British rider Tao Geoghegan Hart has joined the flood of reaction since TNT Sports announced on Tuesday that Eurosport's coverage of cycling in the UK and Ireland would be ending and the races would be put behind a premium £30.99-a-month subscription instead.
In a lengthy post on Instagram, Geoghegan Hart wrote: "For those in need of some context, the cost of watching racing has gone from £87 a year to £370. As of yet, I've seen little comment from pro cycling itself, especially from the many GB riders whose profiles, families & fans it impacts so greatly.
"Let's be clear, the sport going behind such a large paywall is a huge problem. Professional sports are all competing for the same audience. Cycling is completely reliant on this audience, it is how teams justify themselves to sponsors spending millions a year. Only a few teams can realistically promise a sponsor to win the Tour, but all teams can demonstrate good ROI when capturing so many eyes, hearts & minds. It's not only wins that can be of value. It's the journey & the heartache too.
"I find it hard to believe many fans will be able to justify this increase in costs to follow our races & those of our female colleagues. This is a huge shame. Cycling provides such great entertainment and inspiration to so many. GB fans are living a real high point of the sport. There are so many GB professionals, with Tom Pidcock winning his first race for his new team this afternoon a great example of that.
"To be clear on something that many don't understand, teams receive zero remuneration from TV rights. What do I want to say? For amateur riders, cycling has become a very expensive sport or passion. Now as a GB fan, following the upper echelons of the sport has also suddenly and massively increased in cost. I think it is now very relevant to realise where this money is going and where it is not. And perhaps to question the monopoly held over the sports UK coverage.
"I welcome all opinions on this and am curious to hear how many people have cancelled their subscriptions. This season I'll try to champion more accessible media. I'll remain incredibly grateful to our sponsors. I'll also be very interested to hear from you all which platforms myself and Lidl-Trek should consider collaborating with. We want and need to remain available to all of the huge 🇬🇧 audience that has been built up over the last 15 years of astronomic success."
Alex Dowsett replied to post: "Well said." It also received plenty of support from the fans who commented underneath, one thanking Tao for "sticking your head above the parapet and speaking out" about "cycling fans who will be priced out by this corporate greed".
Another wrote: "Potentially next year (2026) it will be the first time in 40 years I will not be able to watch Le Tour. How sad is that as a fan of cycling that it has come to this. I could pay the £30/month but out of principle for those that cannot I will not."
What a week it's been... and it's only Thursday.
First things first, props to Kateřina Rusá, the Czech cyclist who last year rode 55,555km in a year, improving on her 2023 total of 50,505km. Rusá works a full-time job but still rides every day (in fact she hasn't missed one since 19 March 2016) and in 2024 averaged six hours 39 minutes riding and 150km travelled A DAY. An incredible achievement.
The only part we're a bit unsure of and have asked for more info about is a press release that dropped in our inbox from bike manufacturer Festka, for whom Rusá is an ambassador, the high-end bike brand claiming their rider "once again holds the record for endurance cycling". Now, we haven't heard a response back to our pedantry, so we're assuming what it all means was Rusá was the athlete on Strava to log the most cycled distance in 2024? After all, the Guinness World Record for greatest distance cycled in a year belongs to Amanda Coker who rode 86,573.2 miles (139,326.34km) between 15 May 2016 and 14 May 2017.
Now, a calendar year riding in Czechia is undoubtedly less pleasant (conditions wise) than riding from May to May in Tampa, Florida, however if we're talking about "the record for endurance cycling" in a year, that's got to go to Coker. Maybe we need to get out more... we're assuming the record was for distance on Strava last year... or maybe it was Rusá's own personal record... hopefully Festka will take a minute from rolling their eyes at our pedantry and get us an answer. Anyway, chapeau Kateřina!
Several models of Garmin cycling computers and smartwatches are facing a bug which forces the device to crash and enter a reboot loop when accessing any GPS-related activities. The tech giant has now published a number of resolutions on its website specific to individual devices, although many users are still claiming the workarounds failed for them. More info here:
A pretty standard set of responses to anything we've put out about the TNT Sports news this week...
Tao asked: how many cancelled subscriptions there have been since Tuesday? The answer to that is pretty unanimous when looking at pretty much any forum discussing the move.
On Facebook, Robin Cooney told us: "We'll never know the answer to your question, Tao. TNT will not want to admit how they have destroyed our sport by trying to get cycling fans to pay for the football. In your post you also make the same fundamental mistake inherent in the TNT business model by saying 'Professional sports are all competing for the same audience'. They really aren't. TNT tried to get more customers to pay for the football by buying MotoGP - UK viewing of MotoGP went off a cliff. I don't know a single cycling fan that is going to pay £30.99 pcm to watch loads of other sports they don't care about."
