The dust has not yet settled on the decision to close Eurosport down in the UK and Ireland, and to move professional cycling behind a bigger paywall in the form of TNT Sports. From the end of February, remember, subscription prices will increase from £6.99 to £30.99 a month, and for those who simply watched Eurosport free via their Sky or Virgin Media packages, a fee will be imposed for the first time. The future for watching cycling in the UK certainly seems a lot more expensive, if not incredibly bleak.
Help might be on the way, however, apparently, in the form of the Saudi Arabia-backed plan to reshape professional cycling, One Cycling, which reportedly has an ambition to develop a single outlet for streaming racing, like GCN+ used to be. For those of you who haven’t kept up with the project - and I don’t really blame you - it’s an attempt to redesign and reorder pro cycling, create a more sensible calendar and restructure the economics of the sport, funded in part by Saudi Arabia.
The aims would be appreciated by many a cycling fan; professional cycling in its current form is a mess, with the biggest riders often on completely different programmes, and so much of the power is held by the all-consuming Tour de France in July. The origin of the money gives me pause, with more than a vague whiff of sports-washing, but Saudi Arabia is not alone in this in cycling, merely following other countries investing in the sport, from the UAE to Bahrain, via Kazakhstan.
That’s One Cycling. It is apparently on its way, with Chris Marshall-Bell reporting as much for Escape Collective this year, although when and what form it takes is still up in the air. At present, it’s Schrödinger's cycling revolution, both here and not here, depending on who you listen to or believe.
The latest development in One Cycling is that those behind the project wish to create a universal streaming service, with all of cycling in one place, in the “medium- to long-term ambition”, cutting out the broadcasters in the middle, with more power given to race organisers and teams.
On the face of it, it sounds like a great idea, one which would solve many of the problems that people have with our TNT-branded future. It would mean just paying for cycling content, not subsidising football or boxing, and would create more of a connection between customers and the project, in a similar way to GCN+. If it could also be a bit cheaper than £30.99 a month, that would be a boon too. If one organisation could control all of the rights, and give them directly to consumers, then cycling fans would probably be happier.
That’s a big if, though. There has always been one huge problem with One Cycling, beyond all the other questions, and that is the participation - or lack thereof - of ASO, the organisers of the Tour de France, the Vuelta a España, Paris-Roubaix and a whole lot more. ASO not joining in threatens to sink the whole venture before it has even left port, like a modern day Mary Rose.
Forget ASO’s grand portfolio for a second though, and think about the Tour de France. The Tour is the Tour, it is cycling to many people, and while One Cycling might be an attempt to rebalance cycling away from that big race in July, that seems unlikely to happen soon, if at all. ASO has a television rights deal with Warner Bros. Discovery (TNT’s owners) that runs until 2030, an exclusive one at that, which cost a lot of money.
One Cycling did say it is their “medium- to long-term ambition” to create a streaming service for cycling, but without the Tour de France, it might be five years away. That’s really long-term. If the platform does gain rights for other events - another big if - let’s say the Tour of Flanders or the Giro d’Italia, then cycling fans might be in an even worse position, where they have to subscribe to multiple platforms to watch the races that up until now were under one roof. Watching cycling might get even more expensive and tricky before it gets cheaper and easier, essentially.
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If you want to get in touch with Adam, email adam.becket@futurenet.com, or comment below.
