Sport

It's good, but it's no Copa del Spectacularisimo

IT is with tremendous excitement that Armchair Reporter is able to announce that its broadcasting arm, Armchair Reporter Sports Entertainment Television, has secured exclusive rights to the Copa del Spectacularisimo. The annual contest, which will be played every October 22 in the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, will pit the reigning WWE Intercontinental Champion against whoever finished third in that year's Tour de France.

The competitors will play a set of tennis, a best-of-seven series of Super Mario Kart races, a game of Trivial Pursuit and the omelette challenge from Saturday Kitchen. Last goal wins.

The only potential hiccup I can see is that the Copa del Spectacularisimo doesn't exist. Maybe BT Sport can offer some advice on how to get around that one.

After all, they are proud rights holders of the Rugby Champions Cup, another at this stage, fictional competition.

On their Rugby Live programme on Wednesday night, Craig Doyle, Lawrence Dallaglio and Martin Bayfield lamented the fact there was no Aviva Premiership (which they've got the rights to) the previous week and none this week.

It was, it seems a barren wasteland of rugby action. Except a little thing called the Heineken Cup was on.

But that's on Sky, how do we deal with that? If a sporting event falls in the forest and the only witnesses work for a channel that doesn't show it, does it make a noise?

It's not just BT Sport, Sky do it as well, but the fact a lot of BT Sport's eggs are in the RCC basket makes things a bit stickier.

Two minutes of Heineken Cup discussion out of the guts of an hour-and-a-half seemed to do the job, while the rest was taken up with a lot of England chat, a feature about the Glasgow Warriors (who, although they play in the PRO12 are conveniently sponsored by BT Sport) and guest David Flatman eating a lot of doughnuts.

With regular presenter Austin Healey mercifully absent, Dallaglio was on social media watch, adding further evidence to the case that just because something's on Twitter doesn't mean it's funny or clever #gaaplayersbehaviour.

But enough of all that, there's bidding on sporting events that might not happen to be done.

I hope BT Sport haven't snapped up the Ulster senior hurling final yet.