GCN+ Shutting Down

If you have Sky, Discovery + is free for Sky Q, Glass and Stream customers. I have been using it since March to watch all of the MTB, Le Mans and the current CX racing. So far, all free of adverts.

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

My understanding is that Eurosport is still a separate thing in parts(?) of continental Europe, but most of it now only exists within Discovery+, I don’t think the Eurosport On Demand app is still a thing. Not in the UK anyway.

free for Sky Q, Glass and Stream customers

Without wishing to be snarky, how much does that cost.?? I’m guessing a fair bit more than £35 a year.!

According to the GCN announcement Eurosport still seems to be an option in Europe:

“In Europe, GCN+ subscribers will now have the option to subscribe to access Discovery+, Eurosport or Eurosport Extra, where you can continue to watch live cycling”.

Eurosport is £39.99 pa at the moment.

Whether coverage will be available “on demand” isn’t clear.

Also no idea what happened to GCN+ films and documentaries present or future.

Discovery+ is a poor like-for-like replacement and it says it contains advertising even after paying a costly subscription. Sad times.

The live feeds don’t if one chooses correctly.

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

Even better the live feeds can be watched sans commentary just the sounds of bikes and the crowd. Bit tricky if one doesn’t have a team sheet to refer to for all of the peleton.

tenfoot
Full Member
If you have Sky, Discovery + is free included for Sky Q, Glass and Stream customers. I have been using it since March to watch all of the MTB, Le Mans and the current CX racing. So far, all free of adverts.

Nothing is free on Sky.

Without wishing to be snarky, how much does that cost.?? I’m guessing a fair bit more than £35 a year.!

£30/month (although there are always offers) if you want standard Netflix, slightly less (£26) if you can handle the basic version

Back to the old days of recording on Eurosport, then playing catch-up when the other half goes to bed and frees up telly.

So lots of lates nights, usually half asleep and praying it’s not recorded 4 hours of snooker.

I thought it was too good to last.

Just received my GCN+ email. Zero mention of switching over to another service, which seems odd

Eurosport shows nearly all the cycling I want to see, it’s only £40 a year for subscription.

Didn’t someone call this when they made the bid and it was pointed out they have history for just canning stuff? “Oh no they wouldn’t” was the response. IIRC

I found the GCN subscription running parallel to Eurosport a bit confusing TBH.

Was GCN+ a success?

If so….

Maybe they’ve realised they’d under priced the subscription and will relaunch it next year with a few tweaks with a hefty price rise.

If not, then…

Maybe it’s services will go back to they used to be, on YouTube.

I don’t think you switch from what I made of it, you’ll get an auto-cancel and refund.

Watched the vid now – that’s a shame.

I won’t be looking for an alternative or heading towards Discovery. For me the £30 odd was about what it was worth. Especially because the smart TV and the roku stick I have didn’t work with GCN+ so watching on a proper sized screen was always a faff so I didn’t use it as much as I should.

I’d have paid similar or a bit more for a old school eurosport style service of a bit of bike racing and a bit of winter sport (always partial to biathlon and ski jumping for some reason) but there is no way I could ever justify £30pm for a discovery+ sub.

So end of the road me. Best I watch a few of their cycle specific documentaries before they disappear.

edit –

Eurosport shows nearly all the cycling I want to see, it’s only £40 a year for subscription.

could you post a link to where you get eurosport for that price – this is all I can find….https://get.discoveryplus.com/gb/watch-eurosport-on-discoveryplus?cnt=gb&utm_campaign=WW-EU-D1-EU-C7-EU-BAU-DR-W-AllSports-Undefined-220101-NA&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=eurosport.com&utm_content=home-top-banner-subscribe

Haze
Full Member
I don’t think you switch from what I made of it, you’ll get an auto-cancel and refund.

Yup that’s it, but I assumed they’d at least suggest you go have a look at spendign your money on Discovery instead

Didn’t someone call this when they made the bid and it was pointed out they have history for just canning stuff? “Oh no they wouldn’t” was the response. IIRC

I was saying that I wouldn’t be surprised if DH went the same way as Batgirl.  I wasn’t expecting them to get rid of the whole of GCN+.

Looking at this from a non-EU person POV, does that mean most people in the world won’t be able to watch DH now?

didnthurt
Full Member
Eurosport shows nearly all the cycling I want to see, it’s only £40 a year for subscription.

Except going to Eurosport now sends you on to Discovery instead

I’m a Eurosport subscriber, and all race coverage is available ad-free

Really? I get Eurosport through my Sky package, still waiting for Niels and Dendermonde highlights 🙄

So to summarise, it’s £6.99 pm for Discovery+ standard to catch up on racing that I can’t watch live. And there’s no additional content on-demand, just what’s been on Eurosport already…including adverts?
Might be cheaper to upgrade our VM to multi-room and watch it in the kitchen, doesn’t solve the Eurosport scheduling issue though…

If we take a step back for a minute and think about what this means for mountain biking, it’s actually quite serious.

It sounds like UK based folk have options that aren’t that much more expensive than GCN+ (although still more expensive for a poorer service) but that’s not the case across Europe.  My only option to watch live cycling on Discovery+ would cost £18 per month (annual subscription) and is just not worth it for me. And the rest of the World is currently completely cut off from watching mountain biking at all.

