So has anyone in the US gone ahead with D+ membership via vpn?!
Which one of us is going first….someone has to
So someone can correct me if I’m wrong but I thought a VPN wasn’t enough to get the “Euro” version of Discovery+? I thought it also involved registering in such a way to “trick” it into thinking you’re a European resident.
I truthfully don’t know but I suppose you’re right. Someone has to try it.
That is my understanding is as well, but someone earlier up thread had a post about how to work that angle.
ETA - I don’t think there is any need yet for any of us to try an dodgy practices just yet. We don’t know what action plan may or may not be for other regions. It could be as simple as folding the races into the Discovery+ app in those regions (even if the US version does not currently have sports).
As noted in the EC articles and pod, WB / Discovery also own a chunk of FLO, so the races may well end up there….which would obviously be massively disappointing and will then see me engaging in dodgy actions. 
So you’re saying that you’re okay with using this get to entertainment content someone isn’t allowed to access, but you’re against using it to overthrow dictatorships?
More seriously, it’s worth noting that using a vpn and related tricks to get around geoblocking isn’t always against the contract you have with a provider. I just learned that this is Netflix’s stated policy on VPNs: " Watching Netflix while using a VPN isn’t allowed on an ad-supported plan. Live events on Netflix can’t be watched while using a VPN."
the vpn is one thing but there’s probably another component where you have to have uk (for example) credit card tied to a verified physical uk address in order to subscribe. virtual credit cards are easy, but being tied to an actual overseas address is beyond my capabilities and i’m not sure could be overcome so easily…
but again i’m going to act like an old man screaming at the sky. WHY does this have to be so difficult just to watch a sport i love? it’s the most absurd thing i’ve ever seen and it seriously sours me on the sport. as much as i love it, if they don’t want me to watch, i have to turn my back on it
agreed
It looks like Discovery Plus is still only in a very small handful of markets.
This is such bull sh!t 
Looking now at Flobikes, and it looks like $29.95/month or $149 a year. Flobikes have some of the gcn race content (with NBC/Peacock having some of the rest?). So a 300% increase in price for 1/2 the stuff (not to mention the lack of the documentaries etc).
Realistically, I can cope without 75% of the races on GCN, but the 25% of the races on GCN I really are about are split across Flobikes and Peacock.
So another option other than FloBikes + Peacock will be needed.
Assuming FLO ends up being the answer for the US (and this is very much just speculation and dot-connecting), it would likely be with the transfer of rights for the races that GCN had for the US region, so in theory, all the gaps would be covered.
In theory and if FLO is the solution provided…and I pray fervently it is not.
I felt GCN in US wasn’t very good for coverage anyways, besides the price. I always used VPN to UK and it was great. I tried to VPN Netflix to UK from US but it didn’t work. Hopefully I can get a UK discovery plus but I’m gonna wait to hear some positive reports from others before dropping cash on it
For those thinking GCN+ closed because of financial insolvency, I think you are incorrect.
(Raising subscription prices could have addressed that issue.)
My understanding is that GCN took a major investment in order to get the race streaming off the ground. The major investor is (or sold to) Discovery/Warner Brothers.
Discover/WB don’t care if GCN makes money or not - they just want to suck the blood out of your little wallet into their one-size-fits-all least-common-denominator streaming service.
In this case that means screwing over a (relatively) small passionate community and dedicated content creators. Discover/WB couldn’t care less.
I feel it’s getting to the point where it’s not the subscription fee anymore. It’s more about how much ad revenue can they generate. GCN and others prob can’t generate enough advertisers for the hours the event is broadcast. No one is out bidding The Feed or Alpecin for spots during the Tour here in the USA.
As for cycling coverage on the television, in Texas we get hours of High School football and “0” coverage of any local bicycling events.
But the dearth of cycling awareness in America is sad. I thought that part of it was the ‘Eurocentrist’ rules of ‘Professional Cycling’. The US Postal cycling team had to be sponsored by a European team to compete on the world’s stage. Corporations either haven’t figured out how to monetize the sport, or don’t want to for some reason. Heck, I was shocked to find out that a local college actually had a cycling team at one point, and no one had ever heard of it.
