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I am interested in the business model behind their decision
There is a sports industry.podcast called Unofficial Partner that has a series of podcasts on exactly this called the Bundle. Depending on who you believe, it's either geniuses playing 4D chess who are about to deliver the next tsunami of cash OR it's a bunch of shiny shirt wearing spivs repackaging the old cable TV model (having spent the last 10 years saying that the old cable TV model was dead forever).
Unofficial Podcast also did a docco about dodgy Amazon firesticks. Their impression was that many users were high spenders on subscription products already, they weren't total freeloaders. They had 3 subs already and they were f*d if they were gonna fork our for a 4th one...
TV executives believe there's a large number of "Sports" fans. Which I take to mean fat people watching daytime telly at the weekend.
My sports are Aston Villa (I'll watch their away games if they're showing them at the pub) F1 (fast forward the highlights on a Monday morning to watch the bits that say "replay", i.e the crashes) and TdF (the last 10k if I'm in the house) and the highlights.
Maybe I'm not the target demographic and maybe they're overconfident in thinking the American model will transfer over to the UK
As Aggs said sport is slowly but surely being ruined for normal people.
Look at football, those in power decided allowing sky to have all the rights wasnt "competetive" so instead of paying 1 payment a month of say £50 you now have (if you really want to see everything) to pay north of £100 for a minimum of 4 different companies to supply games. Whats worse is that not all the games are even shown. How many times do you think oh my teams on, i'll watch that, only to find none of sky, TNT, Premiere etc etc are even showing it. And then they have the cheek to say its for the good of the consumer, yeah, paying for 4 sports subscriptions to watch maybe one or two teams you like is great value for money.
There should be separate channels for cycling, like F1 has on sky, if I want it, I'll happily pay for it, but I'm not giving £30 a month for a channel with 10% cycling and 90% sports I dont give a monkeys about.
The TV executives, sports team owners etc dont live in the real world. £30 a month to watch cycling is nothing to them, but they get hundreds of grand a year, never mind what they pay the sports people. £30 a month is a justifiable saving now for most people with the way the economy is tanking with ever increasing prices for the basics like food and mortgages / rent.
How does this compare to other sports? If I wanted to watch F1 or football live what would I need to pay? (noting that those sports still have decent highlight shows on mainstream TV)
It does seem to be a bonkers decision though and hard to see how it is sustainable.
Good analogy with the WRC; the Monte was the weekend gone and the popular motorsport forums had very few comments on it......if it's behind a paywall, people can't/won't pay. Conversely, the Rolex 24 at Daytona was streamed on You Tube; record figures, and pages of comments on the same motorsport forums.
In less than a year I've gone from £40 per year, to £6.99 a month, and now £30.99 if I want the Premium subscription (£3.99 for basic with no sport). I could accept going to £10 per month, as I also watch WEC, Superbikes, and a bit of snooker, ski-ing.....but £30.99??? Really, for loads of stuff I don't want to watch. Eff right off.....
I was a little sceptical with the World Cup moving to Discovery/Eurosport, but gave it a chance as it was on the same channels as the other cycling disciplines........
This is going to do serious damage to the sport of MTB; going from a free stream to £30.99 per month in 2 years......
Telegraph running an article pointing out that the BBC showing the 6 Nations could also be at risk as TNT gradually take over that tournament too.
At £20/month I could probably make good use of it (MTB, Road, MX, WEC, MotoGP and maybe 1 or 2 other things). The trouble is that I dont actually want to pay that money, and would only be watching these things because I was paying (rather than the other way around)
OTOH... it's (for me) better VFM than paying £15/month for my TV licence
That’s me done with watching the MTB this year then, it was the only sport that I managed to make the time to watch last year at all.
Surely this is going to wreck the potential income stream of a sport which is already under significant financial stress.
a bunch of shiny shirt wearing spivs repackaging the old cable TV model
Having read the quotes in the OP link and worked in media myself, I'm going with this.
I'm sure we've all worked places where nobody is prepared to stand up and say "hold on a second, this is never going to work".
They probably have a fanciful 10 year plan where they see themselves taking over from Sky in the UK, or something like that.
