Next summer will be the last when the Tour de France will be shown free-to-air in Britain, from then it will be for Eurosport subscribers only. It marks the end of five decades of free coverage in the UK.
It’s a headache for cycling fans in Britain but also an issue for pro cycling which losses pan-European mass market coverage. And if you live somewhere with free coverage don’t assume it’ll always be that way.
Free-to-air is just that, buy a TV and you can watch what is broadcast over the airwaves or down the internet for free, no subscriptions or sign-ups. This reaches a mass market audience and is the core of pro cycling’s business model where sponsors pay millions for naming rights hoping to reach many millions of people.
Chances are many UK cycling fans, the kind that even read niche blogs like this, will find a way to watch the Tour de France in 2026 and beyond. Plenty already subscribe to Eurosport, others might use VPNs to get free coverage.
But hundreds of thousands won’t clear the paywall or tunnel beneath geo-restrictions. It’s the loss of this casual audience that is a pity. A significant chunk of the UK audience is there for the scenery. In time a share of those people will learn how the yellow jersey is awarded, fall off at traffic lights because they forget to unclip from their new pedals and so on. Maybe you’re reading this blog having started out this way?
The boom British cycling has been in reverse for some time, the glory days of the Yorkshire grand départ, Team Sky, le Tour de Yorkshire, the likes of Bradley Wiggins, Mark Cavendish, Geraint Thomas and Chris Froome in their pomp are over. Ironically British fans have plenty to look forward to thanks to the cohort that got into road cycling around this time and are now World Tour riders.
The Tour coverage in Britain began on Channel 4 in 1986 but in the 2000s its rival ITV bought out Channel 4 to reach a prime audience. All along it’s been made the same production company. Today ITV is one of the main TV channels in Britain but it’s a business with a market capitalisation of £2.9 billion ($3.8bn / €3.5bn) whose stock price has been in the doldrums.
ITV’s Tour de France coverage has included good reportage on the ground from several journalists. But also dreary low-rent ad breaks featuring charity donkey sanctuary appeals and cremation plans. You didn’t need to watch ITV to know this given the number of Britons rage-tweeting every July. Another warning sign was the lack of women’s Tour coverage too, this has been Eurosport-only in Britain. Seen against all this perhaps we can see ITV’s decision to decline the rights from 2026 onwards as unsurprising?
There’s nothing wrong with Eurosport’s coverage. It gets the same FranceTV-Euromedia images as everyone else… but it’s different in tone. Especially the English output, where it does feel like they’re putting their presenters in front of the camera more than the riders at times. Pet gripes aside, fundamentally it’s aimed at at cycling fans.
ITV like other mainstream channels is there for the race but more too. Across the North Sea Dutch public broadcaster NOS typically sets up its daily Avondetappe (“evening stage”) show in the grounds of a châteaux or amid a vineyard for the vicarious sense of travel. These broadcasts might feature rosé wine as much the green jersey. This peddles the soft drug of France in summer with sunflowers, the shade of roads lined by Napoleonic plane trees to a waiting public, long before people become cycling fans and move onto initially niche things like the relative difficulty of each side of the Tourmalet or the three kilometre rule.
All this matters because plenty of ITV’s viewers won’t switch to Eurosport. Some of those that do move wanting their dose of the Tour de France may not stay if they find coverage spends more time discussing aerodynamic socks than softly-lit holiday destinations; if the day’s reportage is about tire pressure rather than ancient caves. Exclusivity maybe good for Eurosport today but in the medium to long term the supply of new subscribers could dry up. The UK TV audience for pro cycling is set to shrink.
This is a challenge for the sport as a whole. If sponsors are interested in reaching a big audience they’ve now lost hundreds of thousands of eyeballs and wallets in the UK. It’s worth repeating British audiences have been falling already. But rather than audience measurement, just imagine a big “X” drawn across the UK as the mass-market reach is gone. It’s not disastrous but it does undermine cycling’s offer: never mind a global reach, it’s struggling to cover Europe.
Americans and Canadians will be saying “welcome to my world”. Alas they’re still worse off than British cousins as the rights to various races are fragmented, rather than all with Eurosport.
Meanwhile if you’re sitting comfortably in Europe today, watch out. For now Tour organisers ASO seems keen on having a wide mass market audience which means you get the Tour and the rest of their portfolio free. But NOS is cutting back, no more Vuelta in the Netherlands. Already the Giro is hard to find outside of Italy. Flanders Classics is in talks with the elusive One Cycling project whose business plan is predicated on bundling up TV rights and private equity is hardly coming in to share, it wants your cashflow. A scenario where cycle races are harder to find is only one or two steps away for many.
The saying “if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product” has been the essence of the Tour de France: free and open to all on the condition of a parade of corporate advertising and the backdrop of La France. It’s gone from a sports even in France to socio-cultural institution and this is why it has ridden out scandals. Yet pay for cycling coverage it’s not like rapport changes and the ads vanish. You still get teams called Ineos, Movistar and Quick-Step, and may well sit through ad breaks and find coverage product-placement. It’s extractive, each to their own on how much to pay.
For now the headache faced by US fans is not on the horizon. Indeed several countries in Europe give certain sports events “protected status” meaning they have to remain free-to-air as they are considered culturally important. In France a decree rules that the Tour de France and Paris-Roubaix must be free for all. Likewise in Italy the Giro and the Worlds… but not the Tour, so Italians enjoying RAI’s coverage today could wake up to find it’s gone behind a paywall tomorrow. Plus if these laws can be written, they can be revised and you can imagine the lobbying reach of the likes of Warner Bros-Discovery keen to corner the market.
There’s a wider lament about losing shared things, it’s a challenge for society when we stop watching, reading and listening to the same media. But just for cycling there will be Britons who would have become cycling fans now but won’t because the serendipity of stumbling across Tour de France is gone, and for a cycling blog that’s wistful enough.
