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2021 Olympics TV Guide: How to watch the Tokyo Olympics on TV

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(Photo by Matt Roberts/Getty Images)

The 2021 Tokyo Olympics run from Saturday, July 24 to Monday, August 9. Here is our full TV Guide on how to watch every event at the Olympic Games in Australia.

As was the case during the last Olympics, the upcoming Games in Tokyo will be broadcast by the Seven Network, who will spread the coverage over their three television channels. Between Channel Seven, 7mate and 7Two, the network claims they’ll have a whopping one billion minutes of Olympics footage to broadcast across the Games.

Unfortunately for those who were planning to take in every single second, that equates to just over 1900 years.

Precisely what events will be shown when and on which channel will likely be decided on a day-by-day basis, but you can be sure Seven will have a strong focus on Australian medal chances and the sports that typically do best in our market.

In even better news, Japan is just one hour behind Australian Eastern Standard Time, so every Olympic event will be on at a superb time for Aussie viewers – in stark contrast to Rio 2016, London 2012 and Athens 2004.

We strongly recommend you look at our comprehensive events guide for the Tokyo Olympics, which has every single event and its Australian starting time.

The Seven Olympics commentary team will be spearheaded by Bruce McAveney, alongside Hamish McLachlan, Mel McLaughlin, Mark Beretta, Edwina Bartholomew, Luke Darcy, Abbey Gelmi, Johanna Griggs, Andy Maher, Jason Richardson, Lisa Sthalekar and Nathan Templeton.

Anna Meares is also a huge addition to the commentary team, while several other ex-Olympians are also in the mix.

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Instead of using a paid version of the 7Olympics application they ran with in 2016, the 2021 version will be free, with low subscription numbers hampering the company four years ago.

The 2021 version will simply require an email address and some personal details to access hours of extra content across all of the sports which ordinarily won’t be shown on TV.

The current broadcast deal is expected to end at the conclusion of the Tokyo Olympics, however, Seven do have an option to extend their rights to 2024

Between the free-to-air and subscription coverage, Australian audiences will be able to watch every event from every sport during every day of the Olympics.

Channel Seven first broadcast the Olympic Games way back in 1956, when Melbourne hosted with six hours of live coverage each day. This was the first time the Olympics had been broadcast into Australia, and there hasn’t been one missed since.

Before 2016, the network last had rights to the Games in 2008, when Beijing hosted, although this was shared with the SBS who provided the broadcasts and commentary of the lesser-known sports, allowing Seven to focus on the mainstream sports like swimming, athletics, rowing and cycling.

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With the exception of those in 2012, Seven have broadcast every Olympic Games to the Australian market since 1992 with Network Ten on board before that.

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