Boggles the mind, DH was the only live sport I'd watch live or watch the full replay and used to look forward to the TDF daily highlights now I just will do something else as £31 is too much. I get the business thought but surely they must lose money doing this!
To think you could once watch FA Cup & Champions League football, Rugby, F1 ,Darts, Rally Driving, etc and now all behind a paywall. Sure I saw the 6 nations was moving to TNT yesterday, how long till the Grand National and Wimbledon go the same way!
Cant be good for encouraging youngsters to take up sports when they can't watch them, then with the growing pull of extreme less traditional sports like BMX, Skating, Scootering and water or snow sports, etc its got to be killing some of these sports off!
We'll all be able to watch sports for free once every 4 years at the Olympics.
There's something in the rules of the Olympics that it must be on free-to-air TV.
I'm similar to you @wipperman95. I got the original Eurosport Player annual package for £19.99 to watch BSB and WSB, knowing full well it was a bargain.
Felt slightly aggrieved at having to pay £6.99/month (probably still reasonable value though, just that I was getting it uber cheap originally), but £30.99/month now feels like too much, especially on top of all the other services.
When you cancel it offers you 7 months half price. It’s so cynical
I feel so dirty but I took it. Need a shower now. Not going past the 7 months though.
How does this compare to other sports?
Isn't the difference here the amount of TV money that goes to the teams? Cycling is not getting anywhere near what football gets surely.
Well this is all a bit of a dilemma for me. I watch ALL cycling from CX every single race on Discovery+ to DH and tours, classics etc. I used to watch MotoGP but binned that and don't miss it, i used to watch BSB/WSB and don't these days even though i can with Sky Q option.
But £31 a month, hell that's a bit of change there for cycling..
We’ll all be able to watch sports for free once every 4 years at the Olympics.
There’s something in the rules of the Olympics that it must be on free-to-air TV.
But much of it was only on Discovery in the UK last year.
The Beeb only had selected events (but quite a lot), all presented by Claire Balding obvs.
How do we get DH added to the UK Gov "crown jewels" list?
We’ll look back on those funeral plans, donkey sanctuaries and charity donation adverts with fondness and regret.
If only we'd all sorted out our cremations, sponsored Eeyore and donated more to UNICEF...
I'll be honest, I only watched the Tour on ITV as I couldn't justify the cost of the other stuff for how often I'd watch it, but this is a real blow for all cycling fans, and given the turbulence in the industry recently, if the TV bods have got their sums wrong, could be fatal for a lot of pro cycling teams and events in all formats
Just checked and I'm still getting access to sports via Discovery+ that comes as part of my BT Broadband account. Details here https://www.bt.com/tv/packages
If you are already a BT Broadband customer it could be worth checking if you have it. You need to activate it by logging in to your BT account.
FWIW various riding FB groups I joined for the occasional bit of trail Intel are blowing up with this.
But I suspect 'our' backlash, whilst seeming huge to those in it, will not register with WBD.
I sincerely hope they've got their sums wrong and they lose out because of it.
I bet Chris Ball is 'unavailable for comment' too.
How long before the TDF starts in Riyadh?
Used to enjoy watching boxing until it went pay per view many moons ago. Now it's a joke sport in Saudi and I've lost interest so much I don't even bother watching free bouts on channel 5.
Same with football really, hardly ever bother tuning in to match of the day. Though that may have more to do with the clown show that is at Old Trafford
6 Nations looks uncertain. TDF might have some highlights on quest, but nothing else free to air.
Tis bollocks.
And it's likely the weekly free to air cycling show won't have much MTB content........
Cancel and you immediately get a 50% off offer.
Make it 75% and I'd consider it.
Disco+ isn’t even very good at covering sports. The Olympic coverage was dreadful. No editorial or production, nightmare to find the women’s final etc and shit highlights. BBC were brilliant at packaging up the days events. Channel 4 are great at this as well. D+’s idea of highlights is the last 20mins of the stage. The UCI/ASO etc should be v annoyed although I imagine they are getting €€
When does this start?
Just logged in to Discovery+ and can still see the cycling......
I am interested in the business model behind their decision
Often a product is worth what the seller says it is. If you give it away for free with a Sky subscription or a small monthly amount, then subscribers will consider it low value and subsequently won't use it and then won't renew.