Jason Porter: "Whether you watch CX, MTB, Road, BMX or Track, for the UK audience & market, this will do irreparable damage to the cycling industry, both from a sales perspective as well as encouraging new people to take up a cycling discipline. Absolutely shocking decision by greedy people who have no interest in the sport themselves. A very sad day for UK cycling fans."
Graham Martin: "I'll be cancelling after this weekend's CX Worlds."
thetr1ckytree: "It wouldn't be so bad if it was going to benefit cycling teams and the riders with a huge influx of money like Sky have with football. I think It's just going to turn it into a niche sport and if anything, financially could get worse."
One West Midlands school is taking a novel approach to improving student attendance, offering those who maintain 100 per cent attendance or show the most improvement the chance to win a new bike.
The story is up on Stourbridge News, and concerns a competition for two new bikes to be won by students at Pedmore High School (not to be confused with PED more, the words to live by for many in the pro cycling ranks during the 90s).
The year seven to 10 students can win the first bike by maintaining a 100 per cent attendance, or the second by showing the most attendance improvement by the end of the spring term. If more than one student has 100 per cent attendance or is equally improved on the attendance front there'll presumably be some form of prize draw... or perhaps a hill climb or 10-mile TT to decide the victor? Okay, yep, probably a prize draw.
The internet strikes again...
Mike Humphreys has history with incredible physical challenges and raising money for a great cause, last year having run 30 marathons in 30 days in 30 different countries. Now, once again raising awareness of motor neurone disease (MND) and raising money along the way, he's cycling to the Alps... on this...
He's setting off this week and from the anxiety-inducing videos he's uploaded to Instagram we're not sure what's going to be the bigger challenge — the climbing or the descending.
"This is going to be a struggle," he admitted. "The gear ratio is far from ideal for big hills but I guess a challenge has to be a challenge."
Good luck, Mike!
After Pidcock's stage win yesterday, teammate Frederik Frison had some words for all those who doubted the Brit signing with the second-tier team.
Frison — who we're contractually obliged to remind you is the peloton's premier Peter Sagan impressionist, and missed last year's classics after suffering "quite extensive damage to private parts" in a dog attack — told Het Nieuwsblad the AlUla Tour victory had seen the "critics silenced a bit" after the transfer was "criticised by some".
Stage three should be a sprint. We'll bring you anything worth knowing a bit later on once things heat up. For now, there's about 130km of fairly boring-looking pre-sprint rolling to be done.
If you need to read about a new bike to take your mind off all this TNT stuff...
Here's your 60-second cheat sheet for everything we've learnt this week.
TNT Sports is closing Eurosport down in the UK and Ireland, integrating all the channel's content onto its main TNT channels. As a result, cycling fans will no longer be able to simply purchase the cheaper £6.99 monthly subscription to watch racing and will have to buy a £30.99-a-month premium discovery+ sub.
That £30.99 is a monthly fee and there is no annual or six-month savings available either. In short, if you want to watch bike racing it's going to cost £371.88-a-year. That's considerably more (443 per cent more, in fact) than the £83.88-a-year your old £6.99 sub would have cost. Oh, and that's before taking into account you could get it cheaper buying an annual pass or via various promotions.
Eurosport will be integrated to TNT Sports on 28 February, after which point the channel will close in the UK and Ireland, although it will continue elsewhere in Europe. TNT Sports says the move is about consolidating all its sports content on one platform, making it simpler for viewers and growing smaller sports by broadcasting them adjacent to larger, more popular sports such as Premier League football fixtures. TNT also believes it will take cycling coverage to the next level.
The bottom line for fans who only want to watch cycling is that for the same races (bar the women's Giro d'Italia which has been added to TNT Sports' rights for 2025 and wasn't previously available on Eurosport), you'll be paying a hell of a lot more to watch them.
In 2025, ITV will still have its free-to-air coverage/highlights of the Tour de France, Paris-Nice and Critérium du Dauphiné. After this year, Warner Bros. Discovery has exclusive rights to those races and they'll be on TNT Sports.
When pushed on if there will still be free-to-air coverage of the Tour de France after 2025, the TNT Sports figures we've spoken to haven't given much cause for optimism, but equally didn't completely rule it out. A free-to-air highlights package seems the most likely option, although TNT Sports says it is too far in the future and production plans haven't been finalised. Given this week's price hike, they'll have to forgive cycling fans for assuming the worst on the free-to-air front.
Warner Bros. Discovery also owns Quest and will be putting some free-to-air content on there, including highlights of the Grand Tours and Paris-Roubaix. There is also to be a new weekly cycling show. 'The Ultimate Cycling Show' will be hosted by Orla Chennaoui and Adam Blythe and launches on February 27th, promising to cover "key parts of the season" and editorially "designed to cater to the seasoned fan, plus attract and engage new audiences".