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The BBC has admitted it did have the full TV broadcasting rights to the Tokyo Olympics but traded them to ensure it could screen future Games.
The terrestrial broadcaster has been heavily criticised for being able to screen just two events at one time during the ongoing Games across its television channels, iPlayer service and website.
This is in stark contrast to the 2012 London and the 2016 Rio Olympics, when the BBC was able to offer streams of over 20 sports at the same time.
The BBC are only allowed to show two live events at a time after losing rights to Discovery
It has emerged the BBC struck a deal with European rights holder Discovery to secure its coverage of future Olympics
American pay-TV company Discovery, which bought the pan-European rights to this Olympics, the Winter Games in Beijing next year and the 2024 summer Games in Paris for £920million, has access to the full range of sports.
This has led to viewers needing to subscribe to Eurosport or Discovery+ in order to watch all the event live as they unfold.
It has now emerged the BBC could have shown more from the Tokyo Games but made the decision to sacrifice coverage this time to safeguard free-to-air coverage of the next two Olympics in a £120m deal made in 2016.
The Times report a statement from the BBC that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) 'sold the rights for the Olympics in 2022 and 2024 to Discovery and as a result we needed to carve out a comprehensive deal that ensure the Olympics remained on the BBC.'
The BBC will still have reduced coverage of the 2022 Winter and 2024 Summer Olympics with the majority of the action on Discovery's channels.
The BBC showed over 5,000 hours of live Olympics sport in 2016 but this has been cut to just 350 for the Tokyo Games
