Providing free live coverage of the Tour de France is “not on the road map” of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), who will hold the exclusive rights to the race in the UK from next summer.
The deal, announced in October last year, will mark the end of free-to-air transmission of the Tour, which has been hosted on ITV for the last 25 years. There had been suggestions that it would continue in some format, but it has now been confirmed that there will only be highlights.
WBD have also today revealed that they will be closing down their Eurosport channel, and merging cycling onto TNT Sports from next month. This will increase the price of watching cycling for UK viewers, with subscriptions to the premium channel costing £30.99.
“Free-to-air live cycling is not on our road map,” Scott Young, senior vice president at WBD Sports Europe, told Cycling Weekly. “The important part, the immersive nature of being a cycling broadcaster, is to get people to come to the destination, which is TNT Sports.
“People can choose to make their decision as to how they want to engage with us in the short term. We are investing in cycling.”
Although there will be no free live coverage of the race, highlights will be made available on Quest, one of WBD’s free-to-air channels. The broadcaster is also launching a new programme, ‘The Ultimate Cycling Show’, which will be presented by Orla Chennaoui and Adam Blythe, and will go out free on Quest from 27 February.
Many fans and professional cyclists have credited free-to-air live coverage of the Tour de France for their introduction into the sport. David Millar, a former pro and member of the ITV commentary team, said he now fears “a whole generation [is] going to lose the Tour because they’re not going to buy a subscription”.
According to Young, there are no concerns within WBD that putting the sport behind a paywall will stunt future fan growth.
“All of it is now going to be surfaced alongside some of the biggest sporting properties in this country. If you look at the [football] Premier League, Champions League, [rugby] Autumn Internationals, MotoGP, there’s an entire audience that may yet to discover cycling,” he said.
“For us to use the biggest sport tentpoles we’ve got to introduce that audience to a cycling audience, I think that’s more of the opportunity that we’re looking at, [rather] than [being] worried about people stumbling onto it. I think we’re long past the stumbling phase.”
Young also said he expects WBD’s social channels, such as Instagram and YouTube, will play a role in introducing new fans to the sport. “We’re one of the largest sport social sites in the UK, so our connectivity to an audience through our social platform outstrips most of the points of engagement,” he said. “We’d hope that we’re driving the stumbling. We’re getting into the hands of an audience and going, ‘You’ve got to check this out.’”
Cycling will form part of TNT Sports’s premium scheduling from 28 February 2025, when Eurosport will disband in the UK. The Tour de France will be broadcast for free in the UK on ITV this July, before it becomes exclusive to TNT Sports in 2026.
