GCN was owned by a parent company called Play Sports who is focused on cycling. They went through all the effort to get the cycling rights and create GCN+.
Discovery has owned a majority share in Eurosport since 2015. They presumably viewed acquiring Play Sports as a good synergy with the cycling coverage on Eurosport (which it was) and also acquired it in 2021 during the pandemic when everyone was going all in on streaming.
The next year Discovey and Warner Media merged but this left the new company with an enormous amount of debt to the previous owners of Warner Media, AT&T.
So you have a new debt laden merged company with no real sense of identity at a time when itās clear that consumers arenāt going to continue to subscribe to a bunch of concurrent streaming platforms forever. There will be winners and losers in the bigger game against platforms like Netflix, and WB Discovery is looking like a loser.
Late to the discussion here but was planning on getitng GCN+ for this winters trainer rides. Any idea where I can find their documentaries or XCO races from last season in the US?
I havenāt been following this thread, but sharing just in case others, like me, didnāt know Max is going to carry the GCN catalog, and it looks like itās free for at least the next few months, at least through the Giro. How to Watch Bike Racing on Max in 2024
Note that Max has said those will be available for live streaming. In my limited experience with Max, thereās a lot available for live streaming that isnāt available on-demand. I watch almost all of the racing on-demand, not live, so Iām not sure what the status will be.
And for anyone who hasnāt been following the thread or digging into the details:
The Max interface provides a very limited window of forward-looking availability (only about two weeks).
When I looked in January, there were no cycling filters available.
In some places, they say that there are 300 live events available across all sports; in others they say that there are 300 live events available for cycling.
It would be great if they carry the full GCN+catalog, but given that a month after the announcement, I didnāt see any of the back catalog available, Iām not sure what to expectā¦
I havenāt figured out what I am going to do. I have been watching some Sci-fi, I found the cycling channel on Roku (which is free) which looks like a hodgepodge of old race analysis off of YouTube) and I started watching season one of the Lifetime series on YouTube. Iām sure I will break down and get Max if they have the replays.
This seems like generally good news, but whether/how on demand viewing will work is going to be key. Iām on the west coast so most races start at like 3am my time, I pretty much ONLY watch on-demand after the fact.
Finally got round to subscribing to Discovery+ UK. It looks not bad and pretty intuitive on the web, I hope the app is too. I used to like streaming GCN movies on the train; hopefully they have something similar.
Iām in the US and Iāve been using Discovery+ UK for a bit over a month now. Here are some of my observations so far.
For background, my setup is an Ipad + ExpressVPN.
I have not been able to download the UK app. So Iām limited to accessing through a browser.
I am only able to view content when using Safari. With Chrome, Iām able to login but content does not play.
The web based UI is not super user friendly but also not terrible.
I get great throughput (thanks expressVPN)
I AM able to airplay to my Apple TV, even when Iām on VPN. Thatās a great surprise.
I get the same content as I had on GCN+, including the multiple audio channels.
Iām not surprised that he canāt download the app.
App stores are typically specific to different regions, and the account that you use to log into an App Store is usually specific to that country.