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If the move from free Red Bull to £7 / month Discovery wasn't bad enough, I've just read https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/eurosport-is-closing-down-in-the-uk-cycling-is-about-to-get-a-lot-more-expensive-to-watch that Eurosport is going and...
Customers who use the Discovery+ app will also witness a price hike, and will have to swap from the standard £6.99 a month package to the £30.99 premium package if they want to continue to watch live cycling.
Surely very few are so keen to watch XC or DH that they'll pay this?
This makes me really angry, no world cup watching for me in 2025.
WTF!
Who is the number cruncher at WBD that signed this off? Surely the number of subscribers is gonna plummet and won't offset the 5x price hike....
Just seen that on Cyclist magazine site too.
https://www.cyclist.co.uk/news/eurosport-tnt-sports-premium
I imagine it's pretty much word for word the same as the first link.
The enshittification continues. I'm not paying £31 / month, no chance.
wow. just wow. I had a promo deal which ended a couple of days ago at 3.99 a month which was justifiable. Have watched some CX with the kids this winter.
Cancelled it when it was about to go back to 6.99, but 30.99 is just insane. Completely crackers. Lost for words really.
Absolutely no interest in any of the other content.
Hopefully there's enough lack of interest that there are some selective sports options. Or GCN makes a comeback at a reasonable monthly ££.
Same as others here, will be cancelling my subscription which is a shame as I enjoy the XC and tours etc.
Sounds like Eurosport will continue in the rest of Europe, wonder if there will be the possibility of a Discovery+ subscription and VPN to get the cycling.
Well that's that then ! Can't see anybody paying that , makes me wonder if there will be anymore WC after this season.
Surely very few are so keen to watch XC or DH that they’ll pay this?
They're gambling they can increase ARPU (average revenue per user) by convincing you that the additional £23 jump is a great deal considering how much other amazing stuff you get in the bundle. But the deeper/narrower your interest is (cycling only for me), the less compelling an offer this is. If you're a person who loves all kinds of sport and event from canoeing to bowls, it's probably a great deal.
Will it make you subscribe to the bundle, stop watching UCI stuff entirely, or sail the open seas, matey?
I wonder what the reaction in the ASO offices is - they were presumably happy to drop ITV for TdF coverage in the knowledge there was a low priced route to viewers through Eurosport UK, and now that has been shut off. The viewership for TdF in the UK is going to be able to fit into a single coffee shop.
It will be interesting to see if it remains ‘free’ on Sky subscription
So is the TdF not on ITV this year?
Well this is terrible.
Fwiw I shared my disco+ login details with a friend and I've also had multiple devices signed in simultaneously with no issues so might have a look at sharing a subscription between 3-4 mates.
I kind of rely on the on demand stuff to follow the road season so don't think going down the dodgy fire stick route will help.
So is the TdF not on ITV this year?
It is, but this is the final year for it and I think it's pretty much the only thing they'll be showing. They might have Paris-Nice too, will have to check.
But yes, final year of free-to-air for the Tour. We'll look back on those funeral plans, donkey sanctuaries and charity donation adverts with fondness and regret.
It will be interesting to see if it remains ‘free’ on Sky subscription
Seems not based on the first link "Virgin Media customers, for example, can add it to their bundle for an additional £18 a month. Sky TV customers can do the same for an extra £30 a month."
FFS what a load of garbage, £30 just to watch cycling is too much and happening end of Feb just before the classics season gets under way. ****ers!
Well I voted with with feet/wallet as soon as I got the email, like most others I agree £6.99 a month for the cycling was OK, and maybe if it had gone to £10 or £12 I would have grumbled and accepted it, but a 4.5X price hike just made me cancel, I'm not paying all that extra for football that I won't watch.
This and the new format won't help the World Cup series.
We’ll look back on those funeral plans, donkey sanctuaries and charity donation adverts with fondness and regret.
Halcyon days.
Wonder if the commentary team gets ported across?
...and into the sea it goes.....
I believe in paying for content, so I was happy to fork out last year - despite the organisational shambles and crap commentary.
This year I'll be investigating those dodgy feeds I've seen people link to.