Well written. On a personal note, it was a chance encounter with the Tour on SBS in Australia a couple of decades ago that sparked a life long love affair with cycling. If not for my exposure to that free broadcast, there would be no subscribing to (the former) GCN+, no purchasing bikes, no hours on Zwift…
I am in exactly the same situation. SBS will forever hold a special place in my heart.
I was delighted to see they have the rights until 2030, but after then? Who know. I can only hope they see the value in showing cycling to the Australian public.
SBS have a strong strategy for ensuring the rights come up for renewal.
Unfortunately for the good of the sport in Australia, that strategy is to do everything they can to make sure cycling remains a niche sport that is too small for the commercial networks to be interested in poaching.
If they were really interested in growing the sport in Australia, they would put in bids to show the international races in SA and Victoria each summer.
SBS was originally tasked to provide European content for migrant populations. Cycling was a good fit with that … and they also championed soccer. Not sure they are cycling promoters per se.
My take on the problem for road cycling in Australia is that we just don’t have the extra urban populations as everyone is piled into the cities. That affects the visual aspects as well.
A solid write up as always Inrng. My take is it’s a lost opportunity and one the cycling powers that be just don’t get. An overly restrictive UCi, bikes that are far too expensive, kit (Rapha included!) all over priced. People will and do vote with their feet. The cycling businesses have as usual over inflated sense of importance and they are paying the price at the moment and to be honest rightly so.
I remember enjoying watching test match cricket for several hours a day on BBC as a child.
Warne vs Gatting is still my all-time favourite sporting memory. Then cricket lost its reserved status, Sky got the rights and I haven’t watched a single minute of cricket in a quarter of a century.
Exactly the same for me. The joyful boredom of a lost weekend watching a test match. But that was a different time. It took up a 1/5th of the tv channel real estate whereas now choices are infinite and the serendipitous magic is lost. It seems to be a fact of modern life that we find our way to these niches that then in turn become harder for those outside to penetrate.
Do we care? Does the sport of cycling care? When Ineos and UAE and Saudi money is gone, there will still be a Tour of Flanders. There will still be riders to ride it and people to watch it.
Excellent piece. I’ve unfortunately seen the US model up close, and your observation about missing out on casual fans is spot-on. Once upon a time the Tour de France was in the American public consciousness, but for very understandable reasons the interest dropped off considerably after the US Postal years. My interest in professional cycling was a result of my dabbling in riding myself, then coming across races randomly on cable tv. Although cable isn’t free, in the glory days of cable packages you could find a fair amount of racing on a decent cable package. Now these packages have completely collapsed, and as you observed, it now requires several subscriptions to watch the entire season. This, coupled with the collapse of the US road racing scene, means that the entry points for casual fans are few and far between. All of this has led to road cycling being more “niche” than it has been since the pre-Lemond days.
Hadn’t read this while writing the lines below, but it’s absolutely spot on. And a shame, because cycling in the USA has had – and atill has – its legendary figures, races, scenes etc. After all, two of the three global Big Brands when road bikes (and beyond) are concerned are still USA-based!
Yep, great piece!
Cycling as a sport and its institutions, organisers, unions or teams included, should have ganged up since long on the fragmentation of TV market instead of trying each to get their slice of the pie by their own. It should have been top priority for the sport, because its mass status is key from several POVs. Of course the idea is apparently staying (relatively) mass in a handful of countries while also going on as a niche sport everywhere else. It may even work, but the risk is that the niche feeling becomes dominant. Not even imaginable in France? You’d have said the same about Italy, but the latter is now flirting with the tipping point. And the situation isn’t well-established in Spain or the Netherlands, either.
UK is a shame after the all around investments, figures weren’t bad but you need the depth to hold and face bad times… just check USA to know what’s a volatile cycling scene (and market).
However, not being a mass sport anymore is a big risk for cycling. The huge deal of public money cycling depends on is flowing in directly and indirectly mainly because of the popular dimension, i.e., the national-cultural aspect and the idea that it can work as a promotion for habits which benefit the society. In Italy RCS is now way more solid than 10 years ago but it’s currently struggling… to draw the route, because a more widespread hostility towards cycling as such. Much more people don’t accept closed roads, imagine spending public money. Being a “coffee machine” sport is a huge added value in order to manage politics and ideology, historically needed by cycling… and potentially “in need of cycling”.
Besides, the way branding works in cycling through team sponsorship is more effective when working on a large and not necessarily passionate public. As we know few ever win, so a lot is about making your brand recognizable, not building up any specific value identity. The idea is for the brand becoming *familiar*. It’s about a vague/mild preference or trust given to a name already heard many times even if you don’t relate it to anything specific, it’s good for new brands or brands entering new markets or brand belonging to markets with many similar options to choose between or markets with an issue of trust. In a sense, even sportwashing belongs to the above categories.
(Working on identity always was more about sponsoring races).
Obviously, you can change your status and sponsorship model along with that. Famously, the sport jumped from technical bike-related sponsors to general commodities from Nivea on. It can track the road back, maybe even back to a TDF for national teams!
Yet, it’s important to be aware of how your model works and how you pretend to change it, be it only to know precisely what you’re going to sell and to whom. Even more so, in order to know who’s not going to buy from you anymore…
Check the list of WT team sponsors and wonder for each of them if they prefer several millions of casual viewers or hundreds of K of cycling hardcore fans. Many wouldn’t even care about the latter. Eurosport tends to be 10% of the open broadcast public.
Another essential issue is whom you’re giving full power on a key segment of your whole production system. Is Discovery-Warner interested in… “the future of cycling”? “The sustainable well-being of the social environment of the sport”? Do they even understand how it works and do they care, or it’s like extracting value when they can, then sell just before everybody notices the toy is broken? Many TVs did care because of political reasons and because of it was a serious middle to long term broad investment for them, even part of their identity (imagine that in Italy it mattered *a lot* when cycling was moved from national public free Rai3 to national public free Rai2). Discovery buys a local product to export, a whole different matter. The sport puts itself in a very risky position which so many other have regretted before (Italian basket, F1 in Italy, MotoGP in Spain… I name markets I know well).
