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No hiding place – from TV sport
07/07/2026
John Williams, University Fellow in Sociology,on the 2026 World Cup and other sporting spectaculars.
Look, I love my sport but even I, growing up as a kid in the north west of England, was often looking forward to the summer recess – or at least a narrower focus on test cricket, briefly the Open golf tournament, and two weeks of glorious Wimbledon tennis. Rugby and football and their supporters could take a welcome breather, a backseat. Well, not anymore.
Last weekend it was quite impossible to cover all that was happening in the TV sports-world. As well as the all-conquering football World Cup finals, we had: a sell-out World Cup final in women’s 20/20 cricket at Lords; the Magic Weekend in rugby league; the Nations Championship, a brand new global international summer competition in rugby union; the world’s premier cycling event, the Tour De France; the ginormous British Grand Prix at Silverstone; plus, or course, endless tennis from SW19. All live on various television outlets. So, when you next hear a sports promoter or agent complain about injuries, or the burnout workload of the stars they represent, just take it with a large pinch of salt. They will not be complaining about salaries. Because what used to be discrete winter sport is increasingly an all-year-round enterprise. No single sport respects anybody’s seasonal claims anymore, because subscription TV has an appetite for ‘live’ sporting events that is neither seasonal nor easily sated.
Back in the 1970s – when we assuredly played football and rugby only in the winter, and cricket and tennis took over in the summer – Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? was a national comedy favourite for the BBC. It regularly attracted TV audiences of over 20 million viewers; only sport can go close to that now. This sitcom was based in Newcastle, and focused around two male characters as long-time friends: upwardly mobile, respectable and married Bob; and working class, feckless and single, Terry. It gently explored the changing landscapes around masculinity, culture, employment and class in the English north east. It was really rather good, both funny and full of pathos, as well as being sociologically interesting and important. You can still find extracts online.
Anyway, in one 1973 episode, ‘No Hiding Place’, ‘the lads’ are desperately trying to avoid finding out the score of an important England football match played abroad: they are desperate to watch it later, at home, as ‘live’ on TV. Sound familiar? Purely by chance, Bob and Terry catch sight of an inconclusive early-evening newspaper headline. Alarmed, they resort to sitting in the only place they can think of guaranteed to avoid having any sort of contact that might reveal the final score – a local church. After a miserable day, they find out later that the headline they had glimpsed had read: ‘England fogged off.’ The match never took place – they had wasted their time and best efforts.
I was reminded of this classic episode just this week, when England kicked off in the FIFA World Cup last-16 knockout fixture against hosts Mexico, in Mexico City. It was at an unearthly 2.00am, Monday morning UK time; an hour later than originally planned because of local weather concerns. It meant bed at 4am. But sensibly the BBC promised a full rerun of the game at 7.00am, with no score giveaways. Perfect; this was what I opted for. Maybe you did, too? My wife woke up first and immediately looked at her phone – warning me not to look at mine. Big mistake, this, because she immediately said that she was also coming down to watch the game. So, I knew in advance – I just knew – that England had won. (And what a mighty win this was). Why else would my wife choose to watch the whole game at this hour? I had done my very best to avoid it but, like Bob and Terry over 50 years ago, I had made a schoolboy error.
Critics of this version of the Fifa World Cup – myself included – have argued that a 48-team tournament, with 32 countries qualifying for the knockout stages, is bloated and overlong. When are elite players going to rest? How many nations could afford to host it in the future? A 48-country event, with a last-32 stage, also risks providing more predictability and safeguards for the strongest countries that they do not really deserve.
To some extent, all this is true. But this extended format has also meant fewer meaningless fixtures in the final group matches, and very few games have been the walkovers that many of us feared. The crowds have also been uniformly enormous despite the ridiculous ticket prices. In fact, the great heroes of the 2026 World Cup have been the hosts, and the unconsidered minnows; such as those from Cape Verde, who reached the knockout rounds after previously holding Spain to a draw. Absent from the last eight are also some traditional big hitters – Brazil, Germany, the Netherlands and Portugal have already fallen by the wayside. England are matched with modest Norway in the last eight, another surprise.
Of course, there is also the Donald Trump factor to consider here. Front page news this week was that the US president personally rang his good mate, Fifa president Gianni Infantino, to ensure the lifting of a red card ban on the USA striker Folarin Balogun before the last-16 USA tie against Belgium. The European football authorities were not amused by this blatant political intervention, but the pliant Infantino simply waved it through. (Belgium won 4-1.) Trump is now likely to be booed at any World Cup match he attends. His national popularity rating has slumped following his war adventures, his chaotic 250 years of independence celebrations and, more recently, revelations about his commercial activities in the highest US office of state. The truth is that not even his advisors want to see Trump at this successful global festival of football. Even his planned grand presence at the final is likely to be a downer.
And what of the current England team? The success of this multi-ethnic version of Englishness – and under a German coach – feels in direct tension with those exclusionary displays of St George’s Cross flags that have been appearing in our streets and towns over the last year. This very modern version of Englishness is doing us proud, with a brave 10-man 3-2 victory over Mexico inevitably drawing Rorke’s Drift-style allusions. Some have even called it the greatest England football performance since that victorious summer afternoon back in 1966. Well, with a virtually unknown young Englishman, appropriately named Arthur, currently wowing them at Wimbledon, who knows what the rest of this summer of TV sport might yet hold. And just remember, if we stick together, we can do this.