I tell you what bowls is a bit under represented on wiki.  crown green bowls doesn't even have its own page.  and world championships and a fair few world champions on normal bowls don't have their own page either.

The BBC used to run some excellent competitions for unfashionable sports, the most famous of which was 'Pot Black'.

Anyone else remember the special magic that the BBC Sportsnight Greyhound TV Trophy used to generate?

There was also a BBC Rugby League Floodlight Trophy that was a winter staple for years.

And how can we forget the BBC Darts compaetition 'Bullseye' won by Tony Sontag and then twice by Jocky Wilson? 

There was also a Bowls tournament, which I think was called 'Jack High'

All lost and gone forever. Maybe 'One Man And His Dog' has a chance of making a comeback? Otherwise we are just left with 'The Hole In The Wall'.

There used to be the Transatlantic Trophy as well over the Easter weekend, Britain vs US. It was at Mallory Park, Oulton and Brands Hatch, used to be televised by the BBC - Sheene, Grant, Steve Parrish vs Kenny Roberts, Steve Baker Pat Hennen. I remember the public outrage when they had to leave the racing because it was running late and it was time for Play School or something

Athletic meetings, I used to go to Crystal Palace meets years ago and they were always a sell out with plenty of ticket touts around. Now I wouldn't go to an athletics meeting if it were free and that includes next years Olympics.

Agree totally with Desmond regarding the footy....used to love the footy in the 70/80s but the overpaid mercenaries strutting there stuff in the epl have turned me right off ...same as des.. only make a point of watching barca these days

Generally agree with OP

Nothing has fallen as far as The Derby . I remember them moving the off time because Engalnd were playing a Friendly against Jamaica a few years back.

Really was a massive event as recently as the 70s/80s , and was probably still bigger than The Grand National til around then. Going back further it was the biggest sporting event in the world . IIRC  it was the only sports event that was a Bank Holiday until they scrapped a load of them because of WWI (which were not restored). Crowds of a quarter of a million.

The FA Cup also is greatly diminished .An odd one that .Back in the day when a large % of the population (maybe 60%) had no interest in football whatever, the nation would stop and watch it . Now that Football is all pervasive hardly anyone - even committed football fans - seems bothered .

I date the decline to 1991. Woking were on a great run of Giant Killing and then had a home draw with Everton.They then asked - quite brazenly - to switch the match to Goodison so that they would make more money out of it.The FA stupidly allowed this ,Everton said thankyou very much and won a tie they might otherwise have lost that would have been talked about for years.This then became the norm, and was actively encouraged by The Media  'lets hope Farnborough (or whoever) can move the game to Old Trafford and get a big payday' .Who gives a sh1t how much money any club makes out of a football match? It should be about creating history .Because of this i feel the Giant Killing stuff fell by the wayside in the 1990s.

When it got to the semi finals they then allowed Arsenal and Spurs to be played at Wembley and this killed completely 'the magic' of 'getting to Wembley' (by actually making the final) .And , IMO , it was rather special to see your team play there in a Final . The logic for that was you couldn't have tens of thousands from North London going to Birmingham or Manchester and back .But this was turned on it's head 2 years later when they allowed the all Sheffield Semi to be played at Wembley too. So i'd say by the time United pulled out in 2000 it was already past it (what a farce that was , the England WC Bid that United going to Brazil was supposedly going to help had absolutely zero hope, and it would have been easy to reschedule a 3rd round tie anyway) .

Football generally is of course so much bigger .In the 80s when it got to June (unless there was a WC/Euros) Football Stories would disappear from the back and inside pages of the Tabloids , and these pages would be given over to Cricket and maybe Athletics .Nowadays even if nothing is happening in football they just make up ridculous transfer stories , just anything as long as it is football.

Athletics has certainly plummeted in interest/coverage levels .ITV used to show the Friday Night Grand Prixs in the 1980s at peak time. Just unimagineable now .I'd include though also the Major Events like Olympic and World/Euro Championship .I know they still get shown on the BBC but i'd guess the viweing figures are 25% of what they were .Personally i do not watch them at all and i never hear anyone (other than a few here) talk about them .In the 1980s i would just watch the whole thing, some of my best memories of Sport on TV are the 100M up to 1500M races of the 80s, loved Daley in the Decathlon too . Maybe the decline in interest (for myself and generally in Britain) was due to there only ever really being the interest in the first place because the British Athletes were so good in so many events at that time .

The last one i watched comphrensively was the 1987 World Championships .The Seoul Olympics in 1988 i didn't bother with as it was on at 5am or something and i used to get in about midnight and have to get up at 8. Another thing that turned me off though was the Ben Johnson Scandal: From that point on it seemed to me that the races were really just provisional in determining the champions. To know the real result you had to wait for the tests, and not usually the next day either , you could only be sure if the right guy got the gold if he didn't fail a test in the next 4/5 years.