I notice that – in the link you provide – the 2nd favourite contest (after GC) with the public is the polka dot jersey. And yet so few riders and teams seem interested. You would have thought they would be just for the publicity.
I would really hope that Discovery+ would sign up Ned Boulting and David Millar, at the very least. They would be a big improvement to their commentary staff, and they could finally rid of us of Carlton Kirby.
I will not tolerate Kirby slander here. Blasphemy!
I’m with you’re CK !
Entirely with you re the dreaded CK
@J Evans – please not Boulting. He often seems clueless about what he’s watching. Millar can be quite dull sometimes but wouldn’t be a bad addition to Eurosport. Maybe replace Kelly (controversial I know but he is mostly a terrible commentator)
Kelly has good race insights, to my mind. He’s not there to provide commentary, he’s there to use his well-honed cycling brain to give some insight into why people might be doing what they’re doing and keep the “fill the air” commentators ground in racing reality. He does that well, to my ears.
His race insights are increasingly poor too. Great rider – awful pundit/commentator/whatever you want to call his cliche filled comments)
I think it’s a pity Kirby & Kelly are usually paired together as I think both of them work better with other commentators. Kelly seems to usually only speak when he’s asked a question by the lead commentator & Kirby tends to talk on for ages unless he has a co-commentator who’s prepared to cut in sometimes so when they’re paired together it feels like Kirby does nearly all the talking.
If cycling tries to charge too much to its viewers, it will lose most of them. Aside from diehard fans with plenty of spare money, most will baulk at paying a certain amount. Personally, Discovery+ being £7 a month for the 8 months of the cycling season that I’m interested in is getting close to my limit.
Like many in the UK, I discovered cycling via Channel 4’s TdF coverage in the 80s. That won’t happen now, and there is already a lot of competition for viewers. Cycling can only gouge people so much.
You only have to look on Pinkbike, Vital MTB forums after Red Bull lost the free to air coverage of the MTB World Cup to WB/Discovery…….who of course are a pay to view. Its still a sore point…
And has already had an effect on some parts of the sport.
Have you been able to cancel your Discovery+ subscription for the cycling off season without repercussions? Because I’ve just tried to cancel mine & received an email telling me that if I cancel & then re-start then I’ll have to watch adverts in the future & that in order to not have ads I’ll have to keep my current subscription. I feel like I’m almost being blackmailed by Discovery+!
I cancelled a couple of months ago, being fed up of paying to listen to Kirby during the Vuelta. I received no threats.
If they tell me I’ll get adverts if I re-subscribe, I’ll never re-subscribe.
I’d suggest others do the same – call their bluff.
Oh dear, it sounds like it’s just me they don’t like then!
You could also just use a different e mail address each time you re-subscribe. Slightly tiresome, but it doesn’t take long to get a new e mail.
I took it to mean that anyone subscribing going forward would be landed with ads but maybe that’s not the case. The problem is not being able to tell in advance….
Seems to still be the same deal:
https://auth.discoveryplus.com/gb/product?loginProvider=username_password
I just looked up ‘Discovery+ sign up’.
Thanks. I’ll investigate.
My brother-in-law’s a computery person (which, as you can tell from that, I am not), and he reckons it would be very unlikely that they could have one type of account with adverts and another without.
Thoughts and prayers for this hard times of “off season”
While I’m happily still paying my 3.99€ per month and watch a lot of track and cyclocross races in November, December and January, until the first road races start again at the and of January.
Maybe open a gofundme page.
Mocking others’ financial constraints makes you look big and important and better than them.
Easy.
But worth noting another anomaly (or a shopping opportunity) as the price varies from country to country across Europe, it can be €15 a month too. Where is it €3.99 a month please? (asking for a friend)
While anonymous heckling makes you a lovely dude, I know.
I’m talking about 4 freaking Euros a month, not 40. If you can’t afford the amount of one beer in a pub, your problems are way bigger than the D+ subscription policy.
@INRNG
Germany
Das klappt… will explore, ideally this offers Eurosport 1+2 only rather and the extra live feeds and multiple languages.
Greg, unintentional anonymity on my part.
According to UK government statistics, about 1 in 5 British people live in ‘absolute poverty’.
I don’t know what country you live in – it might be a bit better there.
But you’re right, ‘if you can’t afford the amount of one beer in a pub, your problems are way bigger than the D+ subscription policy’.
One can read more here:
https://www.jrf.org.uk/uk-poverty-2024-the-essential-guide-to-understanding-poverty-in-the-uk
@JEvans
To be clear, I didn’t want to be mocking anyone’s financial struggles, since I have to live barely on the minimum myself, being chronically ill and therefore unemployed. Sorry if it came over that way.
And I wasn’t aware about the weird D+ pricing politics in different countries. I subscribed at beginning of the year and since then I feel these are the best spent 4€ per month deal I ever made. With that subscription from Germany I was able to watch more cycling than I ever could before, without relying on shady pirate stream sites and whatnot. Also able to switch between languages if the commentators began to annoy me, which they always do over a 3 weeks tour
But obviously it seems this deal isn’t always the same for other countries, which I don’t really understand. Especially cause Eurosport 1 is normally still free-to-air here on basic cable and you can also watch the Le Tour for free on German public broadcaster ARD, but their commentator is really horrible, and beside TDF and the 2 German races in Frankfurt and Hamburg, they don’t show cycling at all.
tldr: D+ sucks massively if they charge 15 bucks in other countries and show less than here for 4. So I expect to see raising prices here too, soon
Greg, thanks for the reply. All the best to you from someone else who’s chronically ill and therefore unemployed.
