Call for ITV to broadcast more cycling

Cycling Weekly is today starting a campaign to encourage ITV to show more cycling on its digital channels.

As reported in this week's CW magazine, ITV holds the terrestrial broadcast rights to several UCI Worldtour races, but is only going to show delayed highlights of them.

CW understands that, as part of their contract to show the Tour de France, ITV could broadcast the Criterium International, Paris-Roubaix, La Flèche Wallonne and Paris-Tours, which are all run by Tour organiser ASO.

Currently, ITV4 will show highlights of Paris-Nice on March 26, and they look set to air edited coverage from Liege-Bastogne-Liege for the second year running. Both are also ASO-run events.

Having been the topic of conversation on Twitter recently, CW is encouraging people to contact ITV in support of more free-to-air cycling.

There are several ways of contacting ITV; you can email them at viewerservices@itv.com, write to them at ITV Viewer Services, Gas Street, Birmingham, B1 2JT or phone 0844 881 4150 (5p per minute from a BT landline, calls from other networks may be higher, and from mobiles will be considerably more).