Tell people it's premium and charge them more, then a reduced number of more committed customers will be more likely to make use of it and renew. Renewals mean the revenue is more predictable over a number of years.
More committed subscribers are better for advertisers too, so the broadcaster can also charge more for advertising and sponsorship.
Also it might be part of a much longer strategy to create something approaching a global sports broadcasting monopoly: Premier League, Champions League, Olympics, tennis majors. World Cup next?
When does this start?
Just logged in to Discovery+ and can still see the cycling……
My last payment was £6.99 on 20-1-25.
My next payment is showing as £3.99 on 20-2-25
So I've just been dropped down to basic package. I presume I can watch all sports until 20-2-25
Bother. Used to watch the DH every year but stopped after RB, had already decided to finally get a Discovery subscription this year in order to watch it properly again... Not any more 🙁
That might be me done, I watch all the Cx, XC MTB and Spring classics, but not sure I can afford the price hike - will probably cancel after Cx World championship.
Will you be able to watch the replays? Only mentions "live" cycling?
Will you be able to watch the replays?
Not from what I've read, everything going behind a paywall
Will you be able to watch the replays? Only mentions “live” cycling?
They usually put the highlights on Youtube. Better than nothing...
Goodbye Discovery+. I only subscribed when Eurosport went there. We have NowTV for Mrs TiRed's F1. Can I get ES and F1 for the same price elsewhere? - never been s Sky subscriber and am not bothered by all the channels, but do watch a lot of cycling. In fact that and the news (and rugby and F1 for marital harmony) are pretty much all I watch on TV!
I've cancelled this morning. Only had the subscription for road cycling coverage through the season. Not worth £370 a year for me.
What a shame, viewing of cycling in the UK will completely die now.
I’m not paying £31 that’s for sure. I will wait for notification as I’m still paying £7.
The basic package in the graphic shared above suggest that it included Eurosport so I think some more research to exactly what that covers is in order
I'm out. Ludicrous increase. Was bad enough when discovery changed the non-sports content to contain advertising. (However interesting to note that when netflix increased its prices it resulted in a net gain for the business with less than expected cancellations.) I'll investigate a VPN and overseas subscription. I need my cycling and Le mans fix.
Disco+ isn’t even very good at covering sports. The Olympic coverage was dreadful.
All of which matters not one jot to the people making money out of it.
I expect the cycling will form such a small percentage of their viewers that they are more interested in the football / boxing which more people will be willing to be over charged to watch live games.
neverownenoughbikesFree Member
There should be separate channels for cycling, like F1 has on sky, if I want it, I’ll happily pay for it, but I’m not giving £30 a month for a channel with 10% cycling and 90% sports I dont give a monkeys about.
F1 is a separate channel but you have to buy the Sky Sports package to get it which includes football, tennis etc.
What's annoying is the rest of the world can get superior coverage for about two buttons and a bit of string per month with the F1TV app (nothing to do with sky), but in the UK Sky have the monopoly so you need Sky Sports at approx £20 + £10 for Sky itself.
As this only applies to UK & Ireland - BREXIT?
I will really miss the Dakar Rally as well.
I bet the BT option door will close sometime soon then! Thats a good tip though and will have look.
Not every bike event is a classic to watch but seeing the youngsters rising from U23 and learning their trade , sort of getting to "know" the characters of the stars is all part of watching a sport as well and needs viewing regularly.
Eurosport introduced me to CX viewing as well , I do enjoy watching it.
I suppose with for example the fancy studio for Eurosport Tour Coverage ,pre race team briefing?! the on the motorbike peloton coverage,on bike tv shots, 3 presenters, the Breakaway program etc costs are big. Do we need it quite so fancy?
I will really miss the Dakar Rally as well.
SBS have got that free-to-view too 🙂
WBD is coming across like a right load of ****
Americans?
As for getting the sport package through your Broadband provider... You'll be coughing up too
Looks like no road cycling for me this year. I was looking forward to the spring classics. No CX next season.
I know it is their job, but the comments of the presenters and commentators in the press release are sick making. I can't believe that what they have said is anywhere near to what they actually think.
Like everyone else on the thread - I am done.