Gutted.
It will make me think about canceling my Sky Subscription now as this was really the main reason I have a basic Sky package with Eurosport
+1 to that.
I am interested in the business model behind their decision. Surely putting the price up that much will cause a load of people to cancel? So are they better off a larger number of £7's or a smaller number of £31's. I'd have throught advertising revenue would be better on the larger audience at least?
Can you use a Eurosport subscription taken via a VPN in Europe?
Bollocks to that. Not interested in all the other sports so will sack it off. Reading it on pinkbike will be it now.
So are they better off a larger number of £7’s or a smaller number of £31’s. I’d have throught advertising revenue would be better on the larger audience at least?
There'll be a tipping point and they're gambling on not going past it. I doubt they've done this without a financial model of the impact and some scenario analysis. The only question is whether the assumptions hold within range or not.
Worth remembering STW probably isn't representative of the entire subscriber base.
There are plenty who will see the "extras" as a benefit to justify the cost it's just not the core demographic posting here.
Just renewed our VM too before Christmas, dropped TNT since I only watched the football on it once in a while.
£18 per month add on now isn't worth it for the road season where there's little happening for 6 months.
Guess that's another sport I'll be losing touch with...
I thought the 6.99 was alright given the number of hours that I watched in a month, especially when there was a Grand Tour on .
Unfortunately now the new price is hard for me to justify
Can you use a Eurosport subscription taken via a VPN in Europe?
Eurosport player subscriptions ended last year and migrated to Max (France). The two channels are going to disappear in the not too distant future as I understand it.
It's 15€99 monthly with the sports option included through our ISP.
Sounds like Eurosport will continue in the rest of Europe, wonder if there will be the possibility of a Discovery+ subscription and VPN to get the cycling.
Is ES not staying as a free couple of channels on Virgin/sky? (Presumably still with cycling coverage) TBH I think I'm fine if TDF/Vuelta/Giro are mostly watched as highlights, I have got a day job and a family. The TiVo is choc full of CX from this winter that I've only watched half of. I've watched a very small amount of XC/DH in the last year and if I'm being honest I'm not too worried about that.
WBD have fluffed things massively though, there's rules about coverage being free to air in cycling's main home markets and the rest of the world just isn't as committed to watching it live...
Is ES not staying as a free couple of channels on Virgin/sky?
No, Eurosport being merged into TNT.
I'm annoyed but I've started to wonder how much I'll miss it.
CX season - MVDP turns up. MVDP wins
Road season - Tadej turns up. Tadej wins.
That's saved me £360
I share a £7 discovery+ subscription with a mate so he can watch skiing in the winter and I get the CX. We then both watch road and mtb in the summer.
I've just got a 'free' TNT subscription with an EE broadband and mobile family deal. Will that only continue to work if we go up to the £31 a month disco+ fee? If so they can **** off and I'll be on the pirate feeds for DH and CX will lose a viewer.
I'll be cancelling.
I watched a fair bit and the discovery price seemed ok on that basis. £30 a month is nuts though. Never watched anything else on discovery. Real shame because there's going to be no good coverage anywhere now of a y disciplines. BC should lol at this (and won't) because it will hit the sport hard in the long run.
My Dad's got TNT through BT for rugby, I'm wondering if this will affect him.
With numbers like that they can afford a massive percentage cancelling. Those to lazy to cancel and stay subbed purely due to lethargy, will more than pay for it. They probably don't watch much either.
Similar with Microsoft forced service upgrades. Make people pay more for stuff they don't want/need, and most will just suck it up or do naff all and keep paying. Although their price differential was much closer. And there is a cheaper sub to get what you want, but they make it almost impossible to find.
Remember they are only in business to make money. Cancel, and you'll probably find access to a cheaper sub. After they try to convince you about all the stuff you don't want that you will miss.
I cancelled once the DH finished
I will absolutely not be subscribing again.
Other options it is then.
So as I'm going to be losing it from my Virgin package I'm going to review my total Virgin package as see about saving some money. I'm certainly not paying Virgin an extra £18/month to retain ES (as I read somewhere is the case).