Warner/Discovery/HBO or whatever it’s called (I really hope they unify the branding if only to simplify the label used so readers in Britain, Belgium and Italy know it’s the same thing) has different tiers of subscription, first you have to subscribe to the general channel, then you get the sports-add on. But you can also pay a premium not to have the ads.
Now it might be you’re on a tariff that is cheap and you won’t be able to access it again; but it could be them scaring/nudging you into staying so check the terms.
That said at least here in Australia the closest parallel would be rugby union which has mostly gone the pay for view model with only few international matches each year on free to air TV. A reasonably well known but not major local sport which has pretty much thrown all chance of gaining supporters down the toilet. Year after year Australian Rugby is less visible and important.
Here in Australia we get the tour “free” on SBS. That is if you put no value on large amounts of adds , large cooking section at the beginning of the broadcast and a desire to play music after each advert break (which i presume they sell on there store). If GCN was still available and was allowed to show the tour here i would pay for it. But i am already someone who is willing to pay. Someone new would never pay. Without GCN om Australia we no longer have any reasonable way to get most races live except the few on SBS. I actually get most of my cycling highlights on youtube.
What’s really perplexing is that Australia has been steadily one of the strongest nations in cycling: since they sort of broke into a “virtual” top-10 of countries at the beginning of this century, they never fell back down again. Of course, the last 3-4 seasons haven’t been as impressing as some 10-15 years ago with Evans, McEwen, Rogers and later Gerrans, but the country is steadily strong with some solid 10 starters at the TDF season after season, Hindley having some great moments, O’Connor too. Vine is an interesting figure to follow and Groves, Matthews or Ewan bring a certain quantity of victories in, although maybe less than expected sometimes. Constant great track success with Olympic medals. Very young Plapp to look forward to with interest. A nationally identified WT team. What’s not to like? Italy would sign for such a situation.
Normally national sporting success brings in popular interest and strong media coverage as a consequence. I recall that racing time zone is an issue, yet it must also be said that there’s a global generalised trend of watching less live and more on demand which could help with that.
The re-emergence of cycling in Australia can all be chased back to the David versus Goliath win by the men’s team pursuit team in Los Angeles Olympics in 1984. It is also the reason that the sport is centred in Adelaide.
For that reason it is nice to see that gold medal return to its spiritual home this year!
I guess that the Aussie tidal wave in road cycling (pioneers apart) tracks back as you say, the impact of policies…and emotions… on a generation of children turning pro a dozen years later and from then on.
Unlike other nations, it kept its standard consistently high for a quarter of a century now, which should bode well for a self-reinforcing process to become a well-established part of the national sport culture. Even so, it looks like it’s not there, yet. I wonder why. Maybe, as you hint at, is it more of a very local thing in a big country? (The hotbeds are common in traditional countries, too, even in small Belgium! But maybe it’s about proportions).
It ws more specific people … Charlie Walsh in particular. Mike Turtur was one of the riders on the team and he got the TDU started.
BMX (Robbie McEwan) and mountain biking (Cadell Evans) are reasonably popular but the road is more or less for those who stumble onto the fact that they have an aptitude for it.
Another serendipitous encounter with Channel 4 coverage in 1987 here. Sparked a lifelong interest. Plus far too much money spent on bikes subsequently.
Post GCN (RIP) watching poorly edited Discovery+ highlights that don’t arrive until late in the evening will now be normal all year around rather than just for events outside the Vuelta (disappeared a few years ago from ITV4) and Le Tour.
Also won’t be able to talk about the race with my aged parents anymore.
I quit watching after GCN+ ended – why does discovery want me to pay to watch mostly snooker and skiing when I’m a cycling fan? The live coverage hasn’t worked for me for ages – work meetings coincided with race finishes – so to see races I wanted the on-demand service that GCN offered, not itv4.
I just fired up the Disco+ schedule to see if maybe it’s got better since I chucked it. Cricket, MotoGP. Cycling on for 2 hours total tomorrow (a cx race – not on long enough to cover start to finish – and a highlights package for the same race)
Seriously, Discovery made a choice not to do cycling for cycling fans but to make it a filler sport that might get some drive by eyeballs, do the UCI really think this is doing the sport a service?
D+ in the UK has (virtually – they didn’t have Burgos, I think) every race, and you can watch them ‘on-demand’ later (even weeks later, as I tend to end up doing with grand tours). It’s exactly the same as GCN (but with other stuff, which I also ignore) – same coverage, same staff – for road racing, anyway. (They don’t have much cycling at the moment because there are no races on – and doesn’t a CX race last about an hour?) And it’s £7 a month, so you can pay £56 and watch Omloop to Lombardia, then cancel.
I’d sign up for that in a heartbeat. In the US you would have to have Max, Peacock and Flobike for all that coverage. And the coverage on Max isn’t guaranteed.
Discovery+ has been great, it has a dedicated Cycling tab in the sports landing page and if you go through the “all sports” listings it splits it into all the disciplines on demand, i was watching last seasons cross races during the summer when there was nothing else on.
The Giro is on S4C free everyday, full coverage and Welsh is a great language for cycling commentary very melodic and flows along with the racing.
Your Giro experience reminds me when I was watching it on EITB in Spain ^___^
(I don’t understand Euskera, yet).
Its the way with all sports now. The idea of not having to pay a subscription to watch anything seems almost quaint now. It might mean better TV deals for organisers but sponsors may vote with their feet, if they aren’t already.
It is an interesting side note that it does seem to be if you put a sport on a pay per view platform then the standard of production decreases. Free to air sports coverage (largely of the past) basically involves a brief introduction, the actual sport and then a brief summary with a couple of interviews. Pay per view sport seems to be more about talk, whether thats football, cricket and F1 on Sky or cycling on Eurosport/Discovery+. Its all about creating rivalries, conflict and controversy. Ideally in a short repeatable reel. Whether it exists or not.
