Farewell, Eurosport: A tribute to the sports fans' most dependable friend

At the end of the month, Eurosport goes into paywall obscurity. For many years it was the sports obsessives' greatest servant.

As a fledging sports obsessive back in the early 2000s, the sports television space was a relatively straightforward one. There were no streaming splits, no bundles of sports extra and packages determining certain access to sports and channels. No Netflix, no Amazon, no DAZN and certainly no GAAGo.

Free-to-air sport was prevalent, with the likes of Formula 1, rugby and golf still very much open and accessible on terrestrial television as the likes of BBC, Channel 4 and ITV did a lot of the heavy lifting. Closer to home, Irish sport was far less fragmented as RTÉ carried as much as it could and more recently, Virgin Media and TG4 picked up the pieces.

The only problem back in those days, and a major bone of contention in many a rural Irish household, was Sky Sports and the expense of obtaining the holy grail of sports vistas. To have Sky, let alone the additional sports package that, at the time, seemed to cost in the upwards of millions, was a sign of great wealth and prosperity—forget about what cars were sat in the driveway or how many square metres a house might expand, if a home had the Sky satellite dish drilled high and mightily into a chimney, this was was a home of great affluence and riches.

And so, in Sky’s stead, sat Eurosport. Far from mainstream sports it was reared, Eurosport was for the true sporting aficionado. There was no Premiership football here. No, this was the expansive world of sport beyond anything we were remotely familiar with. This was sports hipstery before it became an entire lifestyle choice.

Instead of Arsenal and Manchester United, it corrupted a generation of alpine skiing experts. In a world dominated by Roy Keane and Patrick Vieira, you were fixated on Hermann Maier. When the skiing season was over, suddenly you were a late-night sumo wrestling observer—you knew your Kisenosatos from your Kakuryūs in the great dohyōs of Osaka and Tokyo.

In the summer months you took to the roads and cobbles of France, you might still do to this day, and scanned the alps and harsh terrains, following the destinies of Jan Ullrich, Marco Pantani and an American upstart who’s name has since been stricken from the record books.

You dabbled in hockey, handball, indoor cycling, various other downhill skiing and arctic winter sports. You knew your slalom from your downhill, your cross-country from your freestyle events. When the Winter Olympics came around you better believe you were on top of the schedule of events and following the ski jumping and luge and the bobsleigh in close detail, analyzing the times splits. And you better believe you knew about all the intricacies of the curling arena.

You were more than prepared for Wimbledon because you had already done due diligence through the Davis Cup, the French Open and the array of other minor tennis events that popped up throughout the year.

Eurogoals provided you with ample information on the latest Ligue 1 standings and scorers, you were primed on Bordeaux and Nantes, Montpellier and Auxerre, Paris Saint-Germain before they were the ultra rich and far too mainstream for our liking. You had passing knowledge on the Eredivisie and the Portuguese and Belgian leagues, while the Cup Winners Cup was your bread and butter. To you, the culture of football flowed well beyond what Richard Keys and Andy Gray were proffering behind the Sky Sports paywall.

My favourite memories of early-to-mid 2000s Eurosport was coming in from a dreary January day of school to find the African Cup of Nations in full flow on my screen—all these amazing sights and sounds of a football world I was previously completely ignorant to. The passion of the fans, the buzzing of horns and vuvuzelas, grainy pictures from an entirely different world. Tunisia v Guinea. Aliou Cisse and Freddie Kanouté. Geremi, Samuel Eto’o and that incredible Cameroon side.

Documenting all of the above was the dulcet tones of Tim Caple—the most versatile man in sports commentary. Even the adverts felt so tremendously European and different to our eyes and ears.

By the end of February, after over 35 years in a more-or-less free-to-air transmission across televisions screens with the appropriate needs, Eurosport will be parked behind the TNT Sport paywall at a cost north of €30 a month. No more blindly stumbling upon a Roland Garros classic between two players you’d never heard of on a drizzly Thursday afternoon. No more German Masters snooker, no more snow-capped expeditions across the Swiss Alps.

And sadly, no more Grand Tours, their one last sports bastion as the heralded purveyors of cycling, with incredible access and round-the-clock coverage for cycleheads around Europe. One of the last largely accessibly sports without forking over hundreds a year, cycling will be greatly damaged by this move towards profits and exclusivity. For the first time since the 80s, the Tour de France won’t be available on terrestrial television in the UK—potentially losing a whole new generation of cycling fans.

For a sports fan of a certain generation, Eurosport was the one friend you could rely on. Always there on standby with something. When the glossy mainstream machine was idle, Eurosport was your buddy in need, the comforting arm around the shoulder of the bored sports nut. It delivered sports you had never thought of watching, athletes you’d never of, and made them your world for a few short hours. It took you to places you had never heard of and stretched your sporting horizon to tremendous heights, across Africa, Asia and beyond.

Sport, sadly, isn’t ours anymore. The era of falling down a rabbit hole of new sports and random tournaments that become the reason to live for a few days are gone. The deeper we fork into our pockets to catch it all, the more egg on our faces as television executives laugh into their oceans of gold coins. No wonder dodgy boxes and Firesticks are now in the everyday lexicon of the sports fan who’s friend knows a cousin who knows this guy that can get you a solid deal.

Farewell, Eurosport. You were the last one standing.