The Cycling Weekly readership may now go up again.....!
Just like the old days!
Sport is being ruined for an average all round viewer.
Remember
(after the XC and DH prevously discussed.)
WRC Rallying ( the origjnal format with lots of manufaturers).
WRC a good example of popularity in the past now a shadow of its self a way cycling may go now?
Also loved watching Rallycross as well.
Good luck to Eneos getting another joint sponsor!
Anything in VM T&C's for something like this?
Pretty much only have thier TV package for Eurosport, anything else we watch is either Freeview or streaming!
I know money is king, but what with the GCN thing, the exclusivity, and now this pricing model 'simplification', WBD is coming across like a right load of ****ers
I'm on a Sky Glass package although I lost my "bundled" F1 when I moved from normal Sky to Sky Glass and they wouldn't transfer it across. No big deal, I soon forgot I watched F1.
I've yet to hear anything from Sky about if / how my sports stuff can stay included or if I'm going to have to pay loads extra. Which I'm not doing, there's no way I can justify £31/month for that and I'd have no interest in watching anything other than the cycling so paying to include football, darts etc is a complete waste.
Streaming services are becoming a right bunch of money grabbers, it'd be easy to lose track and end up paying £60/month upwards on Amazon Prime, Netflix, Apple TV, Discovery+, Paramount+ .....
Pure enshittification - oh your deal which was £3.99 now has adverts throughout but you can pay £6.99 for no ads. oh but £6.99 doesn't get you UHD, only 4k and also none of the current movies are on it, if you want those it's £14.99 a month. But they have ads so it's £21.99 a month to watch current stuff in UHD with no ads...
Who is the number cruncher at WBD that signed this off? Surely the number of subscribers is gonna plummet and won’t offset the 5x price hike….
WBD don't give a shit who the subscribers are, though. They don't care if they have 100% turnover of subscribers from one year to the next. So long as they think they can advertise, con, rely on accidental non-cancellations to keep the top line coming in, they aren't bothered.
When you cancel it offers you 7 months half price. It's so cynical
I am interested in the business model behind their decision
There is a sports industry.podcast called Unofficial Partner that has a series of podcasts on exactly this called the Bundle. Depending on who you believe, it's either geniuses playing 4D chess who are about to deliver the next tsunami of cash OR it's a bunch of shiny shirt wearing spivs repackaging the old cable TV model (having spent the last 10 years saying that the old cable TV model was dead forever).
Unofficial Podcast also did a docco about dodgy Amazon firesticks. Their impression was that many users were high spenders on subscription products already, they weren't total freeloaders. They had 3 subs already and they were f*d if they were gonna fork our for a 4th one...
TV executives believe there's a large number of "Sports" fans. Which I take to mean fat people watching daytime telly at the weekend.
My sports are Aston Villa (I'll watch their away games if they're showing them at the pub) F1 (fast forward the highlights on a Monday morning to watch the bits that say "replay", i.e the crashes) and TdF (the last 10k if I'm in the house) and the highlights.
Maybe I'm not the target demographic and maybe they're overconfident in thinking the American model will transfer over to the UK
As Aggs said sport is slowly but surely being ruined for normal people.
Look at football, those in power decided allowing sky to have all the rights wasnt "competetive" so instead of paying 1 payment a month of say £50 you now have (if you really want to see everything) to pay north of £100 for a minimum of 4 different companies to supply games. Whats worse is that not all the games are even shown. How many times do you think oh my teams on, i'll watch that, only to find none of sky, TNT, Premiere etc etc are even showing it. And then they have the cheek to say its for the good of the consumer, yeah, paying for 4 sports subscriptions to watch maybe one or two teams you like is great value for money.
There should be separate channels for cycling, like F1 has on sky, if I want it, I'll happily pay for it, but I'm not giving £30 a month for a channel with 10% cycling and 90% sports I dont give a monkeys about.
The TV executives, sports team owners etc dont live in the real world. £30 a month to watch cycling is nothing to them, but they get hundreds of grand a year, never mind what they pay the sports people. £30 a month is a justifiable saving now for most people with the way the economy is tanking with ever increasing prices for the basics like food and mortgages / rent.
