This is not great at all.
What a bummer.
The racing!! I hope Warner bro will figure out how we can watch the racing on a weekly basis.

Daved.

---

http://www.theundergroundcoach.com

In Europe, it's a pivot over to the Discovery+ branding to show races via Eurosport, etc.

Nothing announced yet for anyone outside of the Euro zone.

Purely speculative -- but I'd imagine this means major changes to the PTO's content distribution model as well.

---

----------------------------------
Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

What the hell am I supposed to do at work now?

Wow. Super disappointed for all of the GCN+ folks who have been generating terrific content. Personally, this is a big negative impact as I watched racing during indoor training and enjoyed the cycling news and feature videos. I suppose that WB/Disc will bundle GCN with other content and charge more than GCN+ alone. I'm sure that they have run the models and are confident that they will make more $ this way. But I'm confident that I won't go for the false economy of $1/channel/month for 50 channels all bundled together (or, whatever) - with only one channel that I'm interested in watching.

Hmmm... Why did Ryan pull the link to the YouTube announcement by GCN+. Is there something that he/ST knows about that announcement?

Back to Eurosport like decades before. Nothing like major companies coming together to limit access and make enjoying these sports shittier.

There are a few other really terrible cycling subscriptions available. Do your research because there are a few major brands that are absolute shite.

GCN plus has given us the best bike racing coverage we have ever had in the US, and at a very modest price. What did we pay - $50 a year....so about $4 a month for great bike racing coverage. Could even log on with a VPN to watch races not available in the US. As others have said i expect it is going to be bundled with lots of crap i have no interest in and the price will be much higher.

---

And the question remains. where were you.

Ryan just embedded the video (by replacing the link with its youtu.be version you get from clicking on the "share" button on YT).

---

"FTP is a bit 2015, don't you think?" - Gustav Iden

One of them tries to piss on its customers while gaslighting them that it’s only rain. This company, of course, is appropriately named Flo.

This is life altering. It is almost all I watch. Will we be able to subscribe to Eurosport then? I can't go to NBC coverage. I can't. I won't. This is not happening. I've evolved from reading 2 column inches in the paper the day after the race in the '80s to a full week's recap on NBC on the weekends in the 90's to finally being able to mainline cycling coverage almost 24/7. You can't rip this from me now.

---

cock-up before conspiracy

Accept all our cookies and the YouTube embeds actually work as God intended.

(Also that means you help keep the lights on around here.)

---

----------------------------------
Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

Simply sad.

Considering the GCN+'s great value for relatively low money, it seems to me that it was just too good. Something like: "we'll decommission GCN+ and to all the current subscribers we'll offer a package for 4x the price. We estimate that only 1/3 of the current subscribers will accept the new deal, but doing so we'll net increase our revenue by 33%. In addition, the overlapping costs will marginally go down."

This was the operating model for cable companies, it seems we're shifting back to it slowly.

Basic pack had ESPN and Hallmark. If you wanted ESPN2 you had to buy an entire package that included Oxygen. God forbid you also wanted a local sports network, that would be tied in with The Oprah Network as well. Makes sense, every football fan I know can't miss a day of The View.

They did an excellent job of making sure the packages they offered were very horizontal, having one or two stations that the average person would be interested in, then stacking the other stations that same person would like into different tiers. This seems to be the same road we're going down now, albeit for different reasons.

Yeah, I don't know why they maybe didn't just try to jack up the price. I'd have easily paid double. It'd be interesting to know the details behind it. There were rumors that the app development - and the GCN+ app is genuinely slick - was just too expensive to maintain. Or maybe conventional media broadcasters like Eurosport cable got too upset at GCN+ taking over and just squeezed GCN+ with impossible licensing costs.

Yeah, U.S. FloBikes is like Uncle Bob's Discount Streaming compared to GCN+ (only at 3x the cost and 1/100th the # of races covered). I don't mind the announcers they use, but they're so cheap they normally won't hire two. And just one person talking is never anywhere near as good as the banter between two. What is the cost for having someone remote telework announce a bike race for a few hours. A couple hundred bucks? So cheap.

I will definitely go down the VPN rabbithole now as a U.S. viewer.

