Cycling fans in the UK and Ireland have reacted angrily to news that Warner Bros Discovery is to terminate the Eurosport brand and channels in those territories, putting its live cycling coverage behind a paywall at more than four times the previous price.
Subscribers to the Discovery+ service received an email this morning, announcing the imminent closure of Eurosport’s linear broadcast channels, as well as the Discovery+ Standard Plan, which had included Eurosport’s live cycling coverage, along with on-demand access to everything from track to cyclocross.
To continue to access live cycling, British and Irish fans will have to upgrade from a typical £6.99 (US$8.70) per month contract to a TNT Sports bundle including Premier League football, typically costing £30.99 (US$38.50) per month.
Subscribers elsewhere in Europe will not be affected – yet.
‘The new home of cycling in the UK is going to be TNT Sports,’ said Scott Young of WBD Sports Europe, quoted by Cycling Weekly. ‘There is going to be a price rise for this premium sports channel. What we’ve looked at is creating value for money, taking the most premium sports properties as possible and creating the adjacency, creating a sports ecosystem where you get value.’
But judging by the online reaction, cycling fans were not excited by the promise of ‘adjacency’ to other sports.
‘Eurosport’ was quickly trending on social media as the news emerged. Many notable cycling writers and commentators expressed shock and dismay, some in very strong language indeed.
‘It might sound hyperbolic, but I think this puts professional cycling in serious danger in the UK,’ wrote Cycling Weekly news editor Adam Becket. ‘Judging by the comments under our original article, and across social media, people are not prepared to pay that much a month to watch cycling.’
Many concluded that any increase in income would find its way, not to support the sport of cycling, but into the already cash-saturated world of football.
The move comes just over a year after WBD closed its GCN+ service, which had offered live cycling coverage and on-demand documentaries for just £40 per year – one-tenth of an annual TNT Sports subscription.
Media coverage and criticism is concentrating on the reduced access to live feeds of ‘grand tours’ like the Tour De France, already set to disappear from UK free-to-air schedules after 2025.
But track cycling will feel a direct impact, as WBD is the UCI’s partner in the Track Champions League, having announced an eight-year commitment in 2021.
The UK is arguably track cycling’s strongest spectator market, with TCL having little difficulty selling out all 6,750 seats at London’s Lee Valley velodrome at least once per season. But with the UK in the economic doldrums, a 4x price hike was never going to go down well.
For those unwilling or unable to swallow the increase, the one hope of live access to the competition may be this year’s decision to make each TCL round available free-to-air in its host country. The London rounds were covered by the Welsh language channel S4C, now widely available outside Wales, albeit voiced in a language most of the UK does not speak.
WBD plans to introduce a weekly cycling highlights show on its free-to-air channel Quest, as well as offering race highlights packages and other related content free through social media.