Yes, a general trend, and far from being new, as I also pointed about above. In Europe it rarely worked, if at all.
But road cycling is also slightly different from many other sports because of its venue or playground… and its political meaning & root in Europe are comparable to few other disciplines (football being of course much above cycling under this perspective). The implication could be harsher than we imagine today. As I said, the growing woes to draw a GT route are just a starter.
Free to air has become a bit of a wasteland in Australia. If he cycling were to go cold and dark winters would become a bit colder and darker.
Another aspect which makes cycling different is the brutal and direct effect of the average athletical level on race dynamics. Losing the status of a mass sport not only reduces the grassroots base as such, but it also makes it harder to even hold a proper race at lower (distributed) levels, generating a negative spiralling down.
And when the population base which the sport picks from is reduced, the peloton works in a very different way, shaping a totally different kind of racing. Whomever has been following women cycling for the last three decades could observe several of these changes.
Up to a certain point, all sports are a bit like that, but none as much as cycling (happy to be made aware of any comparable case), given that all competitors interact at the same time in the well-known combination of competition and cooperation.
Good piece INRNG, thanks.
This new ‘deal’ is certainly going to reduce the casual viewer and hence the viewing numbers. The one positive for enthusiasts would be the potential loss of the clueless buffoon CK. On this I agree with J Evans. I subscribe to Discovery+ and have found the volume and range of coverage and event excellent.
Here in the UK it is no longer possible to read the National Newspapers online without a subscription. I suspect the end of this particular process will result in the loss of more of their already declining readership. I hope the same process is not the end result of the domination of Discovery.
Domination by one brand is never in the best interests of the consumer
The Grauniad and the Daily Hate are still free, and not coincidentally hugely popular. The idiotic policy of giving away all content, not just news headlines, before it even appeared in printed form killed off papers- if the creators don’t consider it to have any value, the public will agree. (See also music, film, tv, etc)
I think the two papers, like others you mention are only ‘free’ if you give permission for all sorts of unacceptable intrusions like ‘cookies’. Not something most sane people would/should accept.
Lets just hope we can still get our fill of WT bike racing at a reasonable cost. NO unwanted intrusion.
“The Tour coverage in Britain began on Channel 4 in 1986 but in the 2000s its rival ITV bought out Channel 4 to reach a prime audience.”
Do you mean “bought it from” or “outbid” perhaps? It’s not really possible for the private (part-owned by Liberty Global aka UPC or Virgin Media) ITV to buy out the publicly-owned Channel 4 at the moment (unless government decide to sell) and they definitely didn’t in the 2000s.
It’s also worth mentioning that the Tour had a few live stages on the main channel itv1 during the peak Froome era and the highlights were often repeated on it late night, as well as their regular 7pm itv4 slot, helping even more viewers discover it.
WB/Discovery have so far put what passes for their highlights of grand tours on free-to-air Quest or DMax but they’re well down the channel listings. Also, they usually mess up and don’t show one or two stages which of course is not to encourage subscription at all oh no of course not(!)
I read that Channel 4 had the rights for a couple of more years at the time but ITV made a bid to Channel 4 in order to get the Tour de France.
Channel 4 really struggled with the Tour in 2000 – they had live cricket and the inaugural series of Big Brother which both dominated the schedules, so the Tour highlights ended up going out at 5:30pm or in the middle of the night (literally, one stage was shown at 2am, Tim Moore mentions this in his book French Revolutions). They would have had the same problems the following summer with the Ashes cricket taking place during the Tour (for cricket non-fans, the Ashes is England v Australia and the most significant series they play) along with more Big Brother which had been a big success for them, so that winter C4 chose to hand the rights back. The reports at the time were that they would have to continue paying unless another free to air broadcaster came in. ITV did a deal to buy the rights off them, but it was done so late they could only put together a weekly (!) highlights show that went out on Monday nights. The only way to watch the 2001 Tour in the UK on a daily basis was via Eurosport, this was still well before video on the internet was possible. ITV began their daily coverage in 2002.
Unfortunately asset sweating, value extraction and rent seeking are the prime models of late era capitalism. They expect all of the benefit for negligable investment.
In a nutshell
An absolute disaster.
My journey into cycling began with a Robert Millar documentary on ITV and then CH4 and the 1987 Tour.
Being a fairly typical kid from England all other sport was Football, Cricket and Rugby League. No one in my family had any idea about procycling.
Without free to air coverage it would not have happened. Cricket and Rugby League both made the same mistake. Yes, I will pay, my kids might watch but no one else will.
Also my Mum watches it. She has no interest in cycling. But he does like France, the hills, the rivers, the sunflowers.
A disaster
Been watching Eurosport since 1989, can’t be bothered with £7 a month for next year to watch the same kid win!
As a total aside the intro music for the Tour de France highlights on Channel 4 is possibly the greatest piece of TV theme music of all time. If I listen to it and shut my eyes I can still see Richard Virenque in his polkadots…!
https://youtu.be/UpFO53ihLpM?si=mWJznlnB4JwpSftk
I still love this. Genuinely gave me goosebumps.
And until now I had no idea it was written by Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks.
Full version of the song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TIueuJtN1g
Absolutely love this. There was a Cycling Podcast (maybe a friends special) when Mitch Docker had signed up where they tried to track down the publisher to get permission to use Shelley’s track etc. Worth a listen if you can hunt it down!
If I remember correctly Shelley had retained the rights and so it was his bemused widow who granted permission. Docker was originally using the music in collaboration with the Slowride Podcast when getting his own pod going. As an occasional correspondent of theirs, an original Buzzcocks fan and an addict of the Channel 4 coverage since the year of Roche, I sent them a gushing email highlighting the provenance of the music. It may be coincidence, but the Slowride guys didn’t reply, which was unusual for them and Docker stopped working with SlowRide at that point and switched to collaborating with The Cycling Podcast soon after, including a Shelley acknowledgement in his own work thereafter.