GCN and Eurosport have the same parent company / ownership. Both are the WB Discovery group.

Interesting.

Apparently, all of the GCN Content away from Racing will go on. Not sure how it will work in Europe but in North America, most of the Pro Race Coverage was streamed either on GCN or FloBikes - each one taking a bit of a different approach to it all. Full disclosure - I do Commentary for FloBikes for a few of the races that they pick up each year.

The question is, for Canada and the U.S. - what does this mean in terms of how we can access Coverage of European Races, because for easy math, we have just lost the ability to watch half of the racing that was available?

---

---

Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

UK discovery+ standard plan is 7 GBP / month. PL Eurosport Extra plan is 30 PLN (7-8 USD) / month.

Annual ES coverage is 40£/ year. In other words, really inexpensive.

Much more difficult is spoofing the payment system to have it accept a credit card not issued in the EU/ UK.

Hmmm...I must have been a cookie disabler in a past life b/c I can't see the embedded link. But from 'profile settings / profile settings', I don't see a way to adjust the cookie settings despite this description: 'From here you can change your username, password, email addresses, user icon, signature, and cookie settings.' Happy to do the right thing if I can figure out how to do it! FWIW, I am automatically logged in upon access, so *some* cookies are accepted, I think...

Clear browser history and cache, come on back, then when Cookiebot pops up, accept all cookies (not just the "necessary" ones -- long story, but embedding YouTube is viewed as a marketing cookie.)

Or use a browser other than Firefox, because they like to disable everything these days.

---

----------------------------------
Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

I was a new subscriber this year, only so I could watch the UCI WC mountain bike racing. Years prior, the race coverage was free via RedBull TV. The GCN+ coverage was worse and the app was terrible. Streaming was incredibly glitchy and painful to watch (via amazon fireTV). We had to clear the cache for ALL of the apps on the FireTV, reboot things, and then pray to the cycling gods that we might get clear streaming. We don't have to do this for any of the other things that we watch through our FireTV.

While the loss of broad content is sad, their UCI MTB coverage was definitely not great.

That's about the best way I could put it. Also, they have an amazing way of putting up a minute race recap on Youtube that spoils everything in the thumbnail. Whatever anyone does, I would highly suggest staying away from them.

Huh. I watch GCN+ through a Fire Cube and it's flawless and smooth. Previously, I used a Fire Stick and that worked, but seemed pretty underpowered so starting the app (any app!), navigation through the choices, etc. was sluggish (although the videos were fine). Not that any of this matters after mid-December. :(

David Zaslaz and Gunnar Wiedenfels are in cost cutting mode right now. WBD is carrying an obscene amount of debt at the moment and they need to drive down their costs ASAP. They are seemingly moving in the right direction at the moment, but their stock still took a hit after the most recent earnings report so there is still much cutting to be done.

Bummer…GCN+ was great for watching cyclocross during the winter months while doing trainer road workouts. Not sure how to watch now that they cut us off in the USA!

I'm just surprised there were apparently no buyers for the GCN/GCN+ app. It took years to develop, there are probably millions of capital invested in it. And it's, as far as I can tell as a user, *good*. I'd though it'd be the crown jewel of GCN assets, other than their core personalities. Maybe it's just so maintenance-heavy or generating such huge cloud service costs that self-supporting monetization is just impossible. Don't know.

Hopefully the shutdown is just short-term cost cutting while the app app is shopped around. Though from my experience in the tech world, once you shut something like that down and all the maintainers walk, the cost of re-start goes up exponentially.

Tiz a shame.

---

http://www.savagesentiments.blogspot.com/
http://www.tricoachmartin.com/
https://www.facebook.com/teameverymanjack

I also would have paid double......this really stinks.

I also dont know why they didnt go down the path of incorporating digital advertising into their app - its the hottest area in digital ads these days...

In amusing irony just now in my inbox I got a notice on how to claim my portion of the class action lawsuit against FloSports for their deceptive renewal process. I can get up to $30 or 10% off a renewal. Guess which option I picked.

