What’s The Cheapest Way To Watch Mountain Biking Now GCN+ Is Closing?

If you got the email announcing the end of GCN+ and understood it first time, perhaps you should consider applying your brain to understanding politicians, or solving the Riemann Hypothesis. It’s taken us a bit of figuring out, but we think we’ve got the answer: you now need Discovery+. At least, you do if you’re in the UK. In some European countries you’ll need Eurosport. Outside of Europe and the UK the picture is much less clear, with Warner Bros Discovery yet to say what the arrangements will be. So, for the benefit of our readers in the UK, what’s the cheapest way to get Discovery+?

You can subscribe to Discovery+ alone, and watch on their app. There are three different subscription levels, and it’s not completely clear to us where live UCI mountain biking will fall, but we think it’s in the ‘Standard’ package which is £6.99 a month. The ‘Basic’ package doesn’t currently include things like Cycling Grand Tours or the Olympics, so it seems a fair assumption that the UCI World Cup won’t be in there either. However, I’ve just added the free app via my cheapo Roku TV stick and it has got mountain biking coverage from 2023 there – so maybe there will be some free after the event stuff so be viewed?

There’s no Annual plan for Discovery+ above Basic level – so it’s a monthly deal only for Standard or above. £6.99 for each month with a MTB World Cup event in is April to October, 7 months. £48.93 to cover the whole season. Skip April and start in May if you’re only interested in DH, makes £41.94. Which is only a touch more than the £39 that the GCN+ annual membership probably cost you.

You can get Discovery+ Standard for free with most Sky TV packages.You need to be either a Sky Q, Sky Glass or Sky Stream customer, and then you can add Discovery+ to your channels for free. We think you need to add and/or activate it, it might not appear automatically.

The cheapest Sky package we can find is the ‘Sky Stream, Sky TV & Netflix’ package, which usually costs £26 a month – although there is a £19 a month Black Friday offer.

If you have a BT TV Entertainment, Big Entertainment, BT TV Sport, Big Sport or VIP BT TV package, we think you can also add Discovery+ to your package for free. Again, you need to push some extra buttons and activate your account to make this appear. Or, it might cost you £20. We really can’t figure it out. Perhaps it depends if you’re a new customer or an existing one. There’s a Black Friday deal where it’ll cost you £1 a month for the first 3 months, and then £50.99 a month after that – this covers Broadband and TV, and includes Discovery+. (We think that includes the Standard package you need for live cycling).

Or, you could ignore the kabillion hours of live coverage and air-time filling small talk, and pay £29 a year for a Digital Subscription to Singletrack. Here on our Forum you’ll be able to chat, ad free, about the racing during and after the event. Forumites will share their favourite clips and social media posts from riders and around the web. Distilled down to the highlights, and the key moments. If you must watch it live, blow by blow and run by run, there’s probably a local bike shop or bar showing it. Though, that might cost you more in pints or coffees than any of the subscriptions here.

If you’ve solved the Riemann Hypothesis or have figured out a cheaper way to get next year’s cycling coverage than we’ve covered above, head to the comments!

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Hannah Dobson

Managing Editor

I came to Singletrack having decided there must be more to life than meetings. I like all bikes, but especially unusual ones. More than bikes, I like what bikes do. I think that they link people and places; that cycling creates a connection between us and our environment; bikes create communities; deliver freedom; bring joy; and improve fitness. They're environmentally friendly and create friendly environments. I try to write about all these things in the hope that others might discover the joy of bikes too.

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