Most ‘Americans’ find cycling boring yet will watch golf, and people riding around in gas guzzling cars for HOURS. (With many watching the later admitting to watching ‘for the crashes’) My idiot brother ‘accidentally’ watched Tour de France coverage and was, according to his wife, TRANSFIXED, focused on the coverage.
My point is that if ‘cycling’ got more support, if there was a ‘Tour of America’, if there were ‘Tour of [insert your state name here]’ races/tours, people would give a crap about cycling in general, and follow it. I remember, being at university, there was a ‘Tour of Michigan’ rolling through the state capital, and people lined up at the barricades to watch them screaming by at breakneck speed. I was there!! I was amazed at the speeds.
Just watching a segment on MSNBC on the surging popularity of F1 racing in America, and how even teenagers are drawn to that ‘sport’. THAT could be cycling in America!! “America is finally catching up with the rest of the world” was just said with no irony. (YEAH! Let’s expand gas guzzling car racing in a time when climate change is both searing and drowning the planet? Really?!)
Bike racing needs to be more prominent than it is currently. People can be drawn to this sport, and it won’t have the baggage of ‘motorsports’. Out of all the things that could ahve come out of Europe, it’s Formula 1 Racing? Really?
Services like GCN+ would have a much larger audience, obviously. How can we get cycling to be taken seriously by the people in this country.
But is watching bike racing increasing or decreasing in draw across Europe?
And I was shocked to see mountain bike racing on CNBC! It must have been a slow weekend? I think it was live, and it totally blew me away. Like finding TdF on NBCSN, although it wasn’t very consistent, sadly.
In defense of FloBikes, one nice thing is that they’ll post the full length video of some of their races to their Youtube channel. Makes it easy to watch replays with English commentary.
Cycling IS boring. I love the sport, and love watching it…but most of the time the Tour is on as background noise while I do other things. CX and XCO are more exciting to watch, but they’re niche disciplines even within the cycling world.
We had the Tour of California and Tour of Utah…no one watched or cared about them.
It seems you really dislike auto racing, but if you honestly cant tell why F1 is as popular as it is, especially compared to cycling, then Idk what to say
I thought the US problem is races are split between Flo and Peacock. So to get all the GCN with VPN coverage, you’d need two services (and still miss some. I can take losing some stuff, but aren’t the grand tours already split across two platforms?
I was riffing on my NASCAR addicted brother, who ripped me about my cycling ‘hangup’, was sucked in to watching the TdF, and thought enough of it to call me after and talk about it. He’s a guy that lives breaths and practically eats NASCAR. He’s been to hundreds of races, my thousands. He said he’s rather watch golf than think about watching bike racing, and yet, he got hooked at least for a day. He had a new respect for the sport. Whether he still does watch.follow or not, I don’t know, but I was fascinated that he actually seemed to like it.
And, yeah, I did a ;NASCAR Experience’, driving a real NASCAR car around a real NASCAR track at pretty close to real NASCAR speeds, and I WAS DRIVING! I got a new level of respect for the sport, but that didn’t include a blind love to devotion to it. With all of the idiotic rules and all, and climate change breathing down our necks, it’s a selfish and primitive waste of the environment. It’s like someone found a whole new environment to burn down to watch people ride around in a circle for hours. Yeah, not a fan. At least some of the racism has been drained out of it, but the whole industry surrounding it was (is) a misogynistic/racist hot mess. That whole sport has also advertised tobacco and alcohol as if it was their only reason for being (which it was, because sponsors = $$$). Not a net positive for the world.
WE NEED MORE BIKE RACING IN AMERICA.
Cycling IS boring.
Well, yes, but I spent part of a summer actually watching golf, and getting in to the physics of the game. I’m not embarrassed. It was interesting. Am I a better golfer for it? Hardly…
Also, let’s not pretend bike racing is some environmentally friendly venture with its parade of motorcycles, team cars & busses…plastic water bottles being randomly thrown into fields, forests and whatever types of nature the peloton is riding through…
I agree that most cycling is boring. I don’t who those people are that can watch the first 4 hours of a TdF stage where nothing happens until 30km to go.
People who say that golf is boring don’t understand golf. Golf is interesting as a spectator sport since it happens sequentially and not all at once like most other sports.
I really got into F1 because of the Drive to Survive series but I still find actual F1 races a little boring. Drive to Survive though helped to appreciate those races. I don’t think the Netflix series on the Tour de France will do the same thing for cycling.