That’s amazing. Need to find my Buzzcocks vinyl. Think I still have it.
Absolutely love this. There was a Cycling Podcast (maybe a friends special) when Mitch Docker had signed up where they tried to track down the publisher to get permission to use Shelley’s track etc. Worth a listen if you can hunt it down!
Danish Free-To-Air broadcaster TV2 extended their rights to TdF (and a range of other rides) to 2030. They started live transmissions back in 1990, and have arguably been the (or one of the) main driver behind the flow of Danish kids into cycling for more than a quarter century. However it was (and is) not without discussions – the cost and screen time are edging out other sports (even though it was possible to watch 15 different football matches live on Danish channels just Sunday), and hadn’t it been for Vingegaard, the future might have been much more in doubt. A string of years with Pogačar dominance may still derail the FTA approach and priorities.
As most other Danes the TV2 TdF transmissions were – and are – my main view into pro-cycling and even though Eurosport is producing a competing coverage also in Danish, its difficult to see the broader interest survive intact without FTA.
Awful news. Apart from being able to watch the Tour for free (I didn’t mind the ads tbh and the slowed down Watchfinder General ad still makes me laugh) the biggest loss will be the commentary team. Genuinely the best around and a pleasure to spend time with. Even if I was willing to pay (I’m not) there’s no way I’d spend three weeks listening to that wittering gibbon CK.
As with so many on here, C4 and ITV coverage here in the UK was my ‘gateway drug’ to pro-cycling.
David Millar makes a good point in the latest NSF podcast – like many kids, he grew up in a house where no-one had an interest in cycling, or even sport. In the age of subscription sports channels, uninterested parents are unlikely to have a Discovery+/Eurosport subscription so the chance of happening upon, and being captivated by, pro-cycling is close to nil.
On another point, does this strengthen the teams’ call for a cut of the ASO TdF revenue? If sponsors pull out due to diminishing viewers, the teams may look even more enviously upon the ASO revenue stream remaining intact (and even increasing).
Ugh, I get it, amazing that David Millar and others were exposed to this sport.
In Canada every athlete traditionally focused on hockey… even if, like myself, you clearly were built for endurance sports. I played hockey far too long, well past when it was clear my slow twitch muscles were only going to get me crushed by massive aggressive guys with huge anger issues. haha… it did hurt.
But, Lance got me and thousands into this sport… he is gone, but I still love it.
“That looks like Stephen Roche! … it’s Stephen Roche!!”
No one could forget Phil Liggett in 1987 screaming as Roche crossed the finish line at La Plagne, thanks to the Channel 4 evening highlights show.
Excellent piece Mr. Inrng!
Thank you to the shout out to Canada – that’s my main problem. We have ZERO TV coverage, all of our cable sports are controlled strictly by our two major telecom carriers. It’s very frustrating. In the summer we have a LOT of syndicated radio/TV shared sports talk shows, and highlights and poker (how is this a sport?)… and ZERO cycling coverage, even for the Quebec and Montreal races.
One more point… it’s very interesting how different governments mandate different items.
In cycling, European countries (relatively socialist compared to their North American counterparts) have a decree to ensure the corporations that own TV let cycling be seen by all. This protected the fans of all economic backgrounds.
In American Football, the sport was deemed a public good, and for years the owners never paid any tax… so instead of benefiting the public and ensured it was free, the owners made BILLIONS off this government rule.
These same owners have then blackmailed municipalities into building new stadiums for them with taxpayer funds, under threat of relocating elsewhere if they don’t. Yeah, don’t get me started on the realities of “capitalism” in the US.
LOL – me neither
I live in North America, but my paternal grandparents are from Europe (Netherlands and Northern Scotland) – my home continent drives me nuts. I really hope cycling can find more stability, but I am confident in that we have seen it go up and down over the years, so let’s stay calm and hope it has anothere wave of success in non-traditional cycling nations.
All – I apologise for going down this rabbit hole into football…
Having spent twenty-five years in France enjoying following an ever-larger British contingent making progress at the top level, it saddens me to see that progress turn into decline. Consistently strong sports require deep grass roots and a broad base. The lack of free cycling coverage will undermine that as did Brexit which made progressing through an EU Conti team (A Yates, Carthy…) far more complicated and exacerbated by the lack of UK Conti teams and decent home races. Let’s not go back to my early days in the sport where riders of great potential (Barras, Bayton, West…) wasted their talent in Saturday evening round-the-houses races.
Lovely, piece. It’s fair to say that free to air got me hooked. I remember sprinting off the school bus to catch the end of channel 4 early show. A bright and exotic offering amidst a sea of dull entertainment. No one in my family had (or really still has) any interest in the sport, not my peers. I hope there will be some free highlights (similar to Eurosport). The power was with ASO to ensure that for a transition as C4 previously did with test cricket, short term gain shouldn’t trump long term sustainability
Here in Colorado, I’ve about given up spectating.
I’m not paying to watch any sport. I participate. I don’t spend much time spectating. Pro races in Colorado are in the past. Don’t race! The exception is cycling and hockey, IF IT’S FREE.
I used to have access to free / pirated cycling and hockey and that gets more difficult as opportunities get blocked more and more.
Their loss, My gain; I have more time to do what I love rather than spend mornings watching other people instead of riding Myself!
Without spectators, WHO PAYS FOR THE RACE?
There has been mention of cycle racing diminishing. The realization has caused promoters to create races in places on the planet with little or no interest in cycle racing to expand interest!!!!!!!!
The entire industry (if I refer to it that way) is very complicated for producing a profit and has been struggling to profit. I get that, however, decisions which produce less spectators may not be the path toward more profit.
Cycle racing is becoming almost insignificant, to Me & I’m a life long cyclist. Will the next step be to charge Me to view race results?
