Berlin. Modern pentathlon, rhythmic gymnastics, archery: what is normally only offered to TV viewers every four years on the occasion of the Olympic Games will be presented once at the »Finals 2021« from June 3rd to 6th. A total of 18 of the so-called large and small “fringe sports” up to canoe polo with 140 national decisions in Berlin and North Rhine-Westphalia will be in the spotlight for four days – only to then disappear again in the shadow of football and its European Championship. Instead of treating the national title fights separately in detail, public television bundles them together into a four-day package and serves them as “compact bites”.
The beguiling message: see how we hang in for the little ones! See what an enormous effort we put into 25 hours of broadcasting time. Just. After that it’s all over like Ash Wednesday. No comparison to the sweeping winter sports weekends. What is the problem with considering summer sports and their audience at home with similar week-by-week formats?
“The media success compared to football will of course only be minimal,” says the renowned sports and media lawyer Christian Krähe, knowing about the relative media value of the “finals”. The 72-year-old, former judge at the International Sports Court (CAS) and founder and president of the Constance Working Group for German and International Sports Law, from which the German Association for Sports Law emerged, adds: “The coming weekend will bring some fringe sports a media presence, albeit a short one. after these less popular sports disciplines, especially those from summer sports, had only had a miserable wallflower existence on the sports screen – incidentally, in contrast to some winter sports disciplines such as biathlon, bobsleigh and tobogganing, which have enjoyed increasing TV presence for several years. However, the public television broadcasters in particular should be given a legal mandate to ensure at the earliest that the fringe sports also receive a comparatively appropriate amount of regular TV presence. “
