Emma Raducanu: British teen wins US Open

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Ms Raducanu topped off her fairytale run with a win in the final, making her the first British woman in 44 years to win a Grand Slam singles title. The 18-year-old beat Leylah Fernandez in the women’s final of the US Open after a classic of a match in the iconic Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York.

Her performances have been nothing short of spectacular, with the tennis star failing to lose a set in the entire tournament.

The BBC had come under heavy fire yesterday after it was revealed that Channel 4 and Amazon Prime had secured the broadcasting rights for the final, leaving the BBC in the dark.

But it was not long before Defund the BBC launched their own attack on the broadcaster, labelling them as “irrelevant”.

Rebecca Ryan, the Campaign Director for Defund the BBC, told Express.co.uk: “The BBC’s failure to secure coverage of Emma Raducanu‘s final at the US Open shows how irrelevant it now is as a broadcaster.

“The BBC will no doubt claim that it doesn’t have the budget but if it cut back on astronomical salaries, multi-million-pound wastage and woke ‘youth’ programmes that nobody is watching, it would have the money.

“The BBC thinks it has free rein to spend our TV tax money on whatever it chooses, without criticism, which is why more and more people are switching off live TV altogether, so that they can legally cancel their TV licence.”

Defund the BBC were initially founded by a group of Brexiteers and began crowdfunding in June.

The crowdfunding aimed to decriminalise the refusal to pay the BBC license fee, an issue which has been debated for a number of years.

The group has since gathered a large number of donations as it attempts to reform the corporation’s governance, which they believe is deeply flawed.

This money is said to be going towards campaign materials to bring the group further to public attention.

These campaign materials will include new billboards, merchandise and advertisements which will be shared on social media so that the message of Defund the BBC continues to spread.

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Speaking to talkRadio in the middle of last year about why the group was formed, Defund the BBC’s Head of Press Liam Deacon said: “You might say this is because of a good instinct to correct this gender pay gap but really I think this is actually symptomatic of a structural fundamental problem with the BBC that pay and money is not tied to performance in the same way that it would be in a business.”

“The BBC is using our money in a really grotesque way.”

But it was not all smooth sailing for Channel 4’s broadcast on Saturday night as the channel’s sound cut off at various points, prompting a frenzy of tweets about this issue.

Alistair Campbell, Tony Blair’s former spin doctor, tweeted: “Oops … looks like Amazon Prime and Channel 4 haven’t sorted the sound. Oh there it is … oops gone again … ah it’s back.”

One user also tweeted: “Channel 4 opened their big, expensively-acquired US Open final coverage… with absolutely no sound. No continuity announcement going into it, either. Oops.”

Another user tweeted: “No sound on Channel 4 HD for their tennis coverage. Not a great start…”

Jessica Pietersen, former member of Liberty X, also took to Twitter to express her concerns about the lack of sound on the coverage as she tweeted: “@Channel4 no sound on the tennis?”

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