You still got plenty of races and the documentaries. If it wasn’t worth it to you thats cool. But a simple click of a button got you great coverage of almost every race on the cycling calendar and that’s a huge loss
and the price per coverage didn’t compare
Could be worse, could be stuck with NBC 30 min recaps at 3 am
£39.99 in the UK for GCN+ (with no ads)
£6.99 a month, so £83.88 a year in the UK, with no option to pay yearly for a discount, for Discovery Standard (with ads)
No free trial either to see how good/bad it is.
I guess there is additional content on Discovery, but I was only really interested in the cycling to be honest.
With other subscriptions gradually going up in price I have to be picky about which ones I keep that really give the best value.
I suspect I will just sub to Discovery for the months of the grand tours, although ITV 4 in the UK usually have the TDF live and highlights of the Giro and Vuelta.
It was once great…reasonable subscription fees, a monthly option vs. yearly and excellent selection of races and coverage.
But then they lost rights to some races (primarily the Giro and other Italian races)) and despite the loss of content, dramatically raised prices and removed the monthly option. So you were paying far more for substantially less.
then the service got glitchy as hell and they were inserting ads into the coverage all the time, sometimes right in the closing KM’s of a race.
Different organizers so they couldn’t care less what the others are doing, let alone bothering to partner with them for a US-based business model.
This blows.
I felt like cycling was primed for a comeback with the pandemic bike mania + the possibility that Netflix could convert new people to follow the sport. The pandemic cycle was obviously a huge bubble, but surely some would stay interested longer term.
Between this, all the talk of mergers, the best team in the world not being able to find a title sponsor, talk of breakaway leagues, etc, it is feeling a bit like the cycling sky is falling.
This is the same lack of coordination/ misaligned incentives that has Jumbo Visma and others looking to create a new world tour cycling league.
Was just wondering, how much did it cost them to produce even the latest Taiwan Kom video?
They say it’s thanks to the companies sponsoring the trip that they managed to go there, but still, for a 15 mins video the producing costs must be rather steep. Perhaps they will amortise the cost by making other videos during their stay there.
100%…and highlights the imbalance of power / money within the sport.
Hell, even the UCI is nothing but a whipping boy for the race organizers…none of them care about “the sport”, they just care about their slice of the pie.
So I guess discovery/warner/whatever got tired of cancelling things that caused mass outrage (the new looney tunes movie) and wanted to cancel something with a much smaller fan base (cycling in the us)
You forgot the best part about Flo - race replays always had thumbnails showing the winner crossing the line, or better yet, the videos showed the last 10 seconds of the race in the opening credits…
Some clarification / reemphasis from Daniel Lloyd on a few points…
plus the pleasure of adverts being served up to you even though you’re paying subs. Fckers.
So if I use Discovery+, it’ll be very reluctantly, and only for TdF & Vuelta, so less income for them vs my GCN+ sub. 
I’m not sure how they are going to do this as they are terminating access by the sounds of the email
I sometimes wonder if professional cycling is actually trying to create its own demise…
All we want is a modern and reliable way to watch the sport.
A system that works for everyone, regardless of where they live.
We very nearly had that.
At this point I almost hope the Saudi’s buy it, at least we’d be able to watch it.
Disappointing.
Taiwan is THE bike tech cluster in the world. I am sure that GCN shot a number of factory visits, about-to-be-released new tech, etc while they there, and will slowly release the videos over the next few weeks.
It’s a quiet time until TDU in January, so I am sure they will be glad to have some videos on slow release over the next few weeks.
I have acess to regular feed/linear Eurosport 1 HD and Eurosport 2 HD and still subscribed to GCN+.
Ad-free, break-free, whole CX season, easy to find content and some pretty good cycling docs for €40/month? How could I not?
Having previously subscribed to Eurosport +/Player, I won’t be subscribing to Discovery+. Service was shite, could never find anything older than 3 or something days especially alternative feeds. Also way more expensive and with less content while sponsoring the same overlords who just cost a few dozen jobs and clearly don’t value cycling fans? Nah.
I wonder when my classic Eurosport “annual pass” (£39.99) will be retired and I’ll be moved over to Discovery+…
CORPORATE SYNERGIES – gotta love 'em. Somehow they always seem to be worse for the consumer.
So for those in Canada and other regions, what are the alternatives now available that ISNT flo. Tried them, complete and utter waste of money.
Already have VPN for GCN so trying to see what I can flip to for 2024.
Sadly, in the past, this usually involved watching some pirate feed, and praying there was no malware involved.
I only paid for GCN once because I don’t want to do the VPN thing, and their rights were frequently restricted in the US, but this is just a massive loss for the cycling viewership community. I can’t help but wonder, if they had publicized this and doubled prices, could they have survived? I really think people would have paid the money.