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.