I am utterly shocked with the BBC. I grew up watching the How to Train Your Dragon series for free on BBC iPlayer, and it breaks my heart to see how it has been taken away from families who rely on public broadcasting the most.

Right now, a 6-year-old girl I know is only able to watch the films because I personally lend her my private DVDs. Her family simply cannot afford expensive Netflix subscriptions or digital rentals during a cost-of-living crisis. Because the television spin-off series sit behind corporate paywalls, she is completely locked out of exploring the wider world of Berk.

The BBC’s core mission is to inform, educate, and entertain everyone—regardless of household income. High-quality, comforting storytelling about empathy, friendship, and resilience should be accessible to every single child in the UK, not just those whose parents can afford a luxury subscription. To me, it feels like the BBC would rather show true crime, which isn't appropriate for little ones. It is so comforting for us to be able to sit down and rewatch HTTYD together as a family.

Why the Figure Skating Community is a Help

To ensure this message reaches the right desks, we are calling upon the figure skating community and its reigning World Champion, Ilia Malinin. Ilia is famously the ultimate How to Train Your Dragon super-fan starring in official Olympic promotional spots with the character, and being showered with hundreds of black dragon plushies on the ice after his historic routines.

We hope our favorite "secret dragon trainer" sees our petition, shares it with his platform, and helps us convince the BBC to do the right thing for working-class UK families.

To help us get HTTYD back on BBC iPlayer, I urge you to share and sign this petition. If we can get half a million signatures, I think the BBC News might be kind enough to give us a shout-out and seriously reconsider their streaming library! Let's bring the dragons back to berk.

To: The BBC Content Acquisition and Licensing Team