GCN+ Shutting Down

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9xBGH-ISFU

Looks like its shutting down. Not sure where this leaves the racing coverage this coming season…?

…or my current interweb subscription? 

Thats a shame, as well as the race coverage they’ve done some nice specials

I guess if you want any of the live coverage you need to pay for eurosport/discovery. I wonder if they will release all of their GCN+ content on youtube now which could be a silver lining.

I wonder if this is to force people into higher paying subscriptions?

Watch the video – it seems you can either move to Discovery thing or get a refund. Content is still being worked on but being offered in fewer places…

Darn, renewed a few months ago.

Looks like if you are a subscriber you will get a refund.  The only option is then to subscribe to Discovery+ to get all the cycling so £6.99 a month vs £39.99 a year.

I’m disappointed. I’d grudgingly paid a sub a couple of years ago just to watch winter ‘cross racing and the Tour, and then ended up watching all sorts of classics and the other grand tours. I’m still confused as to where we’re all going now for live racing…

Eurosport does most…. Discovery+ does the other bits and DH.

🙁 it was great having a single subscription at a sensible price.

Darn – can’t watch a video right now….how long do we have to watch their films before it gets turned off? To be honest I prefer them to the live racing.

Well, that’s me finished with watching live cycling.

Or possibly any cycling.

….how long do we have to watch their films before it gets turned off?

19th December

I’ll have to look at the details, but I think for my household it will go from being an always-subscribed service to going into the rotation of streaming services we activate and cancel according to what we want to watch. Having a cycling-specific streaming service was great, and I’ll probably stick on weekend cyclocross as usual in the next couple of weeks, but I just don’t see the same justification for a Discovery Channel or Eurosport subscription for me.

Eurosport digital sub used to be the same price, has that been dropped in favour of Discovery+ now?

That’s a shame. I only got to watch two DH rounds live this year though, and £80+ a year for Discovery+ is a bit much for that – although if you can switch it on and off then it’s less than 6 months (£42) to cover the DH calendar and you could even switch off for much of July and August.

I’ll probably just go back to watching highlights and Cathro’s videos though.

Surprising, but not a huge loss for me and might even be a slight bonus. I only use it for race coverage, and every June I always wonder if I should switch to Discovery to get Le Mans coverage – so that issue is now solved.

Will be interesting to see how the use the GCN YouTube shows to drive people towards the Discovery subscription

£80+ a year for Discovery+

ooft, that’s gone up since I last looked Edit: because I was thinking of Eurosport

The only option is then to subscribe to Discovery+ to get all the cycling so £6.99 a month vs £39.99 a year.

the trouble is though Discovery isn’t ad free – only GCN+ is/was – which was the whole reason I went with them 🙄

Only subscribed this year for the TdF but also found loads of cool little documentary films on bike packing, adventures etc on there, wonder where they will be available now?

.

I’ve had a scroll through the Discovery+ web interface, and I think it’s a nope from me. It’s a pity – I thought GCN+ was great for making race coverage so accessible – but Discovery+ is a poor like-for-like replacement and it says it contains advertising even after paying a costly subscription. Sad times.

Dumb question, how does one actually get/view discovery plus?

We have a dumb TV with basic freeview (even considering cancelling the TV liceince given how little we use it) and a PS4/connect to ipad for netflix, amazon prime, gcn etc.

On the plus side I bought a year’s sub whenever the Nove mesto XC was (pretty much cost the same as 6-7 months of pay monthly, and thought I might get into winter ‘cross or something) so should get a few months refunded.

Dumb question, how does one actually get/view discovery plus?

not sure if they also have their own app, but you can get it via Prime as a sub-channel (costs extra, obvs)

Well that’s thoroughly ticked me off.

So can you watch races that were say a week ago on either of the other platforms? I rarely have time for live cycling but do watch CX on an evening etc.

Seems like a good idea to me – I sub to discovery+ and don’t want to spend the extra for the few films that gcn+ produced that I’d want to watch. They may publish some of the more widely watched/popular films onto discovery apparently.

So can you watch races that were say a week ago on either of the other platforms?

Discovery+ yes for sure.

