Anyone subscribe to Flobikes?

Yes, Fubo Cycling had a lot of coverage but its gone except for stuff I didn’t delete on my cloud DVR. After cleaning up stuff late last year all I’ve got left on the DVR is Scheldeprijs, Ronde de Vlaanderen, and the Giro. Don’t know how long that is going to last. Sucks.

As of now, there are zero, nada, nothing listed in FloBikes for 2021 for men’s professional races that are watchable in the US :skull_and_crossbones:

The only sport I can watch in the trainer is DVRed soccer/football for just this reason.

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Summary of what has been laid out so far:

  1. NBC has exclusive production rights to ASO races in the US, at least until the end of 2021. Seems they had a rebroadcast contract with Fubo last year, unclear if there will be anything similar this season.

  2. NBC will still be broadcasting the ASO races through the end of 2021. Future of cycling on NBC and affiliated channels past 2021 is unclear, but not promising.

  3. Fubo has seemingly vanished overnight (or at very least, their cycling coverage) and probably won’t have anything for the 2021 season, unless they’re still rebroadcasting NBC’s coverage.

  4. FloBikes had all major non-ASO races in 2020, and has definitely secured the rights to the UCI SPECIFIC races (World Championships (all), CX World Cup) for 2021.

  5. FloBikes is being very noncommittal about their race coverage for 2021 outside of the UCI races, but is asking us to trust them, that they will have enough coverage to make the $150 worth it.

*GCN had some coverage in 2020, but seems to still be figuring out what they are and are not able to make available in the US.

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Fubo Cycling vanished on January 1. We use Fubo TV for local + other channels and it’s fine, and is still carrying some NBC Sports reruns on The Olympic channel.

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yes this is an important clarification. Fubo is still here and is great. What’s gone is their dedicated Fubo Cycling channel. i emailed them several times to ask about it and have not gotten a response yet after about a week of trying

also to comment on Brian’s summary regarding GCN, i actually subscribed for a bit before discovering Fubo Cycling and it was horrible here in the US. just about every event was blocked. i suspect flobikes is going to be the same way, only except being out $9 or so from a month of GCN i’d be out $150…

As someone who subscribed to Flo Bikes and had a great experience with it last year, I feel I’ve already gotten good value out of it and have been enjoying their CX coverage (limited to World Cup races) since the end of road season.

It seems likely they will have similar coverage in 2021 as to what they had in 2020, but clearly this is still up in the air. I say this because the rights, particularly if there aren’t multiple parties bidding on them, should be theirs for the purchasing - and the cost:benefit dynamic hasn’t dramatically changed from 2020 to 2021

I am hoping/planning that in 2021 we will have very similar US coverage options as to what we had in 2020 - that is you must pay for two services (NBC + whomever ends up with the rights to the ‘everything else’ bucket) to get the majority of world tour events, but that by paying for those two services you get just about everything.

Honestly, I’m excited that we will likely have a new rights holder to ASO events in 2022. This is, for me, only a good thing. I hated NBC coverage and much prefer other platforms and announcers.

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Wow. Finally I found a forum where people are talking about the same thing I’ve been pulling my hair out about for the last month! I’ve subscribed to NBC gold cycling and flobikes for the last few years. I got all the coverage I needed with those two subscriptions. I realize NBC will have all the ASO races this year. Great. Flobikes schedule is void of anything in the US besides CX. I’ve emailed flobikes I’ve message them on Facebook I’ve left messages and posts I got nothing from them but some boiler plate replies. Since flobikes got their coverage from fubo cycling’s broadcasting agreements it seems that Flobikes is dead unless they somehow make their own agreement. That doesn’t seem likely, its a little late in the game but I’ll hold out hope. Also GCN race pass has the US broadcast rights to Kuurne Brussels Kuurne, a race that flobikes used to have is a real bad sign. I will be checking in on this thread for info and add anything I find out as well.

I feel like the GCN race pass stuff has really cut into what flobikes can get the rights to. I think before race pass flo had a deal with eurosport and just picked up a lot of their feeds and either used their commentary or added their own which meant they had a crap ton of races to watch the first year i signed up. 2020 was of course a wierd year to watch races but I can swear a lot of the races i watched in 2019 on flo weren’t shown in 2020, whether pre-hiatus or post. Since i think i’ve heard eurosport is owned by the same parent company as GCN it seems less races have shown up on flo for obvious reasons. Most recently noticeably absent were the 2 other cyclocross series like super prestige and the other one whose name i forget. I watched the crap out of cross on flo in 2019/20 season but this year all flo has had was the UCI world cups and GCN had the other cross races. we’ll see what flobikes can get their hands on for the US crowd but it’s not looking good.

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Someone’s gotta get the rights to Strade B, MSR, Flanders, etc. GCN race doesn’t have em for the USA. If I can’t see those on some subscription site without having to jerk around with Tiz cycling or cycle fans I’m going to be pissed off man!!! Ugh

Good interview on the Velonews podcast this week with John Ourand of the SportsBusiness Journal that clears up some of the questions about NBC’s situation. It seems that they still hold the rights to the Tour (and, I would assume, the other ASO properties) through 2023. They’re plan is to move parts of the Tour (NOT THE WHOLE RACE. Only certain portions. Key stages, the Grand Départ, the Chámps, etc.) over to the USA channel, whilst also moving the rest of the Tour, and probably their other races, over to Peacock. Right now, it seems to me, the cheapest course of action to get non-pirates streams will probably be GCN Race Pass and a VPN.

I’d buy GCN race pass if they had an Apple TV app. I have an Apple TV in my trainer room and can easily and reliably watch flobikes or nbcsports gold.

They say you can cast it from a phone but I don’t trust that that would be reliable. If it froze on minute 6 of a 20 minute interval it would be super frustrating.

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I personally use a first generation Apple TV to cast the CX races on GCN from my phone while on the trainer and can attest that it has been consistently reliable. Certainly no less reliable than quite a few smart TV streaming apps I’ve used, even with the VPN. (Granted, I use an iPhone 11 and 12, no experience using older models or android)

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Interesting. Thank you.

Do you run TrainerRoad off your phone? I do and worry a bit about casting and the TR app not getting along.

Are there apps for those services on an AppleTV? I haven’t found them when I have searched.

My training partner does and has not had any significant or recurring issues. Again, he’s using an iPhone 12, so I can’t attest to older models or non-apple devices, but in our circumstance, it has worked consistently and reliably. I will also clarify that we are watching the replays, not the live events.

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Yes. Flobikes and nbcsports gold both have Apple TV apps. So does Netflix, Amazon prime video and everything else. I can basically watch everything and can switch back and forth while on the bike with the remote.

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I think they are called FloSports and nbcsports apps. You then have to login to the cycling part and nbcsports gold respectively.

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I’ll check it out tonight, thanks!

I had previously been casting to my AppleTV from those apps (with no issues), but obviously using an app directly on the device would be better.

I should say it has to be a relatively new Apple TV. I bought a new one for this. No apps for the 6 year old one that I had previously.