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This might sound hyperbolic, but with the Tour de France also disappearing from ITV, it feels like a golden era is over
Two short years ago, we had never had it so good as pro cycling fans in the UK. There was GCN+ at our fingertips, for under £10 a month, with essentially every bike race you could ever wish for, live and on-demand, without ads. There was Eurosport, if you were someone who liked to watch cycling on your TV old-school, with endless adverts for Renault and river cruises on the Danube. During certain races, most pertinently the Tour de France, there was also live coverage on ITV4, and highlights for other events too.
We didn’t know how good it was. Those halcyon days are now behind us, and becoming ever more distant. GCN+ closed at the end of 2023, bringing an end to two great years; ITV4 will lose the rights to showing the Tour de France at the end of 2025; and as of next month, Eurosport will be no more. Cycling fans in the UK (and Ireland) will have to pay more than ever to watch cycling on TNT Sports, from small events like the E3 Saxo Classic to the biggest, like the Tour de France. When I say more than ever, it is a 344% increase on current monthly fees for Discovery+ subscribers - from £6.99 to £30.99. If you’re someone who just watches Eurosport through your current package, that’s a subscription that you’ve never had to pay for before.
It might sound hyperbolic, but I think this puts professional cycling in serious danger in the UK. 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. Without people watching, arguably, sport struggles for meaning. People might read race reports more - good news for me - but taking it behind an even bigger paywall feels like a backwards step, especially when it was so good before.
TNT’s argument is that fans will have access to more sport through their regular channels, and that this way, football, rugby or UFC fans will also cross over: viewed from that perspective, cycling could grow its audience! However, cycling is not football, rugby or UFC it’s a smaller, more niche sport, and this decision hints that it will become even more of a non-entity in the UK. Their other argument is that young people don’t watch TV any more, which might be true, perhaps TikTok and YouTube are king, but when the step to the live experience is so prohibitively expensive, it does not seem like many will ever be converted into dedicated fans.
In my experience, cycling fans are not always general sports fans. They are not people who are going to be excited by the opportunity to watch an array of mainstream sports, but people who just want to watch the Critérium du Dauphiné without interruption, at a similar cost to before. Sure, there are exceptions - I love cricket and football - but I don’t have an expensive TNT or Sky Sports subscription for these, and they are more readily available, whether down the pub or on the radio. Try walking into your local and asking for Dwars door Vlaanderen on the big screen.
Whilst an inconvenience for fans, the end of accessible TV coverage could spell disaster for the future of our sport. If fewer people are watching cycling in the UK, fewer people are going to be inspired to ride (or even race) bikes. Sure, the next British Tour de France winner might come from a house with TNT, but the chances are smaller, the opportunities to discover cycling smaller. We are creating an even more middle class sport.
If this really is the epoch-ending event for cycling on TV in the UK that it seems, then this will have a huge impact on the races themselves, on sponsors who rely on airtime, ultimately on the action. Cycling might seem like an attractive sport for those buying rights this time around, but what about in the future? Will we ever have it so good again? Right now, it seems unlikely.
I expect fewer people are going to be watching cycling in the UK and Ireland from the end of next month. Let's hope it isn’t time for the last rites for the sport.
- ADAM BECKET