Well well, some years ago in Spain when the right wing government decided to harm renewable energies (by pure chance the Minister of Industry had direct personal interests in the oil industry), they created a public tax – which would then be transferred directly to private energy companies – charging homes with solar panels, *even if fully disconnected from the general network*, because the fact that you were not consuming …hindered the power industry.
Hence, just prepare to be charged for *not* watching, i.e., being watching, say, the natural landscape when riding out, hence wasting your gaze in a totally improductive way.
(In a way, it’s already happening. Just try not to have a smartphone and look what happens with a lot of little fares & fees)
Interesting and very worrying. It remind’s me of the Black Mirror episode “Nosedive”, essentially a satire of China’s social credit system.
Of course, to watch the episode you’ll need to pay for a Netflix subscription. But at least CK isn’t commentating
I do share most of the sentiments here, and I am worried about the impact that a loss of free-to-air live coverage will have on the base of the sport in the UK (and any other country where it doesn’t exist or is at risk). However, and looking at my kids and their friends, don’t we also have to consider the media consumption habits of the younger generation? Bike racing certainly was a (modest) interest of my family when I was a kid, and I spent a fair bit of time watching live coverage that sparked a lifelong enthusiasm, but the younger generation doesn’t seem to do that anymore, even when they care about the sport and have the opportunity. We reminisce about spending hours in front of the TV during summer afternoons, but do teenagers still do that? My children are interested in a wide range of sports, but they wouldn’t even watch the biggest events at the Olympics on TV. They streamed some highlights instead, and they only did so when they stumbled upon them. When I asked them about their friends, they said it was the same with them. Funnily, my kids are more than happy to join me when I go and watch a local crit race. Media consumption on the TV and especially live coverage seem to be the thing they are not interested in. I seem to remember that I came across an article confirming that this is a wider trend — viewing figures of live coverage of the Olympics among young people have been abysmal. In short, doesn’t any sport governing body that has reasons to be worried about its future need to consider this as well? As much as I am frustrated about the despicable business with broadcasting rights, doesn’t its impact on the young generation’s exposure to certain sports pale in comparison to the challenges presented by their new media consumption habits?
There are lots, and more ways of watching the race. But for all the growth in people watching clips on social media, the mass market audience is still huge. In France the Netflix show has brought a newer audience, younger people are sitting down to watch it (some but enough to rejuvenate the average age), as well as sharing Tiktok highlights etc.
You’re right, but what highlights are they going to watch once the race as such …isn’t held anymore? Same for the local crits. You can have mass sports practised by people not much interested in the pro version (see commenter above), and of course sports which are massively watched without being as much practised by the general population, but the two aspects usually reinforce each other quite powerfully and they can work separately nearly only if supported by strong specific & local traditions of sort (or nationalism, sadly enough). Just check how essentially no authentic global + mass sport actually exists, despite decades of globalisation and each of them trying very hard…
I got interested in watching pro races as I got more and more in love with riding my bike as a sporting exercise, and then occasionally racing (on a very modest level). When you like it, you tend to be keen on watching how the best ones do it… which nornally implies watching the whole thing or so. And reading some extra, on top of that.
Obviously, you don’t really need to have raced or even pedalled at all, you can get *into* the sport just watching, my point being anyway that when you start to understand the inner dynamics of the sport, well really “to understand the sport, full stop”, no highlight package is actually worth much, save being able to label yourself as a mere witness of a maybe iconic but in itself meaningless instant (“Ehi, did you see Pogačar’s attack?” – “Yes, I saw that”).
To me, that’s not watching the sport, and not because I’m an elitist but, well, because you are *not* *watching* *the sport* ^__^
You’re consuming visual content & general stardom, but it’s a different, specific and complex media arena. And, yes, I even believe that cycling can be a decent competitor there, yet not being a generalist sport will harm the latter part of the couplet, which is where it’s already weaker.
But that’s the modern consumption trend. It’s all instant to short viewing. And that’s it. So watching live for hours goes totally against most young people’s habits these days – they are more than happy to ‘watch it’ on Tik Tok, X or Insta.
Apparently, those same instant-people endure Youtube videos way longer than 15 minutes with a very slow dripping style which I can’t get enough patience to endure over the first 2-3 minutes ^___^ (and podcasts, too!)
However, my point is that they aren’t “watching the sport” as, for example, you couldn’t interpret what has happened and why, or make reasonable predictions over future events, and so on… just with that little bit of information.
Cycling makes for great wallpapers of Alaphilippe descending Galibier or MvdP and WVA battling for Flanders under stormy skies, but AI will soon make ’em better (or it is already, I suspect, just never tried). Same for the Fruitful Pogacar Attack Reel.
But they’re great by-product of the sport, not the content of the sport. A subtle difference, perhaps not even existing from a purely theoretical point of view, yet I think it’s a meaningful one. DSs on cars are watching the TV feed, not the Tik Tok reel 😛
On a different note, now that I think about it the two things go hand-in-hand. The boring Youtube/podcast chattering provides a great deal of information, albeit quite much already chewed over by third parties or, ahem, “experts” (the newspaper articles of old), whereas the highlights reel provides sort of an iconic support for the imagination, as the photoes of ol’. I’m not the first to notice that 21st century is actually 19th century all over again 😛
If I understand your second paragraph correctly, then you are saying that my kids are “wrong”, since they fail to understand crucial aspects of the sport if they only watch a few clips. I would certainly agree with that point, no doubt. Their media consumption seems completely superficial to me, and the same appears to be true for many others in their generation. However, this doesn’t change the fact that this is how they behave. My son used to race himself, and full of eagerness and on a fairly promising level, but he would never watch extended parts of a race on TV after he turned teenager. That’s incomprehensible to me, and I consider it a mistake.