How does this compare to other sports? If I wanted to watch F1 or football live what would I need to pay? (noting that those sports still have decent highlight shows on mainstream TV)
It does seem to be a bonkers decision though and hard to see how it is sustainable.
Good analogy with the WRC; the Monte was the weekend gone and the popular motorsport forums had very few comments on it......if it's behind a paywall, people can't/won't pay. Conversely, the Rolex 24 at Daytona was streamed on You Tube; record figures, and pages of comments on the same motorsport forums.
In less than a year I've gone from £40 per year, to £6.99 a month, and now £30.99 if I want the Premium subscription (£3.99 for basic with no sport). I could accept going to £10 per month, as I also watch WEC, Superbikes, and a bit of snooker, ski-ing.....but £30.99??? Really, for loads of stuff I don't want to watch. Eff right off.....
I was a little sceptical with the World Cup moving to Discovery/Eurosport, but gave it a chance as it was on the same channels as the other cycling disciplines........
This is going to do serious damage to the sport of MTB; going from a free stream to £30.99 per month in 2 years......
Telegraph running an article pointing out that the BBC showing the 6 Nations could also be at risk as TNT gradually take over that tournament too.
At £20/month I could probably make good use of it (MTB, Road, MX, WEC, MotoGP and maybe 1 or 2 other things). The trouble is that I dont actually want to pay that money, and would only be watching these things because I was paying (rather than the other way around)
OTOH... it's (for me) better VFM than paying £15/month for my TV licence
That’s me done with watching the MTB this year then, it was the only sport that I managed to make the time to watch last year at all.
Surely this is going to wreck the potential income stream of a sport which is already under significant financial stress.
a bunch of shiny shirt wearing spivs repackaging the old cable TV model
Having read the quotes in the OP link and worked in media myself, I'm going with this.
I'm sure we've all worked places where nobody is prepared to stand up and say "hold on a second, this is never going to work".
They probably have a fanciful 10 year plan where they see themselves taking over from Sky in the UK, or something like that.
Boggles the mind, DH was the only live sport I'd watch live or watch the full replay and used to look forward to the TDF daily highlights now I just will do something else as £31 is too much. I get the business thought but surely they must lose money doing this!
To think you could once watch FA Cup & Champions League football, Rugby, F1 ,Darts, Rally Driving, etc and now all behind a paywall. Sure I saw the 6 nations was moving to TNT yesterday, how long till the Grand National and Wimbledon go the same way!
Cant be good for encouraging youngsters to take up sports when they can't watch them, then with the growing pull of extreme less traditional sports like BMX, Skating, Scootering and water or snow sports, etc its got to be killing some of these sports off!
We'll all be able to watch sports for free once every 4 years at the Olympics.
There's something in the rules of the Olympics that it must be on free-to-air TV.
I'm similar to you @wipperman95. I got the original Eurosport Player annual package for £19.99 to watch BSB and WSB, knowing full well it was a bargain.
Felt slightly aggrieved at having to pay £6.99/month (probably still reasonable value though, just that I was getting it uber cheap originally), but £30.99/month now feels like too much, especially on top of all the other services.
When you cancel it offers you 7 months half price. It’s so cynical
I feel so dirty but I took it. Need a shower now. Not going past the 7 months though.
How does this compare to other sports?
Isn't the difference here the amount of TV money that goes to the teams? Cycling is not getting anywhere near what football gets surely.
Well this is all a bit of a dilemma for me. I watch ALL cycling from CX every single race on Discovery+ to DH and tours, classics etc. I used to watch MotoGP but binned that and don't miss it, i used to watch BSB/WSB and don't these days even though i can with Sky Q option.
But £31 a month, hell that's a bit of change there for cycling..
We’ll all be able to watch sports for free once every 4 years at the Olympics.
There’s something in the rules of the Olympics that it must be on free-to-air TV.
But much of it was only on Discovery in the UK last year.
The Beeb only had selected events (but quite a lot), all presented by Claire Balding obvs.
How do we get DH added to the UK Gov "crown jewels" list?