If teams weren’t sure about competing next year this is really not going to help.

Except going to Eurosport now sends you on to Discovery instead

Just checked my Eursports app and if still looks the same and doesn’t mention Discovery that I can see. 

Although it doesn’t have the weekend’s CX highlights, it does have the full races, you can even select the commentary language for that real Belgium feel. 

I think Eurosport and discovery are linked / one and the same in the UK – it’s only some other parts of Europe where Eurosport is still a thing?

This thread kinda sums up my feelings about it really, lots of different people subscribing to multiple platforms that provide similar/same/cross content. The people who will loose out are those that only sub to gcn+ with no access to other platforms or now will have more expensive access through discovery+ with additional content that they aren’t interested in.

FWIW for those wondering about migrating…

I went with Discovery+ at the start of 2023 as I couldn’t bear not watchng the DH and – I thought it was great.

I also used to on/off subscribe to Eurosport player for specific events, (Le Mans 24h) so to have that in the same place works great.

App on phone works great. App on Google TV works great. Casting works great video and audio quality good…. I was happy to pay for it and will do again once the seasons starts up in the new year.

(it also works through a browser window unlike NowTv, Netflix etc making it usable on all devices – this is a big thing!)

Eurosport’s app can be very clunky with some events/races stuffed into a difficult to define genres and subgenres which does not help with navigation around when looking for something specific. I’ve also had some races being totally missnamed and also some clipped to miss the beginning or end of the race. But….. Its pretty cheap and does allow me access to diverse selection of events advert free.

I just want to watch the top 3 DH runs and highlights on YouTube + behind the lines by Cathro. Would be more than happy to pay per race like renting a movie. Not interested at all in any subscription service hitting my bank account that I have to remember or navigate to.

Does anyone know if you get Discovery+ through a sky subscription can you then watch anything via the Discovery+ app.  I know you can get Eurosport in the Sky App, but not Discovery+ as that is an”app” on the SkyQ box

Here’s the wording of the email I got an hour or so ago, which ai presume is the same as for the rest of you that subscribe too.

On the other hand being a Sky subscriber discovery+ is included for free. There was a point when sports on the app wasn’t included but that changed earlier this year.

Real bugger.

I have  it mainly for the the films un winter when in the turbo – Zwuft does less than nothing for me so a good cycling film, especially the more adventure based ones were my bag. And a couple of the Spring Classics.

Sky is not ever entering this household. I’d rather poke my eyes of with a shiiity stick than watch or give money to murdochvision.

As an app app there was more available, the built in sky glass app was limited on catch up stuff, or at least the app had a better interface.

What a crying shame. Apart from ITV4 showing whatever cycle racing it can (usually Le Tour and Tour of Britain). GCN was fantastic for our cycling mad house.
Although it was time that Sean went.

They’ll need to open an onlyfans for the GCN+ vids

robertajobb you’ll be safe now as it’s been owned by Comcast for a few years now.

Not good news! I paid the £40 annual fee for the DH. Enjoyed the coverage but think I’ll get the partial refund and survive on YT highlights next year🙁

This is really sad. The team were putting out great content. Got gcn for the cross but stayed for the spring classics and wall to wall coverage of bike racing across all disciplines.

What is happening to MTB? It’s gone for free on red bull to part of a subscription?

Happy to subscribe as the £/HR is low. Not sure what I’d go for. Only really interested in cycling. Only other TV I watch is on demand stuff from the free sources like C4, BBC and ITV.

Seems like another regressive move for the paying punter. I get Eurosport on Virgin but paid the extra £20 a month for the Eurosport app when it was available to allow me to watch highlights and catchup at a time (and place) that suited me. I was gutted when they ditched the app in favour of GCN, but I grudgingly paid for that at twice the price (£40). The app was a bit ropey at times – hard to find highlights, and video quality was highly variable.

I’ll probably give the Discovery+ thing a try but to me it’s removing choice and increasing price for the punter. In an age where piracy is a growing problem for broadcasters, this seems very short sighted.

I’m more than a little miffed – I love GCN+

I’ve had Discovery+ & it’s utterly shite. Some content never appears, it doesn’t have a functional catch-up  service so you can’t watch the cycling when you want; the highlights programmes sometimes never materialise; the fast forward & rewind function is a lottery… it’s possibly the worst streaming service I’ve ever used, & was the reason I got a fire stick & GCN subscription.

As some have said above, this is the end of me watching cycling. **** great one..!

I never bothered with gcn as it seemed to have the same cycling content as Eurosport without the winter sports and motor racing for the same price. I’m hoping than my Eurosport sub keeps renewing as I’m not going to pay £7 / month for discovery.

It is not great that a cycling specific platform is shutting down, however I do not see this as the end of the world.

From what I gathered, all of the flag to line cycling coverage was effectively simulcast on GCN+ and Discovery+ . I watched on GCN+ but I distinctly remember the commentators noting that TV viewers would leave for an ad break whereas GCN+ & Discovery+ viewers would stay for uninterrupted coverage (ie no adverts).

So for me this is win-win, I get the cycling and access to other sports, but don’t get access to the documentaries which to be honest, I didn’t watch.

So for me this is win-win, I get the cycling and access to other sports, but don’t get access to the documentaries which to be honest, I didn’t watch.

For a lot more money. Simon’s deal above appears to not be available as a new sign ups.