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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Thanks!
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!People wouldn't believe that in Denmark, it costs 60 euros a month to be able to watch Viaplay which is the only way to watch Premier League and Champions League outside regular flow tv channels.
Thanks Armchair and Awaveydepends what the deal is, and Sky have so many its impossible to keep track of them all anymore, but I think if you have Sky Q or Sky Glass, that deal with Discovery + is only the "Standard" version, not the premium sports from TNT included.
but then Sky were bundling Eurosport with what they used to call their entertainment package, which meant you were paying for it, noticed quite alot of the cycling press today claiming it was free, it was originally free way back when it started and was probably 10-15years ago they made that change, and since most people had the entertainment package by default no-one really noticed unless they cancelled Sky completely and wondered where Eurosport went.
and I thought I remember for a while there was kind of a weird setup they did with TNT back maybe when BT Sport started to try to get marketshare, that they divided the channels into a premium sports channel bit, so say TNT1 & TNT2 now, where all the live premium sport happened, but TNT3 & TNT4 were like the heres the rest of the sport weve got thats not so premium, and that was bundled in as part of your entertainment package, so you again got to watch some sport live but werent really subscribed to TNT or BT for it.
you may find the result is similar now and your Standard version that Sky gives you for "free", gives you some sport but not all sport, and it depends how TNT label it whether you get access to it.
A death spiral in the UK for pro-cycling?
https://www.cyclingweekly.com/racin...eginning-of-the-end-for-pro-cycling-in-the-uk
Of course. I haven't been watching football for over 10 years and was completely disconnected from the sport.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.
A death spiral in the UK for pro-cycling?
https://www.cyclingweekly.com/racin...eginning-of-the-end-for-pro-cycling-in-the-uk
Mine is that package but it’s included for free. The streaming service is basically what is on Eurosport plus a lot more races.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.
SteephillTV where are you!!!looks like cycling torrents are back on the menu
View: https://www.instagram.com/p/DFa0aQNtZf_/?utm_source=ig_embed&img_index=1Yep. 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.
Interesting that they offered you a deal straight away. The strong reaction in the media has obviously been noted by WBD.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.
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).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.
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.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.
Your time, I fear, will come.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.
Your time, I fear, will come.
Interesting that they offered you a deal straight away. The strong reaction in the media has obviously been noted by WBD.
It would be good to know how much they paid for exclusive broadcast rights in the UK & Ireland, and to whom.
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.
Major TGH W, to be honest.View: https://www.instagram.com/p/DFa0aQNtZf_/?utm_source=ig_embed&img_index=1
Seems Tao Geoghegan Hart agrees with you too.
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.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.