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I'm out. Ludicrous increase. Was bad enough when discovery changed the non-sports content to contain advertising. (However interesting to note that when netflix increased its prices it resulted in a net gain for the business with less than expected cancellations.) I'll investigate a VPN and overseas subscription. I need my cycling and Le mans fix.
Disco+ isn’t even very good at covering sports. The Olympic coverage was dreadful.
All of which matters not one jot to the people making money out of it.
I expect the cycling will form such a small percentage of their viewers that they are more interested in the football / boxing which more people will be willing to be over charged to watch live games.
neverownenoughbikesFree Member
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.
F1 is a separate channel but you have to buy the Sky Sports package to get it which includes football, tennis etc.
What's annoying is the rest of the world can get superior coverage for about two buttons and a bit of string per month with the F1TV app (nothing to do with sky), but in the UK Sky have the monopoly so you need Sky Sports at approx £20 + £10 for Sky itself.
As this only applies to UK & Ireland - BREXIT?
I will really miss the Dakar Rally as well.
I bet the BT option door will close sometime soon then! Thats a good tip though and will have look.
Not every bike event is a classic to watch but seeing the youngsters rising from U23 and learning their trade , sort of getting to "know" the characters of the stars is all part of watching a sport as well and needs viewing regularly.
Eurosport introduced me to CX viewing as well , I do enjoy watching it.
I suppose with for example the fancy studio for Eurosport Tour Coverage ,pre race team briefing?! the on the motorbike peloton coverage,on bike tv shots, 3 presenters, the Breakaway program etc costs are big. Do we need it quite so fancy?
I will really miss the Dakar Rally as well.
SBS have got that free-to-view too 🙂
WBD is coming across like a right load of ****
Americans?
As for getting the sport package through your Broadband provider... You'll be coughing up too
Looks like no road cycling for me this year. I was looking forward to the spring classics. No CX next season.
I know it is their job, but the comments of the presenters and commentators in the press release are sick making. I can't believe that what they have said is anywhere near to what they actually think.
Like everyone else on the thread - I am done.
I know it is their job, but the comments of the presenters and commentators in the press release are sick making.
What press release is that?
Like everyone else on the thread
Everyone ?
I was considering a few months of subs for D+ over the summer so I could watch the DH as I think it might be an epic seasn but with the privateer purge and now this they can FRO.
Highlights on YT it is. (and maybe that dodgy stream thing that I've heard about but not yet tried)
The basic package in the graphic shared above suggest that it included Eurosport
No, Eurosport is greyed out in the first 2 packages. Only the channels in white under each category will be available. You need the full subscription to get the sports
Crikey. I've been watching a lot of CX the last couple of months and with that I'm felt I've been getting enough value out of my Discovery subscription.
Thirty quid is a crazy jump though. I'll cancel after the CX Worlds this weekend.
Does feel like a bit of a nail in the coffin for cycling viewership in the UK.
Catching up on this thread and now the PinkBike thread, excellent opportunity for the IXS DH cup if it can get it right! I've seen a few IG posts from them recently.
Over the years I've got used to watching all three grand tours over the Summer but there's no way I'm paying that.
Crazy that I will go from watching the spring classics plus three grand tours a year to absolutely zero but I'm sure I'll find I can live without it.
I like football but my wife hates it and I kind of lost interest in the Premier League anyway lately so still doesn't make it even close to being worthwhile. Really have no interest in any other sport.
Thanks to my rather niche sports interests there's often not a UK broadcaster streaming what i want to watch. So i've been spending my money on a decent VPN and watching all sorts on the local, often free streams.
NZ streams all their international cricket for free for example. Quite looking forward to the french TDF coverage
taking the most premium sports properties as possible and creating the adjacency, creating a sports ecosystem where you get value.”
Sorry what pardon?
I enjoy watching the CX and the Classics but with The Tour I'm happy enough with highlights.
The £6.99 a month I was paying for what I watched seemed reasonable, I'd happily even pay more if they bumped it to £10 or even £15 a month but £30+ a month is way too much of me to happily pay.
