It would be good to know how much they paid for exclusive broadcast rights in the UK & Ireland, and to whom.
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- Apr 6, 2012
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And in UK you need two premium packages to watch it all. No longer a subscriber so not sure total cost these days. Eye watering anyway!
- May 7, 2009
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Thanks Armchair and Awavey
I think my Discovery+ via Sky is the £6.99 one - I can currently watch cycling on the streaming service, but I can't watch the TNT channel on Sky. I think I just need to wait a month and see what happens.
I do wonder if the TNT package will be one of those things I can subsequently negotiate with Sky, but I'd have to wait until near contract expiry for that.
Maybe I need to take a year out, watch it in Flemish using a VPN, and then see how the land lies.
Bloody Warner Bros.
- Jul 16, 2015
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Yep. And then some money people wonder why sport is failing to attract 'young viewers'. I remember during the whole super league debacle in football a few years ago Florentino Perez said youngsters aren't watching football and it's a problem. Well of course it is, i.e. you need to fork over a load of money to various platforms just to watch the games on tv.
I'll pull out the Sean Kelly-isms here, i.e. "back in my day" aka when I was a kid I could watch Champions League football every Wednesday night on TF1. For free. They'd broadcast the French teams and when they inevitably got knocked out, they'd broadcast the most prestigious matches in the following rounds (like Real Madrid, Bayern, Man Utd etc.). Then on Thursdays the UEFA Cup was on France TV. I could watch Liverpool and teams like that. Formula 1 was also totally free. How do you think Michael Schumacher became such a household name? Because he was on everyone's TV whilst their dad snoozed on a Sunday afternoon whilst watching the races. And let's not even mention the football world cup. In France it's now behind a paywall, hilariously owned by beIN sports (Qataris... who somehow got the broadcasting rights in France for the Qatari world cup... aka you couldn't make this up).
So anyway that's a lot of words to basically say sport will eventually die as a mass entertainment product when it's hidden behind expensive paywalls.
- Aug 14, 2012
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Of course. I haven't been watching football for over 10 years and was completely disconnected from the sport.
Now, I've received a 6 month offer for the premium channel that shows the league games, and I've grown again into the game. I might have watched more football in the last 3 months than in the past 10 years.
Same for NBA, same for F1.
F1 is a good case study. Years after years of hiding behind costly premium channels and had their viewership skyrocket when they launch their streaming service for 5 euros per month (plus that Netflix thingy). As a consequence, in my country the channel that hold the rights for F1 stopped hiding it behind their 30 euro per month package, instead they created a different subscription, for a motors channel, for almost the same price as F1TV and bundled MotoGP, WRC, etc. into it.
Possibly but UK procycling, well cycling in general here imo but that's another debate, is already on its knees, is this just a symptom as WBD try to extract more revenue from a shrinking audience and ad revenues market, or another cause of it.
- Sep 4, 2017
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Mine is that package but it’s included for free. The streaming service is basically what is on Eurosport plus a lot more races.
Linear Eurosport already cut back greatly on cycling on its two uk tv channels at least 3 years ago so it was a huge boost getting Discovery+ added to the package.
Looking grim at the moment.
- Apr 15, 2022
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looks like cycling torrents are back on the menu
SteephillTV where are you!!!
- Jul 16, 2011
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I am a Disco+ subscriber. I used their "Help Chat" function today...asked for a human advisor and explained that I would be leaving as I only subscribe to watch cycling (despite, ironically having been a content provider for them) ...and I expalined that £30 a month was not viable. I would not subsidise the football deals they are trying to recoup on. They offered me a deal on the premium TNT package for existing subscribers of £15 a month for the next seven months. I may actually take that. But told them that when it expires, they lose me, full stop. I said that other cycling fans would also leave and watch by other means. I asked that a full complaint be raised and passed upstream, explaining the reasons why they will lose my custom. Which the young lady did. I recommend that anyone who is a D+ subscriber who will not pay the £30 a month TNT service lodge their own complaint and intent to leave. They were, I can tell you, very keen that I didn't leave. I pointed out that a premium VPN service would be much cheaper and would enable me to watch Eurosport elsewhere.
- Aug 9, 2021
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View: https://www.instagram.com/p/DFa0aQNtZf_/?utm_source=ig_embed&img_index=1
Seems Tao Geoghegan Hart agrees with you too.
- Apr 8, 2023
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Interesting that they offered you a deal straight away. The strong reaction in the media has obviously been noted by WBD.
If you cancel your subscription now through your online account, they automatically offer up this same deal after cancellation - £15.49 a month (to be exact).
The website also said that the offer is valid up until your current billing period expiry (10th Feb for me) and to contact customer support if you want to take up the offer.
- Apr 8, 2023
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Sounds like, WBD have worked out that £15.49 for 7 months is more then £0.00 for the entire year! I wonder if we'll see a change soon from WBD where sports are divided up across different packages, as the current idea seems a non-starter.