The point I tried to make is a slightly different one though: The people commenting here (and those working in the cycling media) often developed an enthusiasm for the sport because of free-to-air live coverage. We therefore believe that we will lose the next generation of cycling fans and racers if we don’t have that coverage anymore. A lot of others made that point here. While I wouldn’t want to argue that there is no substance to that fear, I am wondering if it is maybe less crucial than we think. To me, it seems hat we are not going to reach the next generation via such coverage anyway, and we need to find different ways.
That doesn’t change the fact that those people who still watch live coverage remain important for now, as parents inspiring their kids, as target audience for the sponsors, as drivers who don’t hate cyclists, and so on. (And even if we ignored all that, there are still loads of people who enjoy such coverage, and our society is a worse place if it disappears behind a paywall.)
I wouldn’t call that wrong, just not taking full advantage of what the sport has to offer. Which isn’t wrong, for sure. As GCW / Strictly Amateur observed above, there are lots of interesting things to do apart from watching cycling… to start with, riding a bike! And also just a handful of not-cycling-related things, I’d add 😉
That said, IMHO kids and persons in general have very different moments in their lifes – yet it’s important for opportunities to be there when the right moment to potentially enjoy them comes for anyone. Hundreds of thousands of people have been watching, millions in some countries. This social mass surely as an impact, *albeit indirect*, on the potential to get in touch with the sport for future generations.
Of course you can get in touch also through the “Nuclear Pogi” reel. I’m not being ironic. And you can race or ride yourself, no doubt. But… will the next step be taken, in order to close a positive circuit between the two aspects I underlined above (practising and watching)?
If you’re in a favourable social context, somebody if not you yourself will pay the 60-80 or so pounds a year, otherwise…
In Italy cycling is becoming a huuuge niche sport. Millions watch, millions ride, but to start with the two groups overlap less and less (they still do of course); and it’s more and more of a bubble separated from the broader society rather than being integrated into a positive chains of habits, attitudes, economic feedback etc.
PS I hadn’t watched any race live when my passion for cycling started. Actually, I hadn’t any TV at home!
PS 2 Athletes with a sense of meaningfulness related to the history of the sport or to the understanding of its deeper dynamics are not as common as one would expect, but when they show up, they’re a real gift to the sport.
@Mr Ring. I seem to remember that Channel 4 coverage started in 1984 when I was still young enough to be living at home. But my memory could be playing tricks!
One thing I can still vividly recall from those days is Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen’s (RIP) commentary and that iconic theme tune.
Do kids today even watch TV? I think the next UK TdF champ will discover it on TikTok or Reels.
It depends on age. Most children whom their parents allow to do so actually watch ol’ TV products on mobile supports. Content market is exploiting a huge mass of home production essentially for free, but a good deal is also parasitising already existing media structures. What’s next when the parasite kills the host?
We have all mourned the end of Free to Air coverage of the Tour.
Today the actual route has been announced. Looks interesting from the off, and I for one look forward to INRNGs take in due course.
British cycling went down when team sky haters trolled 24 hours a day that its all a betray
You cant repair this as easy as cycling fans think
Other sport ovetakes. They are not stupid
It is the same in us and germany
Once the game is over it is over
But be happy-this is only sports. Wait for world politics changes through internet trolling
The game has just started
That’s exactly why it’s better to avoid inflating too fast some fake bubbles in the first place.
Yes, Sky’s behaviour had nothing to do with any of their problems.
It was ‘the haters’.
@Gabriele
& i think its better to talk quality instead of quantity
Why choosing? 😉
A real pitty for cycling moderate and future enthusiasts, even though it should probably be livestreamed on youtube to ensure serendipity for younger people.
Maybe France and ‘Grand départ’ regions should force/pay ASO to make sure the TDF is free to watch Europe-wide, it’s quite a marketing campaign, for what? A couple of millions by country ? How much 30 seconds adds do you get for that money?
A couple of M for each country as you say would be absolutely huge and enough to generate a critical mass or snowball effect (remember it’s an average for three weeks in a row; people stumbling on it at some point or getting indirect news are 3 to 5 times as much).
But it would be impossible anyway.
What is more, big watchers like Spain or Italy still have it for free, and indeed already bring the millions in.
It wouldn’t be about reaping as much as about sowing.
UK is a serious loss and a shock because it’s a big economy with a good deal of previous work to lure them in.
Remember what we the fans had to suffer during “those years” for the sake of this task… now at least I want one more country in! 😛
Now they still have a solid movement, but for how long?
(Careful with what you wish, anyway, because after all the rise of USA cycling industry much subsequent to Lance ultimate brought the whole market in an awful situation both for consumers and most other producers, without the advantages of actually including a new cycling country…)
Local objectives should be Germany (quite complicated), not losing the Netherlands and Switzerland, but probably more than anything reinforcing the Eastern block because it’s where the growth perspective are from an economic POV and the social-cultural context might be adequate if it comes together with a whole set of changes (Poland trying to work on traffic is a decent example). Ah, and not leaving Italy sink down for good, of course…
I watch and read lots of online media with no ads courtesy of a browser and adblockers.
The VPN I use lets me watch just about all native TV where the races are and it’s actually a much richer experience to have local language commentary.
Agree that losing free-to-air procycling is not good, but if there’s no longer any need for those who bankroll the sport to have exposure in this territory the media owner does best by selling the content on through broadcast channels.
As I understand it from someone very well connected to the existing set up the TdF is loss making for ITV at the current levels of rights fees so when ASO wanted an increase the decision was an easy one to make.
Put simply those afternoon ads on ITV4 for charity appeals and funeral plans will generate about the same amount of income but the cost of four hours of repeats of 1990’s dramas and gameshows will be much lower, giving rise to a small profit (or at least not a loss).
Personally I used to watch the evening highlights as it was a great mix of action, news and background stories compressed into 46 minutes of programme which I find time-efficient. I hope WBD use one of their free to view terrestrial platforms in the UK to do something similar from 2026 onwards.
It will also be interesting to see what happens for the first few days of the 2027 Tour regarding TV coverage in the UK.