GCN+ is practically the only thing we watch on the big screen TV. The wife is nuts about bike racing, we got a dedicated laptop because the Firestick was glitchy then a VPN to get all the European content. It was like a comforting fluffy blanket to "have the race on" and listen to Carlton Kirby's stream of consciousness:

"The Peloton approaches the iconic Egyptian monolith; Eye. Hawk, Lamp, Cat. And you know what that means. I think Tadej Pogacar has a rather lean and hungry look, don't you agree Robbie?


I can't go back to NBC, I like Bob and Christian but I've been totally spoiled.

---

"They know f_ck-all over at Slowtwitch"
- Lionel Sanders

Along these lines, I had GCN+, loved it. Also have a vpn that allows me to watch restricted content in the US, so basically all the races I could ever want to watch. I'm wondering if I'll be able to do this with Discovery+. In the US it's $9/month add free. I wonder if I sign up in the states, but use my VPN if I'll be able to access all that content from overseas. Anyone know? Even at $108/year, I still think it's a good enough deal. I know Eurosport is pretty much a no go because they don't allow US payment forms. Wondering if Discovery will be easier to work around.

---

USAT Level 1 Coach
Team Next Level
http://goteamnltri.com/

Doesn't look like it will work. I just signed up for a free trial. When I turn on my VPN it doesn't accept my username/pwd.

Shoot. We may have to create some kind of sticky thread type thing to collectively arrive at the sets of VPN+site/app+payment that work.

Also I know the Escape Collective site has promised to create an article listing all the ways for each part of the globe. But for both of those it may be worth waiting until deeper in December as things get shuffled around.

You'll probably have to turn on VPN first and then create an account. Depending on the level of checks they do though, the issue you may encounter is that when you enter your CC number, it will be flagged as a US-based card.

Yeah, I tried that too. The credit card step threw it for a loop even though it was a free plan.

Dang - I was hoping that would work. I too am searching for an alternative. I had really gotten spoiled with being able to watch all the races I wanted to watch.

I am hooked, too. But don't worry. WB/D+ will have a plan for you that has GCN+. And lots of other irrelevant programming. For more $. They are not interested in just cutting the avid US customer base off - more interested in extracting additional $ from the avid US customer base...

Would it work do you think if you ran it through your VPN and in my case have my family member in the UK use their CC as payment ?

I'm guessing that would work. Of course if it does work you're obligated to share the username and password with all of us!

So, I'm doing two things in response... I subscribed to triathlontv (new for me). Obviously different/less content thna GCN+, but with the Olympics this year, it might be pretty good. During the winter (starting now in the northern hemisphere), I'll watch some of the 2023 races that I did not see (while on the trainer, so more background than anything). Fresh races in 2024. Then, I blew the dust off an old video recorder that has an HDD (and a DVD). This was a pretty cool device at the time but can only handle SD (no HD) recordings. Still, it outputs upsampled video through HDMI, so I fired it up and connected it to our giant HDTV. The video quality (there were old bike races on there, recorded from NBC (TdF, mostly)) was just so-so, but fine for casual watching from the trainer. The only pieces that were useless are the text-based 'miles/km to go' or '1:44 back' kinds of things - too pixelated to really read. So...I watch GCN+ through a Fire Cube. Got an inexpensive HDMI-to-RCA video converter. Connected the Fire Cube to the HDD video recorder, not expecting much. Dang - works great. I still have 80 hours of empty space on that HDD and intend on filling it up with GCN+ cyclocross and other content before GCN+ goes dark. I figure that I should have enough to watch through this winter.

Maybe by then Xfinity will have fixed my broken connection to Peacock+. I have not been able to watch that since before the 2023 TdF. I call Xfinity monthly...they say it will be up and running in 48 hours...for four months now...

Looney Tunes was saved. And I love Looney Tunes. So, all good there. But with GCN, are we just not screaming and yelling enough?

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/looney-tunes-streaming-max_n_65661b58e4b03ac1cd178975

---

cock-up before conspiracy

Bike racing streaming coverage from the defuncted GCN + will be back on Max. Downside is that your $50 yearly subscription is likely going to cost north of $250


We’re happy to announce that starting in February 2024, an expansive roster of 300+ of the biggest live races across Road, Mountain Bike, Track, BMX and Cyclocross — including the Giro d’Italia, Classics, Mountain Bike World Series & UCI Track Champions League — will be available for U.S. Max subscribers via the B/R Sports Add-On.