I signed up for the GTs but stayed for the really rather good films and of course (as it turned out) the DH coverage. This really does suck balls, especially as the Discovery Plus is going to have ads as well. 

Pretty poor decision. 

Subscribed to watch the DH – got a discounted annual pass for £24 which didn’t seem too bad. There are a few other documentaries I’ve watched, but not much.I guess I’ll have to go month-by-month on Discovery+ now which will cost double. I’m still going to do it though – watching the live DH broadcasts is the only live TV thing I watch any more (no news/sports/celeb stuff/etc).

Discovery Plus is going to have ads as well

Not currently it doesn’t.

not sure if they also have their own app

They do.

It is possible to watch ad free on Europsort and Discovery+. I’ve definitely done this in previous years. Takes a bit of time to get used to the discovery app but it’s ok, I found gcn+ more clunky.

Not currently it doesn’t.

On the support page – clicked through from the GCN+ site it says that they’ll have a limited number of ads in the on-demand content. And says that ads appear already in the live channels?

But if you’re saying they don’t, perhaps that’s a different country/region?

Seems like a good idea to me – I sub to discovery+ and don’t want to spend the extra for the few films that gcn+ produced that I’d want to watch.

Conversely, I ditched my Eurosport On Demand sub when GCN+ came along because I wasn’t interested in any of the non-cycling content.  Now if I want to watch any cycle racing (Road,XC, DH, Cyclocross) I need to subsidise Discovery’s entire content library by paying more than double the amount GCN+ cost for stuff I have no interest in and won’t watch.

This is a horrible decision by WBD and combined with the ‘controversy’ with their takeover of UCI MTB racing this past season, I am very worried that this is the beginning of a dark period for access to cycling content.  I can’t help but wonder how long it is before Discovery ditch their cycling interests because it’s ‘not performing’ due to them putting it behind a paywall that the fans either can’t or won’t pay for.

The fact that the £6.99 pm Discovery+ sub that will now be needed still has ads on it is even more of a kick in the teeth. If I do end up caving to get my racing fix then I’ll be damn sure to deactivate the sub for any months it’s not actively in use..  GCN+ I was happy to just let run on it’s annual sub even though I never used it during the off-season.

I’m on Virgin media and of course they don’t include DiscoveryPlus, 🙄 So it’s the app and chrome casting for me if I want to watch DH. As it’s the same price as GCN+ I guess I’ll do that then?

@Chipps, I’ll send you my log in 🤣

I’m a Eurosport subscriber, and all race coverage is available ad-free. I never bothered with GCN+ as I also wanted to watch the WEC, ski-ing, etc  The only thing I missed out on were the GCN documentaries….

To be honest, did it make any sense to have Eurosport Player, GCN+, GCN app, as well as Eurosport/ Discovery?  Probably not….just a case of cutting costs/ streamlining their services….

On the support page – clicked through from the GCN+ site it says that they’ll have a limited number of ads in the on-demand content. And says that ads appear already in the live channels?

There’s 2 feeds on Discovery if an event has been on Eurosport. There’s the ‘live viewing’ and the Eurosport. Both next to eachother on the catch-up. I have no idea if the Eurosport one has the adverts from TV, because i just click on the other one, which i can promise you, does not.

does this we’ll lose them as commentators? are we stuck with even more Carlton Kirby?

I’m a Eurosport subscriber

Sorry – I might be being thick here – is there still Eurosport available as a subscription – I thought it had already be consumed into discovery….

Not sure if it’s common knowledge on here but it seems that Play Sports Network (the trading name for the company that creates GCN/GMBN/EMBN/GTN etc.) is either already or about to be up for sale by WBD. Seems they have stripped out the PPV cycling content and decided to ditch the YouTube content. Will be curious to see how many of the GCN/GMBN team who are involved in the live coverage stay with WBD.3
Either way it’ll be a lose-lose for cycling fans, the GCN merger into Discovery/Eurosport dramatically improved the commentary and the racing coverage both within and outside of the subscription content and made finding and accessing that content much easier as it was all in the one place.. now we’ll be forced to dig through piles of other content that Discovery want to force on us to find what we want to watch.. like back in the bad old days of Eurosports ‘creatively fluid’ schedule.!!