Vale Cup Fever! 2026

Cup Fever! has been turning up on our screens in various forms* for well over a decade now. It’s not hard to see why. Two or three hosts behind a desk, maybe a guest, and a bunch of sports footage? They could have called it The Cheaper Cheap Seats.

It’s biggest advantage is also the reason why it’s never reached Cheap Seats-level popularity: it’s about sport. Soccer (or Football) to be precise. While comedy-wise it pretty much does everything right, it’s trapped in a net (soccer has nets, right? – ed) it can never escape.

Which is not exactly new news, as there was a lengthy period over a decade ago when there was a strong push to make it happen. It bounced around networks, it went from being a World Cup show to a general sports show, it turned into a podcast, and so on. Clearly there was something interesting going on. Just not interesting enough to keep the comedy on air.

As for that comedy, you can’t really beat two people piss-farting around behind a desk. Ed Kavalee’s comedy chops peaked a fair while back and he’s never going to be stand-alone funny, but he works well here. He knows his stuff as far as soccer goes, which is 70% of the gig, and while he’s not a natural comedian he doesn’t get in the way and he gets off enough winners to be more than just “the sports guy” on the desk (for someone who doesn’t, see the somewhat similar The Front Bar).

Santo, on the other hand, is a comedy machine running at full steam. The jokes are flying in all directions, but that’s always been the case. What matters is that he’s not only the funny one, he’s also someone who knows the game. He needs someone to bounce off, but that someone has the easy job as far as laughs go. And while the absence of Sam Pang was a big loss this season, it wasn’t a fatal blow.

The regular comedy segments were the kind where being half-arsed was half the fun – special shout out to the New Zealand commentators, which brought Rob Sitch back in front of the camera for something that wasn’t quite a do-over of the old Graham and The Colonel sketches from The Late Show. The guests were usually good value too. Nice to see Mick Molloy and Sam Pang taking time from the AFL version of Cup Fever to stop by.

For fans of comedy where the only goal is to get laughs, this is the kind of thing we should have on our screens all year round. Funny people riffing on a subject they know and love? Making comedy out of obscure events they build into ongoing gags? Run on the smell of an oily rag (they even pointed out in the final episode that they don’t have a camera crew, just a bunch of fixed cameras)? Why hasn’t a network or streaming service thrown down twenty bucks and told some funny people “make it happen”?

Oh right, sport.

A sports comedy in Australia has the advantage of a big built in audience. A sports comedy in Australia has the problem that the built in audience has a limit. You’ll never create a national hit out of a NRL comedy show. And not just because over half the country doesn’t give a shit.

People who like sport will happily watch a comedy whether it’s about sport or not. People who don’t like sport won’t watch a sports comedy unless it’s really funny. Sports comedies, relying as they do on sports references, have a barrier to entry for non sports fans. That almost always means they’re not funny enough to bring in a wide audience.

We wouldn’t get Cup Fever! without the World Cup. But being reliant on the World Cup means it’s never going to reach a wide audience. If there was a half dozen of these one-off sports comedy shows waiting to be revived every few years then it wouldn’t matter. Instead, we just get Roy and H.G. dusted off yet again. And they haven’t been kicking goals for decades.

.

*including, but not limited to, Santo, Sam and Ed’s Cup Fever!, Santo, Sam and Ed’s Sports Fever!, Santo, Sam and Ed’s Total Football!, Cup Fever! 2026, and possibly some others we’ve missed