We’ll look back on those funeral plans, donkey sanctuaries and charity donation adverts with fondness and regret.
If only we'd all sorted out our cremations, sponsored Eeyore and donated more to UNICEF...
I'll be honest, I only watched the Tour on ITV as I couldn't justify the cost of the other stuff for how often I'd watch it, but this is a real blow for all cycling fans, and given the turbulence in the industry recently, if the TV bods have got their sums wrong, could be fatal for a lot of pro cycling teams and events in all formats
Just checked and I'm still getting access to sports via Discovery+ that comes as part of my BT Broadband account. Details here https://www.bt.com/tv/packages
If you are already a BT Broadband customer it could be worth checking if you have it. You need to activate it by logging in to your BT account.
FWIW various riding FB groups I joined for the occasional bit of trail Intel are blowing up with this.
But I suspect 'our' backlash, whilst seeming huge to those in it, will not register with WBD.
I sincerely hope they've got their sums wrong and they lose out because of it.
I bet Chris Ball is 'unavailable for comment' too.
How long before the TDF starts in Riyadh?
Used to enjoy watching boxing until it went pay per view many moons ago. Now it's a joke sport in Saudi and I've lost interest so much I don't even bother watching free bouts on channel 5.
Same with football really, hardly ever bother tuning in to match of the day. Though that may have more to do with the clown show that is at Old Trafford
6 Nations looks uncertain. TDF might have some highlights on quest, but nothing else free to air.
Tis bollocks.
And it's likely the weekly free to air cycling show won't have much MTB content........
Cancel and you immediately get a 50% off offer.
Make it 75% and I'd consider it.
Disco+ isn’t even very good at covering sports. The Olympic coverage was dreadful. No editorial or production, nightmare to find the women’s final etc and shit highlights. BBC were brilliant at packaging up the days events. Channel 4 are great at this as well. D+’s idea of highlights is the last 20mins of the stage. The UCI/ASO etc should be v annoyed although I imagine they are getting €€
When does this start?
Just logged in to Discovery+ and can still see the cycling......
I am interested in the business model behind their decision
Often a product is worth what the seller says it is. If you give it away for free with a Sky subscription or a small monthly amount, then subscribers will consider it low value and subsequently won't use it and then won't renew.
Tell people it's premium and charge them more, then a reduced number of more committed customers will be more likely to make use of it and renew. Renewals mean the revenue is more predictable over a number of years.
More committed subscribers are better for advertisers too, so the broadcaster can also charge more for advertising and sponsorship.
Also it might be part of a much longer strategy to create something approaching a global sports broadcasting monopoly: Premier League, Champions League, Olympics, tennis majors. World Cup next?
When does this start?
Just logged in to Discovery+ and can still see the cycling……
My last payment was £6.99 on 20-1-25.
My next payment is showing as £3.99 on 20-2-25
So I've just been dropped down to basic package. I presume I can watch all sports until 20-2-25
Bother. Used to watch the DH every year but stopped after RB, had already decided to finally get a Discovery subscription this year in order to watch it properly again... Not any more 🙁
That might be me done, I watch all the Cx, XC MTB and Spring classics, but not sure I can afford the price hike - will probably cancel after Cx World championship.
Will you be able to watch the replays? Only mentions "live" cycling?
Will you be able to watch the replays?
Not from what I've read, everything going behind a paywall
Will you be able to watch the replays? Only mentions “live” cycling?
They usually put the highlights on Youtube. Better than nothing...
Goodbye Discovery+. I only subscribed when Eurosport went there. We have NowTV for Mrs TiRed's F1. Can I get ES and F1 for the same price elsewhere? - never been s Sky subscriber and am not bothered by all the channels, but do watch a lot of cycling. In fact that and the news (and rugby and F1 for marital harmony) are pretty much all I watch on TV!
I've cancelled this morning. Only had the subscription for road cycling coverage through the season. Not worth £370 a year for me.
What a shame, viewing of cycling in the UK will completely die now.
I’m not paying £31 that’s for sure. I will wait for notification as I’m still paying £7.
The basic package in the graphic shared above suggest that it included Eurosport so I think some more research to exactly what that covers is in order