What’s the best way to watch live cycling following the closure of GCN+?

The news, announced last month, that the Global Cycling Network (GCN) will close its GCN+ app and live streaming service by Christmas was greeted with dismay by many cycling fans, as well as people working within the sport and the wider cycling community, who had come to rely on its unprecedented depth of racing coverage.

Some are worried, perhaps with good reason, that GCN’s demise may herald a return to the dark old days – of, say, the mid-2000s – when it was difficult to find live racing on television or online, beyond the sport’s marquee events such as the Tour de France and some, not all, of the Classics. (And back then, even cycling’s biggest races could be subject to the whims of a television schedule focused on a wide variety of sports, which often prompted an anxious wait for a tennis doubles match to conclude in order to catch the last 10km of a crucial Giro mountain stage.)

With only three cyclocross races left on GCN+’s dwindling schedule, in this article we'll try to quell some of your bike race-watching concerns by telling you where you can find cycling on your TV, computer screen, or phone in 2024, and explain what the implications might be of GCN+’s demise.

 (Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com)

Last month, GCN said that the forthcoming closure of its app and live-streaming service reflected a “changing media industry landscape”, which they said was a result of parent company Warner Brothers Discovery’s desire to “consolidate” more of its content in “fewer places”.

In essence, GCN has fallen victim to the changing relationship between the cycling app, Discovery, Eurosport, and the sport channel formerly known as BT Sport, in recent times.

Founded in 2013, GCN’s coverage of races began in earnest after Discovery Network, owner of Eurosport, bought a 20 percent share in its owner, Play Sports Group, in 2017. That was subsequently increased to 71 percent in 2019, giving Discovery control of the business, and the GCN+ app itself was launched in 2021. The fact that Discovery owns Eurosport explains why both the commentators and the pundits you hear on both that channel and on GCN are the same.

> Global Cycling Network set to close GCN+ and GCN app in December due to “changing media industry landscape”

Away from cycling, last year Discovery announced that it was launching a 50:50 joint venture with BT Group under which Eurosport UK’s operations will eventually be merged with those of BT Sport, under a rebranded identity, which would stream content through the Discovery+ app.

Subsequently, BT Sport was renamed TNT Sports, and the Eurosport brand within the UK is set to be folded into that at some point between next year’s Paris Olympic Games, and the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics in early 2026 – by which time the ramifications of last month’s news will be apparent.

How can I watch live cycling in the UK and Europe?

(Zac Williams/SWpix.com)

The announcement that GCN+ is due to close from 19 December was accompanied by assurances that in areas where the Discovery+ app is available, including the UK and Ireland, subscribers will “continue to enjoy all cycling races they currently watch on GCN+”.

According to Discovery+, viewers in territories where the streaming service is available – which includes the UK, Ireland, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Norway – can subscribe to the streaming service for £6.99 a month.

This package includes all of Eurosport’s cycling coverage, with Discovery in particular noting the presence of the Grand Tours (though we can assume the range of races stretches far beyond the three-weekers, with Discovery retaining access to Eurosport’s full rights portfolio), as well as the channel’s other sports, including next year’s Olympic Games. A more substantial £29.99 a month package also features the sports covered by the group’s TNT Sports channel, including Premier League and Champions League football, rugby, boxing, and wrestling (if that’s your thing).

> The rise & fall of GCN+ – is the livestream party over for cycling fans?

In European countries where Discovery+ is not available, cycling fans can subscribe to the Eurosport App (the successor of the Eurosport Player), which features the same plethora of races currently available on GCN+, while viewers in Poland can watch via the Eurosport Extra App.

(Pauline Ballet/SWpix.com)

Within the UK, we can also currently watch the occasional free-to-air events, such as the Tour de France and Tour of Britain on ITV4 or the BBC’s annual coverage of the world championships, which are typically also free to stream on a catch-up service such as ITVX, while Eurosport’s coverage is available through a pay-TV subscription such as Sky.

Many events – the Tour, for example, via ITV and Eurosport – will be available both for free and on paid platforms, and those with access to both will often decide which to watch depending on who is commentating, or whether the paid version is ad-free.

How can I watch live cycling elsewhere?

Beyond the UK and Europe, the situation seems a bit more complicated. For subscribers in Australia or North America, GCN+’s demise likely means that they will see a big reduction in coverage of the sport.

At the moment, Eurosport says that in markets outside Europe, Warner Bros. Discovery is “working with local partners to ensure cycling fans can continue to access live race coverage”. Customers will be kept fully informed, they say, about the future availability of the live content currently on GCN+.

(Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com)

While Warner Bros. Discovery, incidentally, is an American company – with Discovery+ available in the US and Canada – the confusion arises from the fact that Discovery’s content is dependent on your geographic region, with the sports package available to the platform’s subscribers in the UK not necessarily available elsewhere.

However, some of the confusion has since been cleared up for fans in the United States at least, when it was announced in mid-December that Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming channel Max (the successor to HBO Max, home of the Sopranos), along with the US brand of TNT Sports, will have the rights to over 300 road, cyclocross, tracks, BMX, and mountain bike races from February, which will be available to US-based viewers through an add-on service.

In a similar manner to Discovery+ in the UK integrating all its sport content under the one streaming roof, Max – which like GCN is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery – will effectively provide a like-for-like replacement for GCN’s coverage, with subscribers retaining access to roughly the same number of races, as well as the ‘Breakaway’ pre- and post-race analysis show.

The 300 events on offer on the platform include the Giro d’Italia, cobbled spring classics such as the E3 Saxo Bank Classic and Kuurne–Brussels–Kuurne, 53 Women’s WorldTour events, the UCI Track Champions League, the UCI Mountain Bike World Series, and more, offering what Max claims is “more live cycling event coverage throughout the year than any other streaming service” for US fans.

(Zac Williams/SWpix.com)

Along with Peacock’s mainstream cycling broadcasts, which crucially include the Tour de France, US viewers shouldn’t experience too much of a difference when it comes to their racing coverage next season. If they ignore their new bill, that is.

Max’s B/R Sports Add-On, which also includes live coverage of baseball, basketball, ice hockey, and motor racing, is available for $9.95 a month, in addition to the basic Max subscription, which begins at $9.95 a month with ads (an ad-free version will sting you to the tune of at least $15.99 a month).

So that means, in order to watch the same number of races in the US, you’ll now have to pay four times as much for the privilege.

(Will Palmer/SWpix.com)

Meanwhile, the situation in Canada remains as unclear as ever.

In 2019, Warner Bros. Discovery provided funding to Flo Sports, the parent company of Flo Bikes – which has the US and Canadian rights to a number of races throughout the season, and is available for the princely annual sum of $150 in the USA and $209.99 in Canada – though that doesn’t necessarily mean that Canadian streaming coverage will pass over to Flo Bikes.

With confusion still reigning over the future of cycling coverage outside Europe, the use of a VPN – a virtual private network – may become increasingly popular as fans seek to circumvent the geo-restrictions blocking their access to some of the sport’s biggest traces. Others, meanwhile, may return to the pre-GCN days of searching the depths of the internet for links with unstable feeds and exotic commentary.

Either way, the worry persists among cycling fans that the demise of GCN+ may ultimately lead to fewer races being broadcast.

TV cycling coverage – a priority within a broader sports portfolio?

(Zac Williams/SWpix.com)

Given the impending changes, it’s legitimate to wonder where cycling sits on the list of priorities in a multi-sports network, rather than on a dedicated platform. As noted above, in the past, many of us cycling fans will have been frustrated switching on Eurosport to watch a Grand Tour stage or big one day race, only to spend the next half-hour willing the snooker (a bigger draw in terms of UK TV audience) to end.

Certainly, a big part of GCN+’s appeal was not just its ease of navigation, but also the fact that all content is related in some way to cycling – a different user experience for someone who is passionate about the sport compared to when they are on a more general app, where cycling competes a plethora of other events for attention.

Particularly once Eurosport UK’s operations are fully merged with those of the former BT Sport at some point in the very near future, which also brings football and rugby union into the fold, it’s not difficult to imagine coverage of individual sports being rationalised – management speak for events being cut, or broadcasts shortened – depending on return on investment. After all, we are talking about a business that ultimately needs to make money for its shareholders, with Warner Brothers Discovery being a publicly traded company.

(SWpix.com/Zac Williams)

Also, cycling’s fragmented business model, in which TV rights are ultimately owned by private companies led by Tour de France owners ASO and Giro d’Italia organisers RCS Sport, plus Belgium-based Flanders Classics, with global governing body the UCI also holding rights to its own events, further complicates the issue. In numerous other sports, only one or two rights holders may be involved.

GCN+ meant that pretty much all the bike racing you might want to watch could be streamed through the platform, including races that might not be shown live on self-billed ‘Home of Cycling’ Eurosport’s TV channels, with at times several events running concurrently.

And of course, this all comes at a time when the wider global bike industry is in turmoil following the boom it enjoyed during the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 – something likely to translate into lower sponsorship revenues for race organisers, as well as reduced advertising budgets for the media.