I'll be on the lookout now for European stations that are showing the CX and Classics and I'll figure out how to watch it through a VPN.
i'm currently on a deal from my old GCN sub, I'm on Virgin so it looks like a £18 extra on my package. i'm reluctant though if i'm honest
I only stayed watching them because Discovery+ was included for free on my Sky subscription. If it’s not on that anymore then I’m out. I’ll just catch the highlights on YouTube.
someone on PB recommended Tiz Cycling as an alternative place to view it, but I haven’t looked to see what that is yet.
A few people have mentioned YouTube highlights - well I tried a couple of the Tour de France catch-ups last year when I'd missed it on the telly. Absolutely terrible, lasted 7mins and pretty much just showed the last few km's, none of the breakaways, attacking moves or anything of the tactical race before the finish.
Will be a real shame when nothing is available on council telly.
WEC, TDF and WSB were what I was paying Disco for, but I'm not paying that. Add me to the list of unsubscribers.
What was the thinking behind this? Is it "cycling's the new golf and those guys have piles of cash" or just some kind of aggregation "because sports"?
What's the demographic crossover between football and cycling? What's even the crossover between the cycling disciplines? I only ever watch the DH and the odd bit of xc - nothing else has the slightest bit of interest, or at least nothing a good highlight reel won't cover.
And where have they plucked the £31/month figure from? What are they actually offering for that in comparison to Amazon/Netflix/Disney?
\I can only think that the subs have tanked already and they're trying to milk the life out of those who won't notice for a while. A sinking ship.
What was the thinking behind this? Is it “cycling’s the new golf and those guys have piles of cash” or just some kind of aggregation “because sports”?
It’s the latter. There were various things included in the lower tier, all they’ve really done is remove that tier.
And where have they plucked the £31/month figure from?
£31 (or very close to it) was the cost of the more expensive option already
No way am I paying that.
It will be a carefully set up marketing ploy... you currently think its with £7/m. Now after a few months you think it should be costing £31/m. Why £15.99 sounds like a bargain.... or perhaps some sort of pay-per-view sub for the few programs you want but still paying more than now.
Ultimately if they've got it wrong it will be the UCI that suffers as future TV revenue will fall. But perhaps that should be the lesson for all sports gov bodies - is your mission to milk the TV rights for the max £ or to get your sport seen by the maximum numbers of eyeballs!
I think I’ll miss winter biathlon more than the cycling.
+1.
I’m in a similar boat to weeksy, if I could spare £30 a month I could probably get some use out of tnt sports. I used to watch MotoGP (including the 125s and 250s back in the day) but had to drop it when it went to BT sport, still watch the itv highlight package, which is poor. I also watch all of the CX, pretty much all of the road race calendar and all of the MTB races they show. I watch World and British Superbikes and I’d probably watch the rallying if I had TNT.
But £31 is premier league football money for Sunday league coverage and I won’t pay it.
Also the discovery plus app is shit, for free it’s acceptable but I’d be spewing if I’d paid £30 a month for it.
I guess I’ll just watch highlights where I find them, and ride my bike more.
Also the discovery plus app is shit, for free it’s acceptable but I’d be spewing if I’d paid £30 a month for it
Also this.. The app is appalling. Even the basics of pause/play/fast forward let alone navigating around it
Ok - the last two years I’ve sat here and defended them, saying that it is a product with value and should cost money, and people just had red bull tinted spectacles for the past and the last two seasons were actually better coverage than previously (Rob’s commentary notwithstanding).
honestly if you told me two years ago it would be 30/month I might have paid.
but to quadruple the price for no additional benefit for those of us who just want to watch bike racing, because it’s now on the ‘premium’ package. That’s a big fat no from me.
Cost of running/broadcasting bike racing must be a rounding error compared to football - so basically we are being forced to subsidise the footballists who already manage to hurt every other sport with its financial dominance.
I guess there are more football fans who are so lazy they will stay on the couch rather than turn the tv off; than mtb fans in total.
I've been following the DH world cup since it was called 'the Grundigs' and I'll never give a penny to Warner Brothers or Discovery. This whole arrangement has been a total shambles from the start.