---

BoulderCyclingCoach.com

And they don't list what's included. Which 300+ races? Who has Paris Roubaix? NBC? Who has Milano San Remo? What CX is included? And then there's the fact that February means no Christmas 'cross this year :-(

---

Janyne

Another downside is likely ads with Max unless you pay even more.

A lukewarm upside is they announced some decent talent like Robbie McEwen.

I had rage-quit Time Warner-Discovery (despite not actually subscribing to any of their products so it was an unsatisfying rage-quite), but I'll give this a shot. I do give them some credit for turning it around pretty quick after they decided to close GCN+ - I'd assumed they'd do the math and find it's not worth serving the very small niche of second-tier bike races at all.

We have a Max subscription through our cable package. Just looked and currently there is no on-demand option that I can find for sports. Maybe it will be different for cycling, but that's kind of a deal breaker for me.

Oh yeah, I've been cable-cut for decades now. If there's no a la carte streaming, I'll re-rage-quit. It'd beyond me how in nearly 2024, cable companies are still trying to force us into a dying business model instead of letting us pay for a la carte streaming as we go.

Right.. as of now there is no a la carte streaming for sports on the Max app. So, that would have to be a new feature for cycling that's not available for other sports. Not holding me breath..

My guess would be that anything that was on Peacock last year will stay with the Cock. Not sure with regards to Flo....that might be a little more fluid.

---

"one eye doubles my eyesight, so things don't look half bad" John Hiatt

that is my understanding. all ASO will stay with Peacock...TDF, PR, PN. All the Flanders will stay with FLO. most everything else including the MTB WC races. If you have Max already, the $9.99 add on is pretty good deal for all those races. if you have to buy MAX as well, it definitely makes it pricey. But at least we have an option in US to see most races and it's still a better deal than FLO. I do hope the user interface is good. On demand for us west coasters is absolutely a deal breaker.

Yeah, the Max press release said they'll have cyclocross, but the for the remainder of this season Flo owns the U.S. rights to every single major CX series. Maybe Flo won't put up a fight for 2024 rights, particularly with Discovery+ being a venture capital backer. But without CX Flo becomes even less of a value at the same cost. Flo barely makes sense as it is.

At least for us up north Flo has Flanders Classics and ASO, so that's a good chunk of the cycling calendar but certainly not all of it. Still no source of RCS events (no Strade? MSR? Giro?) or classics like KBK and E3. It also looks like there won't be much in terms of WWT.

This sucks. It was so nice being able to VPN and watch the tour on GCN's coverage. I can't even comment on the quality of Peacock's commentators because I find them so annoying to listen to in the first place, guess I'm stuck with that now.

The other problem with Peacock is that it doesn't let you go all the way back to the beginning of a live event. If I'm remembering correctly, you can only go back about an hour, so if you miss the early morning start then you miss the breaks being established unless you wait until the broadcast is over and the on-demand version is posted. GCN had that nice "Watch From The Start?" option if you join late....

From Beyond the Peloton/Spencer Martin

Yeesh, as a diehard fan, that list makes it hard for me to cross off any one of them. Like with Holy Week split between Flo and Peacock. And Max with Strade, MSR, and the Giro.

So if rates are the same as '23, looking at $60 (Peacock)+$150 (Flo) + $150 (assuming free promotional sports add-on to annual Max "Ad-Free")

So ~$360 for '24, going up over $400 in '25.

With the bonus of all the other Max content...not sure if any of it will interest me - haven't been tempted to get Max before this.

Wow, that’s rough.

In comparison, for EPL, Bundesliga, and UCL, I pay $280 (Sling) + $50 (Peacock) + $36 (Paramount) + $80 (Espn+). Or $450 max. Except in general I pay less due to various credit card offers available, and broadcasting rights for footie is much higher than it is for cycling.

And by its very nature, there is very few ad breaks in football.

To have a season of cycling cost as much as a season of football is just absurd.

Does anyone know if we'll still be able to watch their races that have already taken place? I was waiting to watch the cyclocross season this winter.

I wouldn’t count on it. I think the whole app will disappear.

