No more ITV Tour de France coverage

No more ITV Tour de France coverage after next year!!  It will be exclusively on Eurosport which is a tragedy, I really enjoy the highlights show with Ned Boulting & co, they’re a great team.

https://road.cc/content/news/no-tour-de-france-itv-2026-310953

I went to Ned’s show a couple of days ago and chatted with him afterwards, but he didn’t mention this, hope they had some advance warning.

Noooooo…!

If they do, then they are likely to know about it now…a real shame as it is good. More power to the people who think they can churn more money for subscriptions to get people to watch this…I suspect a lot will just switch off from trying to follow this and those who do pay are likely to already have a subscription that covers this.

Oh no, it really won’t be the same without Gary Imlach presenting and Matt Stephens reporting (plus Chris Boardman if he turns up).

Orla does a decent job holding it together on ES, but they just don’t give it the same production values or put each day in context so well.

Oh no, that’s a shame. I really enjoy the ITV coverage. Theme tunes a banger as well.

Bollocks. Enshittification continues

on ES, but they just don’t give it the same production values or put each day in context so well

Couldn’t disagree more, the Eurosport commentators have incredible knowledge both of the race, the areas, the teams, the politics, the battles.. They’re absolutley astounding

(as long as you ignore the pronunciation of names of riders 😀 )

the Eurosport commentators have incredible knowledge both of the race, the areas, the teams, the politics, the battles.. They’re absolutley astounding

some of them, yes. Others, MUCH less so. More, that only really matters if you watch the whole thing. The production values on the “highlights” programme fall WOEFULLY short of the ITV version

The production values on the “highlights” programme fall WOEFULLY short of the ITV version

This. ITV4’s highlights show was a highlight (sorry…) in itself, it wasn’t just the last 30km of the race replayed. It had history, geology, scenery and architecture, behind-the-scenes racing news, interviews, race analysis…

The production values on the “highlights” programme fall WOEFULLY short of the ITV version

Hence my only really watching the Tour coverage and missing the Vuelta and Giro highlights programmes. I suppose the upside is that it will free up an hour of every evening in peak summer.

Yeah, I’ll miss the highlights package – I rarely get to watch whole stages but the hour in the evening on itv is packed and you leave really knowing what happened on the stage.

Hopefully eurosport/discovery will up their game here as 15 minutes of badly edited highlights really doesn’t do the same job. I share a disco subscription with a mate (mainly for mtb) so can still watch but Orla has become quite grating and the banter doesn’t really work for me.

Overall: gutted!

That’s a massive shame.  A core part of the summer – just a really warm, entertaining show – the whole team were great.

Next year will be a bitter-sweet

Yea, we have the eurosport as part of some other package and still watch it on ITV (streamed so you can actually see what’s going on rather than the blurred mess of compression artefacts and SD that passes for ITV4). It’s a shame so much sport is slowly going behind paywalls.

I went to Ned’s show a couple of days ago…

We’re going next week, looking forward to it. Been to a couple of his previous ones.

If EuroSport have any sense, they’ll bring David and Ned along with it and finally put Sean Kelly out to pasture.

I’ve watched Gary Imlach get old, coped with the replacement of Liggett and Sherwen by Ned and David, still remember the original Channel 4 theme tune (and its replacement). After more than 30 years it will be a different July. The end of an ear.

https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/racing/tour-de-france/cars-set-fire-basque-separatists-inside-story-itvs-tour-de-france-coverage-432763

We subscribed to D+ solely for the cycle racing, then subscribed to itvx (on a £20 for the year special offer admittedly, wouldn’t have paid full price) solely so we could watch the highlights programme online without ads, as the broadcast version is so horrible

More to the point, how will I know which funeral / cremation plan to go for?! Has no-one thought about the poor donkey sanctuary?

Been watching on Channel 4 and ITV since probably 1984, so personally gutted to hear this as well.

I doubt very much I would pay to see it even with my history of interest and enjoyment.

I also dislike the highlights package on Eurosport on comparison.

More to the point, how will I know which funeral / cremation plan to go for?! Has no-one thought about the poor donkey sanctuary?

And how are those lions who work for Injury Lawyers 4 You going to keep in antelope steaks?

Shame,I realy like the highlights on ITV.

A good team and their analysis and race comments are usually spot on.

Going to see Ned next week,will be interesting if there are any ‘questions’ from the audience.

Yep, really disappointing decision. As a former lover of cricket and F1 I haven’t watched them in years since they went to sky.

I have a discovery+ subscription so can watch but have always vastly preferred the ITV highlights to Eurosport. There packages provide no context of the stage, either the last 30km replayed or random time/distance jumps without any linking. A jarring watch.

What a shame – been watching it it since the late 80’s on terrestrial TV, and the current show is great. The theme tunes are evocative, and I will miss doing air accordian at the start of the programme! I got pretty tired of Phil Liggett in the end, and much prefer the current setup, and i’ve always enjoyed Gary Imlach’s sardonic set-pieces…

@onewheelgood no need to do a Van Gogh, it’s only a change of coverage!