I disagree that Rugby Union domestically is very succesful .I think there is still a huge gulf between interest in the 6 Nations/WC and the Heineken Cup (even bigger to the domestic league) .RU generally though is much more popular .I date it to the Will Carling Era as IMO the lack of interest prior to that in the English dominated UK media was due to England being sh1t.

Snooker has declined yes .Probably because it's 80s peak was due to it's being a colour TV friendly sport at exactly the point when the number of people with Colour TVs and only 4 channels to watch was at it's height.

County Cricket is another .Could not say for 100% if it is still played.

Cheltenham is certainly hugely bigger .Until the late 80s or maybe 90s you would know nothing about it if you did not follow racing , now it is unavoidable . It has become more of a social event i'd say. IMO it ruins the jumps season; top class horses just running  once or twice beforehand, every race  - even in Octoner - is analyzed only in as far as it affects Cheltenham Prospects .And now it is fkd up quality wise by all the extra egg and spoon races added to drag it out to 4 days.

Heavyweight Boxing is dire because of the lack of quality for so long. I still think Haye/Klitshcko will be a major event as they are a level up from the plodders of the last 10 years . Boxing generally is much less a part of the average guy's sporting interest though:Any UK fighter going for a World Title in the 1980s would quickly become a household name .Now you have Carl Froch, a genuine World Champ who has been in some incredible fights, and i doubt more than 20% of people will have heard of him . Also you have the upcoming DeGale v Groves fight, one of the best all British Fights anyone can remember, but how many Chit Chatters have heard of either? You would have heard of Eubank/Watson and Benn in 1990 .Also in 1985 you had Kaylor v Christie which had Epic coverage (just a domestic level fight) and knocked football off the back pages.

I think Boxing moving to Sky was a big factor in the decline .They maybe cover it better than the BBC/ITV used to . But a great many people got into Boxing because it was free on their TV . I think the same of Horse Racing's decline .Moving from Channel 4 to ITV meant people who might get into the Sport by seeing racing on World Of Sport while waiting for the football scores never got into it. ATR and RUK are all very well but no one is going to pay a subscription for a sport that they know nothing about , so they will attract zero new fans , and just cater for the old.

Back in the 70's World Of Sport showed probably 20 minutes of the previous weeks Tour De France Highlights before On The Ball.

I think tv's interest really started to grow when English speaking riders started to come to the fore , Lemond , Roche & Kelly.
From then on it has grown from highlights of every stage to masses of live coverage on Eurosport & ITV4 these days.

Don't know how popular Speedway is these days but I haven't watched it since it dropped the World final in place of umpteen rounds to decide the champion , yet another idea to generate revenue & lots of tv coverage but losing the drama & spectacle of 5 rides deciding the champion.

I'd say

There used to be a lot of sports popular because they were on tv...when there was relatively little sport on tv. When the major sports realised they'd be even more popular if they let people watch on tv, these have been crowded out. One of the reasons the F.A. cup final used to be a big deal is because it was almost the ONLY live football you could see on TV! I can remember even England qualifying games not being shown.

Love it or loathe it, Sky has at least meant a lot of sports can be followed that the BBC never got close to covering fully - golf, US Football etc.

Naked Female Jelly Wresting doesn't get the exposure it deserves.

I remember the announcers between tv shows would give you the football scores! That would sound really odd now!

Totally agree with that rant johnnyrant.  Only thing is I blame the fans as much as the footballers/sky/moneymen tbh.  The fans fund the whole operation.

I agree what you say about football Johnny but I don't think cricket is the best comparison. The cricket that is on Sky gets the same endless coverage (albeit not as much as football) on Sky Sports News when its something Sky want to promote. The best example would be other things that Sky doesn't have the rights to.

Things like the Tour De France or big boxing fights that they don't have on their channels get treated as if they didn't even happen.

It has a lot to do with Sky Sports News. On a continous loop in most pubs and what most football fans will watch but it is more advertising for Sky products than news.

That was one of the unfortunate things about Setanta News as they covered everything sports related not just things they had the rights to.

Australian Open tennis.

It used to be the only one of the four slams that many of the top players never bothered to turn up for as it was too far too travel, or some excuse. Explains how John Lloyd was able to get to the final.

Nowadays it's equally as important as the other 3 and no top player would ever miss it unless genuinely injured, their sponsors wouldn't allow either.

Just want to point out that though snooker has declined in popularity, its nothing to do with players - back in the day Griffiths and Thorburn were notorious for being boring, slow players and they were - no-ones as bad as them now - he got affectionately nicknamed 'the grinder' - now nobody would watch him

TV snooker really lost its appeal once people ditched their black and white televisions sets.