Commonwealth Games must prove crises are thing of past
There is no evidence of Commonwealth Games fever in downtown St Peter Port. Guernsey, an island of 65,000 people, is sending 22 athletes to Glasgow 2026, down from 38 to Birmingham 2022. Colleagues on the island report far less public interest than four years ago. There you have these slimmed-down Games which start today in a nutshell.
The bigger numbers? Just 10 sports rather than 19; 3,000 athletes versus 4,822; 215 golds down from 283; 500,000 tickets compared to 1.5m.
This reduced edition of the Commonwealth Games was born of necessity after Victoria’s sudden and shocking withdrawal as host. Glasgow’s organisers have done a fantastic job operating to a necessarily tight timetable on under two years’ notice with scant public funding. This could prove a long-overdue reset of the Games’ overblown financial model. The risk for the Commonwealth Games movement, though, is that the reduced heft of the event further diminishes its status in the sporting calendar.
In this year’s crowded sporting summer, Glasgow 2026 may slip by largely unnoticed. The organisers’ decision to take the money on offer from TNT Sports for domestic broadcast rights won’t help. Understandable given the tight budget they are operating within, but plentiful hours of coverage behind a paywall won’t compensate for the drop in reach from not being on the BBC.
Commonwealth Games tickets
Ominously, tickets are still available for almost all sessions at the Games, even though venues are small. Most notably, there are just 11,000 seats for the athletics and para athletics at the Scotstoun Stadium. Only one session is currently sold out. No surprise that Scotland’s new world mile record holder Josh Kerr will be hoping to win gold over the same distance that evening. 1st August if you’d like to log into TNT.
The Commonwealth Games are traditionally about opportunity for Guernsey and the string of other small territories whose athletes might only be able to dream of appearing in the Olympics, plus developing athletes in the larger nations, sports such as netball and bowls that are outside the Olympic fold and, for Britons, the chance to pull on a national vest (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland) for those ‘below’ GB team standard.
Standing back from that summation, it is hard to discern the core raison d’être of the Games, perhaps because the Commonwealth itself has declined in geopolitical significance to the point almost of irrelevance.
The Commonwealth Games Federation has secured Ahmedabad as its host for 2030 with a promise to increase the number of sports to 15-17 with a commensurate recovery in the number of competing athletes. Those at Commonwealth Games Federation headquarters in London must take on board the lessons of Victoria/Glasgow and ensure that delivery costs don’t balloon too, otherwise the crisis they have overcome over the past cycle will simply repeat itself.
And in the end
Match 104 and that’s all the Fifa World Cup could muster as its climax? A risible half-time show bifurcating 90 minutes – plus hydration-break time – of football vs anti-football.
Was that the best Chris Martin could deliver on the creative front and Lionel Messi and his Argentine colleagues on the footballing one? All that will stick in my memory is Pau Cubarsi being sent cartwheeling by Enzo Fernandez and Wayne Rooney’s brutal ‘I thought it was crap’ critique of the Coldplay singer’s creative direction.
My heart sank at the prospect of extra time and 30 more minutes of slick vs cynical ‘soccer’, but hoorah for the result it eventually delivered.
100 v 50
In the WhatsApp group: “Are we keeping an eye on 100 tournament!!!
“What’s that? I’m watching stream of Yorks v Hants in One Day Cup. And winning!” [sic]
There you have English cricket’s divide. Can one invest emotionally in both competitions, or even find the bandwidth to follow both their narratives? What hurt more for cricket fans in Yorkshire on Tuesday? The 50-over loss to Hampshire at Headingley or the SunRisers Leeds Men defeated by MI London Men down South at The Oval?
I’ve heard all the arguments about The Hundred developing a new audience. This is the first year that the eight franchises are being let loose to monetise their own identities. The end season review of attendances, viewing figures and revenues could prove a pivotal moment for cricket in England.
Anecdotally, I sense a marginal capitulation by cricketing diehards who have thus far opposed The Hundred. But commercial success will rest on sustaining interest among those lured by the competition’s showbiz presentation, cheap tickets and lavish marketing budgets. Any financial reckoning for those who shelled out chunky sums to buy franchises is a little way off yet.
Meanwhile, the 50-over Metro Bank One Day Cup will likely continue to engage its loyal county supporter base in the coming weeks. Proof, if it was needed, that heritage has a very long half life.
Needless to say, this being domestic cricket, tickets are readily available for all matches in both competitions over the coming weeks. Pick one or pick both – if you’ve got the headspace.
Ed Warner is chair of Sussex Cricket and GB Wheelchair Rugby and writes his sport column at sportinc.substack.com