No, after the 19th none of that will be available sadly.

It would be easier if the coverage wasn't so bad. I can't stand peacock or flo, and they're so expensive. I'm relatively ambivalent about max just because at least I think I'll enjoy watching it

Really sad if all their documentaries just go away. They had some really poignant interviews with people important to cycling in a historical sense, and should ideally be on the public record for posterity. Not just racers, but industry people like Mike Burrows too. I hope at some point a TWD exec allows the source material to go to the public domain. Be dickish to lock it all away in a TWD vault to disappear with the sands of time.

I emailed them more than once about doing that.

Aaannnndddd...GCN+ went dark for me at the start of 19 Dec (i.e. 00:01). All I can see on the app is the video announcing the closure - all other content is inaccessbile. Not a surprise, of course, but still :(

I'm seeing other content up. It looks like all the documentaries/adventures/films have been moved to YouTube. Great that TWD didn't decide to just end all that content. And maybe GCN will keep up with their "film" production, just falling back to using YouTube as their distribution tech.

Maybe they were on YouTube all along...not sure...just that I've always viewed them through the GCN+ app.

With Max stating 300+ races I was somewhat ok with the $200/yr cost given I could discontinue VPN saving on that and GCN. Almost a wash. But despite 300+ races, it sounds like if you want the FULL schedule, like everything GCN offered, it requires Max, FloBikes and Peacock. Is that correct?

That's an extreme increase in cost to the consumer. And with FloBikes and Peacock, an excruciating downgrade in commentary.

I'm still livid about this whole deal. Venting as much as looking for feedback.

---

cock-up before conspiracy

the "world feed" was an option for watching the tour on Peacock this year. i didn't have my VPN at the time so i couldn't watch the tour on GCN - but Nico and Ant (i think it was Ant) were pretty good. Much better than Bob and Phil with their senile grandad and mad uncle dumbed down commentary style.

i think we all expected that the cycling would be bundled with other things and the cost would be loads more because of the non-cycling stuff so this isn't a surprise; but i am as bothered by losing access as the increase cost of Max v GCN+. With a GCN+ subscription and a VPN i could watch almost every cycling event on demand; and now i don't think that is possible without multiple subscriptions. i think it is in our best interest to boycott Flo (they always overcharged relative to GCN+ and Peacock) - and force a bit of consolidation.

---

And the question remains. where were you.

I got an email about a refund this morning.

good to know about the "world feed" option for Peacock. That's promising. Definitely won't subscribe to Flo. Experience with them in the past was overpriced, sub par technically, limited races and poor commentary (my opinion). Hopefully there will be some consolidation.

---

cock-up before conspiracy

Im lucky that I have a friend in the UK that was willing to setup a Discovery+ account for me and I used Sundays Cyclocross races to make sure it worked. I cant use the D+ app but I can use the website to login and then airplay to my tv, so with the cost of the VPN ($60/yr) and D+ ($10/month) its about $70 more than it was with GCN+.

The price of GCN+, even adding in the cost of the VPN, was so ridiculously good that I figured it was only a matter of time before the price went up. I just never imaged it would end the way it did. RIP GCN+

Has anyone tried opening a bank account in England to pay for a D+ subscription? Would still be tied to a US address - not sure it would work??

FWIW... I am based in Poland but have a UK-issued (so now non-EU..) credit card and it was accepted to gain Eurosport 1 & 2 access for the equivalent of ~£4 a month from TVN player ((linked to Discovery channel).... https://promocja.player.pl/...gn=AdLite-ESExtra-1M. One should be able to click on the English language commentary (it worked for the recent cyclocross races), but will see if that continues with the first month I have ordered... If a non-EU card was accepted, maybe it will work with US cards for those wanting to try another option..... However, since I am already based within Poland, I don't know if using a VPN will work or not for those based outside Poland, for both ordering and then watching......

I'm in the US and clicked on the link, asked the browser to translate Polish to English. Clicked on the 'choose' button to select the subscription and the next page says 'it is not possible to purchase access to this video in your location'. So, if you are interested, maybe start with a VPN and a Polish IP address?

Aye I guess so, thought it may be the case, but since I am in already in Poland I couldn't check if VPN was a requirement....