The more alternative races and series pop up the better. I'll pay to support people who support DH. WB don't even know what they've bought and they'll drop it as soon as the accountants say so.
Just cancelled.
The sad thing is that this will also reduce the future pipeline of UK cyclist talent across all disciplines.
Ok – the last two years I’ve sat here and defended them, saying that it is a product with value and should cost money,
Absolutely. I'd pay £12 for month for a dedicated cycling feed to keep my Zwift sessions happy. I have watched every minute of the Track League and watch all the CX as a convenient 1hr session, but not at 2.5x the price. I'll use swap to Netflix instead!
And where have they plucked the £31/month figure from? What are they actually offering for that in comparison to Amazon/Netflix/Disney?
Champions League football and some Premier League games, I think, assuming it's subsumed into TNT Sports. Which is 'fine' if you're into footy, but if your principle motivation is to watch cycling, it's absurdly expensive.
Once ITV no longer has Tour de France coverage, I might consider it for a month, but as a regular subscription, absolutely no way.
I guess people who follow other niche sports like skiing will be similarly unimpressed. I do wonder if enough people will watch cycling on TNT to make coverage worthwhile. Or even what that means.
I too am happy to pay around 10/month but not 30. It's all become a mess because even in Belgium not all the racing is easily available any more without a crazy price sub. Best option at the moment is nos.nl via a VPN but I'm not sure how much longer that will last. I wish they suppliers would find a way to allow us to subscribe just for the sports we wanted rather than bundling in horse dancing and marbles
Basic Sky here, only really watch Eurosport for World & British Superbikes, MTB, road cycling so I'm going to watching very little this year unless I try find a deal.
I have BT Openworld & wife is with EE so might find something there?
@slowoldman the presenters are all quoted in this article https://www.cyclist.co.uk/news/eurosport-tnt-sports-premium which is a straight reprint of a press release as far as I can see.
Orla, Adam and Rob all tow the corporate line about how exciting this is, and what a great opportunity the subscription service offers.
I think most of you are overthinking it tbh. WBD bought BT Sport for a ton of money to get access to their Premier + Champions League coverage as they are the golden gooses. Having also bought various other platforms they are now cutting costs and moving everything in to one place to try and streamline + increase profit. With the likely viewing figures for cycling of any discipline in this country I doubt we were given much, if any consideration when the decisions were made.
I got my email at 1am, immediate thought was I'm out. Can't see that changing.
I don't buy it for me I get it for my old man who's 84 in 2 weeks and lives for his cycling, whatever size and width the tyres are. How do I tell him its getting knocked on the head?
As others have said £10pm? maybe you would consider it value (just) but I'm not fussed about the other sports and neither is he. I agree with the comments about WBD trialling the push to £31 and seeing how many auto subscribe from last year as well as offering the half price deals when you go to cancel, then the next thing is to put 70% discounts out there just before the Classics start or the Giro. Its a cynical ploy.
I don’t buy it for me I get it for my old man who’s 84 in 2 weeks and lives for his cycling, whatever size and width the tyres are. How do I tell him its getting knocked on the head?
You have described pretty much the only scenario where I would consider paying the new, high, price.
I agree with the comments about WBD trialling the push to £31 and seeing how many auto subscribe from last year as well as offering the half price deals when you go to cancel, then the next thing is to put 70% discounts out there just before the Classics start or the Giro
Wouldn't be surprised at all.
However we'll never know if they planned it all along or if it's a panic measure because nobody is signing up.
Its a cynical ploy.
Is this not all subscription streaming services? Hook em in cheap, then boil the frog while offering 'discounts' to keep the savvy signed up?
Is this not all subscription streaming services? Hook em in cheap, then boil the frog while offering ‘discounts’ to keep the savvy signed up?
See also:
Broadband suppliers
Insurance companies
From my BT page i can add it for £16 a month (for first month), then £18 a month for first year, £20 a month for 2026
It's more than i'd like... but not completely bonkers.