Good to see so much love for it anyway, hope the programme makers know how highly people think of their work.

On the subject of sport and paywalls, it’s obviously worked well enough for top-level soccer – but perhaps ASO are being short-sighted in taking the WBD megabucks and potentially cutting off a pipeline of future fans?

If they are not working on the tour for another media channel it will also mean the end of Never Strays Car TDF.

Double gutted.

This is gutting. The highlights show is the most perfect and best put together sports show in the UK. The Eurosport version is so poor in comparison.

That’s a massive shame. A core part of the summer – just a really warm, entertaining show – the whole team were great.

That’s how I feel too. **** Eurosport.

Oh well, that’s another sport I won’t be watching.

Sadly, I’ll still have to pay Discovery+ for a couple of months for the Classics but there’s no way round that, as far as I can see.

As much as I’ve loved watching the Tour over the years, back to the Channel 4 days as others have said, I don’t really have time for anything other than the highlights now and Eurosport offerings were crap.

On the subject of sport and paywalls, it’s obviously worked well enough for top-level soccer – but perhaps ASO are being short-sighted in taking the WBD megabucks and potentially cutting off a pipeline of future fans?

It’s an odd one, arguably Pro cycling is like 90’s Premier league football still.  It’s as good as it’s going to get, but it’s not the global behemoth it could be. The problem is if they want to grow the audience and make £££ that’s going to mean the classics and other smaller but traditionally important races being replaced by new ones in other markets. If you want to sell cycling to viewers in the Emirates / Kazakhstan / California , you need races in the Emirates / Kazakhstan / California not some rainy windswept corner of Belgium.

Hopefully in 20 years time we’re not bemoaning the lack of Paris-Roubaix whilst riders attend contractually obliged pre-season races elsewhere.

🙁

Cancelled my Disco+ sub mid TdF because I realised I just didn’t care enough. Didn’t are enough to watch whole stages (life is just too important to devote so much of yours watching other people living theirs) and their highlights are shite. The ITV ones were much better. Orla Chennaoui just annoys me for some reason and Sean Kelly should have been pushed out to pasture around the end of the last millennium.

The ITV mob are just plain better at doing their jobs – that’s the presenters, the hired in experts and the editorial staff.

Beyond some grumpy middle aged men – it’s a shame for the UK cycle industry too. The last thing they needed was the removal of free to air access to watching an hour or so of their products ridden by people who look like they know what they’re doing.

@onewheelgood no need to do a Van Gogh, it’s only a change of coverage!

I worked somewhere once where it was part of the banter to randomly insert anagrams into your speech. I can never hear ‘end of an era’ without mentally substituting ‘ear’. Sorry.

Anyway, it may only be a change of coverage, but as others have said, much though I like Orla, the Eurosport coverage is just not as good. It’s competent enough, but somehow the C4/ITV programme had a warmth and charm that Eurosport cannot replicate.

It’s an odd one, arguably Pro cycling is like 90’s Premier league football still.  It’s as good as it’s going to get, but it’s not the global behemoth it could be.

It’s got more commercial potential, for sure, but I don’t think WBD are the operator to realise that potential.

They won’t be giving it the big budget Sky Sports treatment that the footy or (presumably) golf get. They’ll continue on a shoestring with their clunky, lazy editing and patchy commentary and presenting.

Same probably applies to the DH, sadly.

I thought TDF existed to be a massive, beautiful advert for potential paying visitors to France. If that was the case, you would think they would want it viewed by as wide an audience as possible, rather than hiding behind a paywall.

Rubbish news, won’t pay to watch it. Will be end of an era,

Oh man, that is gutting though I did suspect this must be on the cards sooner or later.

I have Eurosport but it their coverage seems quite functional and staid to me and you can tell they just lob it together with less thought than ITV. I will definitely miss Ned Boulting and David Miller (plus also Daniel Friebe tbf).

I find the actual commentary on Eurosport highlights pretty irritating tbh (I think its Carlton Kirby and Rob Hatch maybe?) though the Eurosport post-race analysis is quite good.

Thats really disappointing.  They had the highlights package down to a tee.  Gary Imlach will be much missed as will the theme tune.  Just won’t be the same with Eurosport.

Terrible decision by the money men

No issue with the race coverage on Eurosport, but the whole package as others have said on itv highlights is great.

Noooo…

the C4/ITV programme had a warmth and charm that Eurosport cannot replicate

This… The commentary team were as much part of July as the Tour, for me.

I’m more likely to ride out to France to see a stage or two than get a Eurosport sub. Just not that bothered by racing overall, the Tour is as much about it being part of summer evenings and a love of France overall since the mid 80s, as the racing itself.

Will be end of an era,

and the start of an error.

Though to be fair if Ned and David start doing cricket it might make that watchable.