The biggest story in pro cycling this week hasn’t been about the races or the riders, but how we watch them. In the UK, the Eurosport brand - which holds a fond place in the hearts of many cycling fans - will be closed down with cycling brought under the banner of TNT Sports.
Amid the confusing cluster of mergers and monikers – both channels are owned by the combined Warner Bros and Discovery (WBD) – what this boils down to is an over 300% price hike for streaming cycling in the UK, with all the races moved to the Premium Discovery+ plan at £30.99 a month, where before you could get them for £6.99 a month.
The news has not gone down too well, at least with our readers -"North of £30 is daylight robbery," one wrote. "As much as I hate to lose it, I simply can’t justify that amount just to watch a bike race," he continued. "Surely they must be able to offer a sliding scale depending on what you actually want to watch."
So, with the UK giving up its status as a haven for cycling streaming, we thought we’d cast our eyes around the globe to see how good, or bad, fans in other countries have it.
Who pays what, and gets what? And in that light, how does the new TNT/Discovery deal really appear in terms of value for money?
Cycling on TV in the UK
We’ll start by looking at what you get for your £30.99 a month with TNT / Discovery+. In short, you get pretty much everything you could ever want - all three Grand Tours, all five Monuments, almost every WorldTour race and a slew of smaller races. There are more than 300 days of live cycling in total, with loads of women’s racing, plus track, mountain bike, and cyclocross. All uninterrupted with no ads, and plenty of resource poured into studio presentation and analysis. The claim to be the ‘home of cycling’ seems fair; the only other place you can watch live cycling in the UK is ITV, just for the Tour de France.
Few would take any issue with TNT/Discovery’s offering, but what about the price? Some might feel like £6.99 a month was a bit of a bargain. Some of the same people might think £30.99 is a bit steep. After all, pre-2024 you not only had the option of an annual plan for £59.99 (a fiver a month), but you also had GCN+ (also owned by WBD), which offered the same thing (without other sports) for £39.99 a year (£3.30 a month).
The uproar at the closure of GCN+ suggested that many committed cycling fans would rather not be bundled in with other sports, yet this approach has now been turbo-charged to the point where cycling fans will be paying off one of the most expensive batches of sports rights in the world: Premier League and Champions League football.
Value is subjective, but the broad feeling seems to be that it used to be too good to be true and now it might be more than people are willing to pay – the lurch between the two extremes only emphasises the chasm.
Cycling on TV in the US
The first point of comparison would be the biggest English-speaking market, the US, where there may be a sense of eye-rolling at the indignation pouring out of the UK. For US viewers, having everything, in one place, is the dream, or a sort of paradise lost. GCN+ gave that to them, but when it was axed in late 2023 they were thrown out into a cold, fragmented TV landscape.
WBD did offer out something for US fans, adding a selection of cycling rights to its US streaming platform, which goes under another brand name: Max. But it was a blessing in disguise. In the US, cycling fans already had NBC/Peacock for the Tour de France and other ASO races, and a specialist cycling streamer Flobikes for the Classics and a raft of smaller races. Max has plugged plenty of gaps, if not all, but you now need three separate subscriptions to watch everything.
Let's do the maths...
To watch cycling on Max you need a base subscription, which is at least $9.99 a month (with ads), plus the B/R Sports add-on, which is another $9.99, so a total of $19.98 a month. A yearly plan saves you a couple of months so it’s $99.99, plus $119.88 for B/R, which is $219.87 a year.
As for NBC and Peacock, NBC comes on cable TV packages which many US fans will already pay for. All their cycling is streamed on Peacock, which costs $7.99 a month, or $79.99 for 12 months. Finally, Flobikes has a hefty monthly fee of $29.99, but that effectively drops to $12.50 if you commit to 12 months at $150.
So to watch everything available online, here are the costs:
Monthly: $57.96
Annual: $449.68 (equivalent of $37.50 a month)
If we compare that to the UK, the monthly price converts to £46.50, which is a good deal more than the £30.99 for TNT/Discovery+. However, the annual total converts to £361.54, which is in fact cheaper than TNT/Discovery, which costs £371.88 because they don’t currently offer an annual plan.