I think the minority/ niche sports that filled the Eurosport schedules will be watching with interest. If this eventually goes Europe wide, and not just UK/Ire, then a lot of those sports will suffer.
Just a note on the Olympics as its been mentioned, it is a required Free to Air event but in the last round of bidding for the rights packages the BBC got massively outbid by WBD and ended up with much, much less than before. Prior to Paris 2024 BBC had live streams of every single event which wasn't the case this time round. WBD are really monopolising the viewing market and I suspect the 6N will go this way "to grow the game".
I'm genuinely gutted about this, watch CX pretty much every weekend and catch up in the evenings over winter, rarely miss the XCO and I've been watching Le Mans on Eurosport since the mid-90's. To watch that plus the URC rugby (my main sports) it would now be £47 per month which just isn't going to happen.
It'll be bootleg streams for me.
Eurosport, Discovery and TNT sports is £20 a month (after the £18 a year )
With Sky Sports on top it's £40
@weeksy I'd not trust those prices at all - I dont think the various resellers have worked out what they are going to do yet. Looking at Sky, EE TV, BT TV etc, none of them have actually updated their offers to reflect the changes made by Warner Bros/Discovery/TNT yet, due to comine into effect in February.
('I've jsut spent ages redoing all the sums that I did originally to end up in the situation below!)
This is especially infuriating for me as I have just this month signed up to Sky. Previously, We had Broadband, Now TV (to watch Leeds and the F1), Discovery+ for the MTB, Le Mans and other sports, and Netflix - all paid and managed seperately.
As my Broadband contrast was up I have combined them all into one Broadband package with Sky stream, Sky Sportswhich includes Netflix and Discovery+ Standard and it worked out cheaper.
Discover+ Standard will no longer exist, and the offer will be Discovery+ Basic which is effectively useles (and cheaper than I was paying standalone). So now I'm losing out on both counts - paying more, receiving less.
I'll be cancelling, as I'm luckily in my cool down period, it was literally only delivered this week. Infuriating price gouging, and nothing less.
From that cyclist.co.uk story linked above:
TNT Sports plans to provide race highlights packages and other related content free through social media such as YouTube, TikTok and Instagram.
Hatch continues, ‘The algorithms will push people to TNT Sport cycling. We’ll captivate people with interviews, with the chemistry between these two [Chennaoui and Blythe], I’ll do the Grupetto [Hatch's YouTube show] every week, we’ll be telling people what’s on… that’s the way we’ll get new people to the sport.’
Chennaoui adds, ‘Our online interaction with the audience is something that we take really seriously, even if it looks like we’re being frivolous. We want to showcase a bit of personality so that people on social media say, “They’re having fun. What’s that about? They’re talking about cycling; I don’t get why that seems to be such fun.” And we bring them in that way. I see it with my kids – that’s how they stumble on something new.’
Ultimately, the aim of the free-to-air content will be to push people towards subscribing to the TNT Sports premium package. However Chennaoui points out that, while the cost may be high, the survival of the sport requires the investment that the likes of WBD can provide.
‘We want investment in the sport. We might want it free-to-air but without investment where does the sport go? Besides, if you’re a cycling fan, I think you want to see it alongside football and rugby and the big sports in this country. That’s where cycling belongs.’
I like the idea that young people on YT, TikTok and Insta will be 'captivated by the chemistry' between Orla and Adam Blythe. It sounds like desperately wishful thinking. But hey, I'm not the sort of youth audience they're apparently after 🙂
Well that's my plan scuppered:
You can access TNT Sports on as many supported devices as you like, but you can only watch two streams at the same time.
Just cancelled - no idea how I'm going to watch sportscar racing now! Bar-stewards!
I notice Chris Ball hasn't poked his head up yet with some more management bull shi7 waffle.......
Can't see this being any good for the already dwindling Enduro series which had a pretty crap highlights package as it was.
Does anybody know the rules for devices on a Discovery/TNT account.
Is it similar to Netflix, where they will track and disable accounts if not on the same wifi?
With my Eurosport account I have had multiple people using it at once before, and never had an issue.
