THERE is more sports programming available on TV now than ever before.

As a sports fan you would assume I would be in my element with this, but I’ve come to the conclusion this is actually damaging.

A little confession time, I’m old enough to remember a time of just four television channels and when seeing sports was much rarer, which made it special.

For example look at the nation’s favourite game of football. I can still remember events like the FA Cup Final being essential viewing, with the nation stopping for a couple of hours.

Now it has sadly become just another match, overshadowed by the end to the league season - when every match in the run-in is usually shown.

Over Christmas if you wanted to you could have watched a match every day for three weeks.

Maybe we should be celebrating this amount of choice, but I have previously written in this column about the damage it can to do to attendances at these games, and for grassroots football.

I’m writing this fair point hours after the draw has been made for the inaugural Uefa Nations League, the competition that is replacing friendlies.

When people have been suggesting scrapping the international weeks, instead they have added a pointless competition. It feels like a step too far as we already have a World Cup and European Championships - there is no need for another international tournament. Meanwhile, the BBC is currently increasing its live sports coverage to 1,000 hours a year, with free-to-air sport available through the BBC Sport website and BBC iPlayer.

I have no doubt that the extra coverage of sports such as hockey, swimming and basketball can only benefit them in the short term, but I can’t be the only one thinking whether we need all this coverage, and if it will be damaging long term.

It has reached a stage it is impossible to follow all this live sport, and people will end up giving it a miss.

If this leads to low ratings, unfairly some of these sports will be hit long term by a perception of being ‘unpopular’ – when in reality it is only because there are other things on at the same time.

The famous phrase is ‘you can never have too much of a good thing’ – but with live sport, maybe you can.