[Words by Steve Thomas]

Back in the pre-satellite and pre-digital era, when mountain biking was just taking off, there was little cycling of any kind on the four mainstream UK TV channels – just the odd local news report or a fleeting Saturday afternoon sports show novelty glimpse.

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During the mid-1980s, Channel 4 took up the cycling mantle in style by providing regular live coverage of a series of city centre pro road criteriums and the Tour of Britain and then the Tour de France, which was huge for the sport in that era.

By the early-mid 1990s mountain biking was thriving in the UK – and the NPS was covered by an enthusiastic and dedicated band of mountain biking broadcasters and cameramen, with Perry Bellisario usually behind the huge VHS rolling camera, and there was also the weekly Saturday Mountain Bike Show on Channel 4, both of which were free to view, and both were a great boost to the sport. 

Fast forward a couple of decades, and thanks to the long-standing, supportive, and immense efforts of Red Bull TV, the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup (as it was then) was free to view via the app and platform until the end of 2022. The energy brand and media giant did a great job bringing the sport to the small screens of the masses. It was relatively easy to tune into without forking out your dosh. Sure, many will bemoan the app’s occasional blips and the lack of mainstream TV coverage – yet, at the end of the day Red Bull did a great job in elevating the series and making it readily watchable.

Charlie Hatton 2023, by Redbull

When 2023 came around GCN+ and Eurosport were granted broadcast rights for the series, and, with that, it effectively became pay-for-view via their apps or through a Eurosport subscription. Although, at the time, this looked very much like a kick in the shins for Red Bull’s long-standing support, it has to be said that GCN+ was a bargain buy and lifeline for cycling fans of all sorts and from all corners of the world, who could, for a brief period tune in to most of the major road races, watch cycling documentaries, and of course gorge on the MTB World Cup and other offroad related content – all be it with distinctly different flavour in terms of presentation when compared Red Bull’s approach, we’d never had it so good.

Sadly, the GCN+ platform and app, which was launched in 2021, was killed off at the end of 2023 by its (then) new owners Warner Bros. Discovery Sports (WDP Sports), who had agreed to an eight-year broadcast and presentation deal with the UCI from 2023 onwards. From then on, the livestream coverage of the Elite UCI World Cup became available only via their related platforms in the UK (including Eurosport and Discovery+), and through other platforms in different regions of the world. 

2024 world champs vali.jpg, by Liam Mercer

Depending on how you chose to subscribe to these platforms/channels, the fee was averaging £6.99 per month, which was reasonable enough, especially if you also watch dropped-bar racing. In addition to this, certain live U23 races, qualifiers and post-race highlights were shown on the series YouTube channel, while the UCI Mountain Bike World Championships were also broadcast live on the UCI YouTube channel, though that offering and its price tag have changed dramatically for 2025.

That’s (not) all folks

Although the original Warner Brothers had been in the entertainment distribution business since 1904, it was in 1923 when Warner Brothers Pictures Inc. was officially formed in the USA, and just about every one of us grew up watching their films, cartoons, and other TV series ever since. The company and its related offshoots have been through many ownership shifts over the years and are a huge global entity, through their former Time Inc./Time Warner publishing empires of the late 1990s, they also published former IPC titles such as Cycling Weekly, Cyclesport, MBR in the UK.

In addition to similar broadcast arrangements within motorsport, since 2021 WBD has also presented the UCI Champions Track Series, and now also the UCI Mountain Bike World Series, and have also agreed on exclusive Tour de France and other major road race coverage, which will roll out in during 2025/26, making them probably the most powerful broadcasting entity in cycling as a whole – and also ending ITV’s free TDF coverage.

What does it all mean?

What’s the upshot of this? Well, you will be paying a whole lot more for your cycling Livestream/full-length playbacks for the foreseeable – at £30.99 per month in the UK. Is this a wise move by WBD and the UCI, and even more so for the sport? That, as you would expect depends on who you ask.

Mountain bike icons - Greg Minnaar, by Red Bull Content Pool

Naturally, WBD sells it as a move to offer more value to cycling fans – largely by including this in other sports – such as football, whilst also putting on a similar and more accessible page for regular mainstream sporting fans and viewers.

Although there is a wealth of experience and expertise within WBD’s cycling presentation division, and we assume that the UCI were well aware of the plan, we can’t help but think they’ve shot themselves in the foot with mountain biking and cycling in general. 

Despite its rise in popularity, cycling and mountain biking is still a fairly small sport compared to football and other sports. Not only is the cycling viewership much smaller than major sports, but add in the increased price imposed during an incredibly difficulty economic period for most, and we can’t imagine that so many people will be lining up to pay a whopping £25 per month extra for the privilege. Plus, we can’t imagine that too many Premiere League fans tuning in to watch mountain biking – but, of course, we could be wildly wrong.

We fully understand that this is business, yet it would seem that those at the business end of things have misjudged the value and affluence of cycling. They may well only need a third of the subscriber numbers of 2024 to cut the same return, but surely that’s not a good way to go for the sport? The minute you put a smaller or fringe sport behind a paywall, it’s like a nail in its coffin - and closing that viewing opportunity makes it less accessible to potential newcomers – although WBD may see it as the opposite.

Are there workarounds?

From the end of February, the TNT Sports subscription cost £30.99 per month/£371.88 a year (as opposed to the Discovery+ 2024 fee of £6.99 per month/£83.88 a year). For the full 14 Series rounds that makes it £26.56 a race, if you subscribe for the whole year and only watch MTB that is (unlikely, but you get the point). 

If you have one, you can add a TNT Sports subscription to a BT Broadband plan for £20 per month or £18 per month with a Virgin Media package.

Alternatively, if it’s purely the MTB World Series you want to watch live, then you could subscribe by the month, at most, which means seven months of the year to pay for – or you could watch the short highlight roundups and World Championships free on YouTube and the TNT free weekly cycling show (or GCN).

There has been quite an uproar from British fans about the price hike, which is completely understandable, and should viewer numbers fall due to this – then, surely sponsors will also see less value in the coverage.

Will you be splashing out on a subscription?

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