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Eurosport commentary

Page 288 - Get up to date with the latest news, scores & standings from the Cycling News Community.
Sep 26, 2024
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I've tried over the years to watch with the English and German commentary but I find the best feature of of the Eurosport coverage is that you can turn off commentary and just have ambient sound. That way you don't have to listen to any of these annoying and often over excitable people. That said, the only one I can stand to listen to is McEwan when he isn't being drawn into the nonsense and Dan Lloyd (was a real shame to see him go). I only left the commentary on if Lloyd was there, but as he's gone its ambient sound or muted on the rare occasion that isn't an option for whatever reason.
 
"What's left to say about Tadej Pogacar...."

"I'm lost for words"

This is basically what we have been served by the commentary team for hours and hours this season. Guys, if you are "lost for words about TP" - comment on the race instead!

We don't need commentary to sing endless praises of TP for hours and hours every single time. We know he is really good. Comment on what is not known about the race (like the race for 2nd or whatever). That's your job!
 
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Bad news for us Brits, no more ITV bolt hole for the TdF after next years race, we will be subjected to bantz central coverage exclusively :(

Very bad move, a lot of 'casual' cycling fans won't be able to watch the Tour anymore. It's not like football where millions of people are willing to pay for Sky/BT sport ect, the Tour will loose millions of viewers because of this.
 
I got into cycling watching the 1999 Tour on terrestrial (I believe it was on channel 4 back then?). The cycling consumption of every casual fan I've spoken to in England has been the Olympic events and The Tour on ITV4, with zero exceptions. I struggle to see the gateway into road cycling from here, nobody watches Eurosport and more people are cutting back on expensive Sky packages, this may be a short-sighted move, though there are rumours ITV didn't bid for the package so I'll withhold judgement for now.
 
I think this is going to be a mistake - and as said above, it pulled in lots of casual viewers who won't watch any other cycling the rest of the year. And they're not going to pay to continue watching it.

I think the ASO have believed their own publicity, but they may find out cycling just isn't as big as they think.
It’s getting time to break ASO. Too big. Too independent. It’s not really feeding cycling for a healthy ecosystem of the sport
 
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It’s getting time to break ASO. Too big. Too independent. It’s not really feeding cycling for a healthy ecosystem of the sport
Although if no terrestrial broadcasters bid for it, there's not much ASO can do. I think it was Dan Lloyd that I read on twitter saying that retaining free-to-air broadcasters is something that ASO try to prioritise. It might actually be ITV's fault.
 
Although if no terrestrial broadcasters bid for it, there's not much ASO can do. I think it was Dan Lloyd that I read on twitter saying that retaining free-to-air broadcasters is something that ASO try to prioritise. It might actually be ITV's fault.

That's a good point. My immediate thoughts echoed many above about ASO being short sighted and how you are never going to attract new fans if your product is behind a paywall. But maybe ITV made such a low offer that ASO had to show some backbone.
 
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I prefer the uci as a team owner and cyclist union driven organization negotiating rights to broadcast their brands to more effectively revenue share.
What should happen, as seen in other sports is one entity runs the World Tour for the governing body. So, the UCI put a tender out - and a Promoter runs, decides the calendar, sells TV rights and chooses which races are in the WT. Just like how most major global motorsports are run.
 
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Although if no terrestrial broadcasters bid for it, there's not much ASO can do. I think it was Dan Lloyd that I read on twitter saying that retaining free-to-air broadcasters is something that ASO try to prioritise. It might actually be ITV's fault.

well he says they didnt bid for the live rights, which is fair enough I imagine those arent cheap to get regardless of the ASOs priorities, or cheap for ITV to broadcast from France either, and ITV dont have the largesse of the BBC licence fee to fall back on and clearly advertisers feel its a pretty low interest thing to be showing given the ad-rolls you get with it.

Its also been suggested the ASO were trying to package up their other races, as per the deal with WBD theyve done, and theres little to no benefit for ITV to have all those races. Equally also been suggested the EBU have said ITVs bid "wasnt satisfactory", not that they didnt bid at all. Theres also been a rumour there absolutely will be FTA highlights available somewhere though I feel the nature of that one feels a little of the OMG what have we just done, given the scant detail with it.

So theres alot of rumour and conjecture flying about whose fault it is, who said or did what, even assuming there is any blame to one party or another anyway

The ultimate conclusion is WBD become exclusive rights owners to the coverage of those races in the UK.

and that means it removes FTA live coverage at least, and whilst highlights may end up hidden away on some WBD adjunct channel somewhere, for alot of people in the UK the route into watching and getting interested in professional cycling racing for nearly the past 40 years will be lost.

all in an era when actually UK interest in professional cycling racing is diminishing rapidly, as the well known riders from the past few decades retire, and the next generation of riders havent broken through yet, if they will at all, and the UK road racing scene is still broken.

the ultimate irony in all this is before this annoucement, British Cycling had been letting it be known they were targetting the 2027 TdF grand depart to be hosted in the UK, when no-one will be able to watch it anymore without subscribing to WBD.
 
The equivalent Giro contract appears up at the end of 2025 so if ITV wanted to keep some cycling for less money maybe they could try to get involved there. Somehow, Welsh C4 had the Giro on live recently (with Welsh commentary!) although I can't remember if that was the case this year.
 
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