That casts the UK deal in an even starker light.
Cycling on TV in Canada
Fans in Canada have it good. They also have Flobikes but unlike the US version, where the rights are restricted, they get pretty much the full season, all in one place. In fact, the Canadian arm of Flobikes has a sub-licensing agreement with WBD, so they have largely the same offering as TNT/Discovery provides in the UK.
Somehow, it still comes in cheaper than US Flobikes (for more cycling). A monthly sub is CA$39.99 a month and CA$203.88 for an annual sub – that’s around US$141 (Flobikes is $150 in the US) and in British money it’s £114.
Remember, a TNT/Discovery sub now costs £371.88 over the same period, for largely the same offering. Of course, for that price in the UK you get loads more sport but as we’ve mentioned that’s irrelevant for many a cycling fan.
Cycling on TV in Australia
The deal in Australia is that you don’t get all that much cycling on TV, but you pretty much get it all for free. Public broadcaster SBS is the leading rights-holder, with a raft of races that are available to watch online on the free streaming platform SBS On Demand.
SBS has all the Grand Tours, three of the five Monuments, and a rather random smattering of major Classics like Strade Bianche, some top-tier stage races like Paris-Nice, and smaller events like the Tour de Hongrie. Aussie fans also get the Aussie summer of racing free, with Seven West Media showing the Tour Down Under and Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race. Beyond that, Stan Sports sometimes pops up with some MTB rights but that’s it.
In short, you don’t pay anything, but you are more limited than in the UK or US, although one critical point is that most races take place in the middle of the night, and there’s a limit to how often even the most hardcore fan is going to want to set their alarm. It's arguably most handy for those Aussies who base themselves in Europe for much of the year, who can still access their SBS On Demand coverage from abroad with a VPN.
Cycling on TV in Europe
The sense of pain at the death of Eurosport in the UK is heightened by the fact it lives on everywhere else in Europe.
This is where the branding gets even more confusing. In some places, the streaming for Eurosport cycling content is Discovery+. In most places, it’s Max, with more and more being moved from Discover to Max. And because you can always make something more complicated, in a few places it’s HBO Max.
Prices vary, but for Max, which covers most countries, you’re paying €5.99 a month for a base subscription and another fiver for the sports add-on, so €10.99 a month, or a combined €119.90 for a year.
The territories which have Discovery+ have it better, but there are only a handful left. In Italy, €7.99 a month will get you a subscription that includes sport, but the crown for cheapest goes to Germany, where your ticket (albeit one with ads) could cost just €4.99 a month
All this fragmentation means that where you could once get your Eurosport Player working in any country in Europe, there's now a web of geo-restrictions, so many fans are looking at VPNs, such as NordVPN, to get their coverage while travelling.
The other thing to note is that fans in many of these countries get a good deal more live cycling on free-to-air television. VRT/Sporza in Belgium, for example, have the Tour de France, the Spring Classics, cyclocross, and plenty more besides. RAI in Italy have the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia, RTVE in Spain have the Tour and Vuelta, and NOS have plenty to go at in the Netherlands. With more free-to-air choice, fans have more flexibility to pause their paid subscriptions.
Conclusion
Value lies in the eye of the beholder, and there are so many subjective factors that influence whether something is worth paying for. Disposable income, production values, punditry preferences, and interests beyond cycling will all skew the equation a little differently for everyone.
US fans arguably have it the worst, but it’s still not as bad as the days before GCN+ and Flobikes, and at least they now have company from their friends across the pond. Canadians have pretty much what the Brits had before, while Europe holds some pockets of outrageous value and what largely seems like a solid deal everywhere else.
Context is everything, so we hope that helps to put things into perspective.
Best deal: Germany – €4.99 a month for all Eurosport cycling online is what dreams are made of.
Worst deal: USA – Even with annual plan savings, it’s pretty much the same price as the UK, with more passwords and fewer races.
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