- Jul 16, 2015
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Here in France, cycling is still part of Eurosport and the way I get is via the Max streaming platform. Max is 9.99 euros a month for all the movies etc. + 5.00 for the sport offering that gives me cycling + tennis. So that's basically 15 euros a month, i.e. roughly what Netflix costs these days. Is it cheap? No. Is it prohibitive? No, not when I see what's happening in the UK, that's for sure.
Before Warner Bros put cycling on Max I had to subscribe to Eurosport itself and that was 9.99 a month. So I guess I'm paying 5 euros more now than I used to but on the flipside there is a load of content on Max.
I have no idea why the UK is so different and why consumers over there are getting ripped off like this.
Before Warner Bros put cycling on Max I had to subscribe to Eurosport itself and that was 9.99 a month. So I guess I'm paying 5 euros more now than I used to but on the flipside there is a load of content on Max.
I have no idea why the UK is so different and why consumers over there are getting ripped off like this.
Armchair Cyclist
Moderator
- Mar 22, 2010
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I don’t know. Britain has always had a particular susceptibility to sporting rip-off that just isn’t replicated elsewhere.
And what a well put and eloquent post from Tao. Well said sir.
well technically they didnt pay for exclusive rights, they ended up as sole rights owners, simply because no other broadcaster in the UK wanted to bid for them.
that ought to tell people a simple home truth about the value of cycling coverage to UK broadcasters and the actual size of the audience we are talking about here
I thought it was a bunch of nonsense frankly, maybe Taos just not old enough to remember that the era he is getting misty eyed about that supposedly inspired a generation of British pro cyclists we had less than a 1hr highlights show on C4 of the TdF only, and that was the sumtotal of cycling coverage in the UK other than the Olympics every 4 years, till satellite TV brought it into peoples homes, and that was still all behind a big Sky pay wall.
in 1995, so 30 years ago, there were only 3.5ish million UK households with access to Sky, which was about 1/5th of the total tv households at the time. the BBC werent showing Paris Roubaix, ITV werent showing the Ronde & C4 werent doubling up their Gazzetta Football Italia with the Giro.
Brad Wiggins didnt get into cycling because it was being shown loads on UK fta TV channels.
yes compared to what we had only a few years ago, this feels a step back in accessibility. but the harsh reality is there isnt the UK audience for it to make it viable for a broadcaster to give the content away for free anymore.
and fine if you dont take my word for it, read what Ned Boulting as someone who is probably better placed than any of us to know what the situation is said when ITV dropped its rights to the TdF. "in the end, the bitter truth at the core of this sad turn of events is this: not enough of us cared. Not really."
and of course no TV coverage in the UK is actually free as by law you are required to buy a TV license and Eurosport as a linear tv service required a subscription to Sky as well.
- Feb 20, 2010
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Major TGH W, to be honest.
He's absolutely right, one of the things that has helped cycling gain an audience in non-traditional markets has been the disappearance of a number of mainstream sports and formerly major TV sports behind paywalls.
If cycling is going to go head to head for cost of viewership with sports like football and Formula 1, it is going to lose out, simple as that. The hardcore audience might still watch it, but I dare say there's a fair few people who follow cycling in the UK who first became viewers because they had been paywalled out of watching sports like football, who either will now simply find a substitute that isn't paywalled if they still don't want to pay the exorbitant costs, or if they are going to pay that up-front cost... will just end up watching the more mainstream sports like football on that subscription and the cycling will be relegated to fringe content again.
This is seen over and over in the US market. Majority of cycling viewers are there by accident. ESPN, NBC associated channels have TDF and Paris Roubaix and people watch it because it's interesting, different but also because it's free.
If you put any obstacle in the way like switching services or pay wall you will lose the audience.
Networks are also lucky to have a few Americans to focus on, give a backstory.
As you bring up, incorrectly in my opinion, I consider myself part of the hardcore audience but my budget and attitude make me resistant, reluctant to spend @$40-80 a month to get to bike racing. Eurosport is already pretty expensive in the US, Just an ugly example, for basic internet service in my area through Cox cable is $67 per month.. That's with no TV!! They do what we call bundles.. So internet, TV and telephone using voice over IP for $119 per month.. Then one more hurdle ( or 2 ) to get Eurosport..likely @$20-30 dollars more per month.
If TDF were not offered as part of basic cable the audience we fall off,
I say all this with great, great bitterness as the NFL keeps one upping everything.. Need basic networks, ESPN, Amazon and now NFL offered on Netflix.. If cycling gets spread around like that it will kill the casual fans.
All that complaining.. I am able to watch more bike racing live or shortly after than at any time of my life. Cycling News, Escape collective, and YouTube are absolutely awesome for seeing and reading about bike racing to a high level of personal satisfaction..
And a name that was in my life for years, VeloNews is gone, don't go there, don't think about visiting, ownership has made looking at anything so difficult and expensive I am actually turned off by the name.
- Jul 16, 2011
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When my sunscription at 15.49 is up. I will quit and either use VPNs or other internet means to watch. As posted above. There's more and more on youtube these days. But how will I cope without Adam Blythe?
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