Purely thinking that 1 account for 3 or 4 people would negate the price change... If you can actually watch all at the same time..
Hmm, I'm on Virgin media and have always had to pay for extra channels to include Eurosport in the package. Except for rugby and a wee bit of skiing, cycling is the only sport I'm interested in watching on the telly. I love the coverage of the spring classics and tours, absolutely love it and would be lost without them.
It looks like my VM bill would be jumping by £18 a month to keep Eurosport / TNT, but I wonder how much of that will be written off when I drop to their basic telly package as I'll no longer be paying for a 'premium' TV package just to include Eurosport?
I've got multiple devices using my Discovery+ app. Granted, they are all actually mine, but it certainly doesnt have the same inbuilt controls as something like Now TV (which is very tightly locked down).
Oh and you can get Discovery+ through a wb browser too, which is brilliant.
Crazy increase that I wouldn't pay just for the cycling, that I love watching. I actually pay for TNT through my Sky package to watch the rugby union but I can't work out if this means I'll still get Discovery+ or not. They're not making it easy!
So since Eurosport will still be available in Europe would it be possible to use a VPN to connect and subscribe as though you are in Europe?
@fathomer as per above, your old Discovery+ 'Standard' with your sky package(valued at £6.99) has now been downgraded to Discovery+ 'Basic' (valued at £.99 but basically worthless as it doesn't include any sport.
(effective 28 Feb.)
https://support.discoveryplus.com/gb/Answer/Detail/000004067#changes
Oh and point of note to everyone.... This is not a rolling change they are making, they are going in hard... From the abovr site, if you have paid for an annual subscription (which you could have done as recently as yesterday) then...
Yearly plan: Your subscription will end on 28 February 2025 and you’ll no longer have access to discovery+. You’ll receive a refund from us for any time remaining on your subscription
Theres none of this let it run, and make your mind up later! Your either in, or out!
I think i'm just going to risk it with a few mates and try and spread the cost over 4 people...
May or may not work, but it can be cancelled very easily if they kick up a fuss
Just had a look and I can get TNT sports as a "free" bolt-on from EE, so I'll be using that come the summer, as long as the goalposts haven't moved again.
I’d not trust those prices at all
Well I've paid it, activated it and tested it.
I did it through BT and then discovery+ app and tested it fine.
How long for, is a whole different question
We used to get netflix for free, Spotify for free too, the world changes and moves on. You can either pay or not.
This way I can also watch Liverpool tomorrow and the Allula race, I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's not a complete disaster
I don't think anyone should be particularly surprised at this. If you listen to Chris Ball, Loic Bruni, and anyone associated with WB they have been pretty consistent in saying that their target audience is people who are looking for something to watch between Moto GP and the Football. Basically, they are interested in people who are too gormless to pick up the remote.
They have zero interest in people who have hobbies (like, you know, riding bikes). Their target audience likes sitting on the couch drinking beer and placing bets during the games.
For these kind of people, £30 is fine. For those of us who are actually interested in sport, we don't have the time or the money.
so does this mean the mtb downhill this year is no longer available for £6.99/month?, bugger.....not paying for other sports as I don't watch anything other than the downhill.
@somafunk correct - they'll happily releive you of £30.99 to watch it though.....
Just explained to my Daughter that we won't be watching this year.
£31 is 3/4 of of a race entry fee - we can either watch or race.....
^ , Jesus Christ, **** them.......money grabbing bastards.
He’s otherwise engaged
The really sad thing is, I very much doubt Chris Ball himself has the savvy to make any decent money out of this. I get the impression he's just along for the ride as much as the rest of us but has signed a contract that means he has to be the face of this shitshow.
It's still £20 via BT ???
Why would you sponsor a team if the coverage is to fewer people who may buy your product? Or do they tell sponsors the raw numbers and convince them the football crowd will buy a V10? If I ran a team I would be raging as much as the fans.
Or do they tell sponsors the raw numbers and convince them the football crowd will buy a V10?
Exactly that, they've now got cycling roadies, CX, crickets, rugby, football etc fans all lumped into their 'potential' viewing figures