After the furore over Eurosport, TNT Sports, and Discovery+ in the UK, there is a shift in the broadcasting sands across the Atlantic, as the main US cycling streaming service, Max, has changed its price plans from the start of April.
It’s nowhere near the bombshell that was the 300% price hike for UK fans, but it does represent another change in the equation of how we watch cycling online in 2025.
Max, which is owned by the same company that runs TNT Sports and Discovery+ in the UK – Warner Bros. Discovery – has the most live cycling rights of the three US broadcasters, although it misses out on some key races like the Tour de France (on NBC/Peacock) and the Flanders Classics (on Flobikes).
Since it started carrying cycling in 2024, following the shuttering of GCN+ at the end of 2023, the cheapest Max subscription with cycling included has been priced at $9.99 a month / $99.99 a year. From next month, the cheapest price is $16.99 a month / $169.99 a year. That’s a price rise of 70%.
However, it’s not quite as simple as that. In fact, WBD would have you believe this is a rather generous cost-cutter for its customers.
For over a year now, Max has put its live sports rights into an add-on bundle named B/R Sports, advertised at an extra $9.99 a month – the thing is, they’ve never charged for it. There was an initial period of grace stated to end in February 2024, but that date came and went and it has remained unenforced ever since.
Now, WBD is scrapping B/R Sports as an add-on altogether. Sport will simply be included, or not, across the three available plans. The Basic plan ($9.99 a month) does not have sport included, but Standard ($16.99 a month) and Premium ($20.99 a month) both do.
So is this a price rise or a price drop?
It depends which way you look at it. In real terms, it takes the cheapest way of watching Max’s races and raises the price by 70%, both on the monthly and annual plans.
However, WBD would argue the true value of its sports package – the RRP, if you like – was, this whole time, an extra $9.99 a month on top of whatever you were actually paying (so $19.98 as the cheapest total). In other words, fans have enjoyed a hefty discount for well over a year now. What’s more, you'll now get the same sports offering, with no ads, for $3 less than that supposed ‘RRP’. Consumers could rather reasonably hit back and say if you never actually charged that price then it simply was never the price.
Meanwhile, if you’ve been on the Standard plan all along, stripped out the ads, then the price is staying exactly the same, just without the vague threat of WBD starting to charge for B/R Sports. That said, the threat has not completely disappeared. In its statement announcing the scrapping of the B/R Sports Add-On, WBD says “this path will not be pursued for now” – the last two words being operative if not ominous.
In any case, the price change takes the cheapest way to watch the whole cycling calendar in the US to $400 a year – Peacock costs $79.99 a year, while Flobikes costs $150 a year.
There is a caveat in that you don’t have to stay subscribed for the whole year – most of the value of a Flobikes subscription is concentrated in the winter and spring, for example – but the savings you get for annual plans make the benefits of pausing and resuming your subscriptions negligible (that’s based on wanting to watch pretty much everything you possibly can).
What are WBD saying about this?
As suggested above, WBD has billed this as a boost to the wallets of its customers. The headline of its press release emphasises that Standard and Premium subscribers are getting sport added to their plans at “no additional cost".
Meanwhile, its CEO and President of Global Streaming and Games, JB Perrette, said: "Over the last year plus, we had the opportunity to assess how users engage with sports and news on Max, and we’ve been actively involved in exploring ways to evolve the sports distribution ecosystem in the U.S. We believe that the best place for that content for now is within the Standard and Premium tiers.
“This update ensures that subscribers can continue to enjoy that coveted access within Max, while also enabling ongoing investment in our premium sports and news portfolio."
