, the organisers of both the Grand National and Royal Ascot horse racing meetings were not reportedly not happy when as part of a blanket deal involving the whole sport they found that they would be covered by Channel 4. How ever they have cases of events leaving the BBC only. As I have written about before (The Perils of Going Commercial) The Boat Race switched to ITV only to be dropped when the station decided to plough most of it's money in gaining Football rights and the event went back to the BBC who paid less money than ITV did when they brought the rights.