This week TNT Sports announced the end of Eurosport in the UK and with it the integration of its content into TNT’s premium subscription. As a result, the cost of watching live cycling in the UK will increase by over 300% to £30.99 a month (£371.88 a year) as of 28th February 2025.

Although TNT Sports and WarnerBros Discovery (WBD) have announced free-to-air highlights and a cycling panel show on the Quest channel, this sharp increase in cost will force cycling fans to dig into their pockets to watch live racing, with its monthly cost the most expensive subscription of its kind across Europe and North America.

This marks yet another blow for pro cycling in the UK as it heads deeper into a real slump on all levels. The British racing scene has been dealt some big damage over the past 12 months following the closure of British continental teams Lifeplus-Wahoo, Saint Piran and Trinity Racing, the shortening of the men’s Tour of Britain and cancellation of the RideLondon Classique, and the news that 2025 will be ITV’s final year broadcasting the Tour de France.

A 343% monthly price increase

Eurosport’s future looked uncertain when the channel was bought out by WBD as part of an ambitious deal struck up between Discovery and BT Sports. Eurosport Premium was closed in June 2024 just before the Tour de France, prompting subscribers to switch over to the wider Discovery+ platform. Although cycling avoided the premium subscription package when the networks merged in 2023, that is about to change.

The cost of the full-blown TNT subscription required for cycling will be £30.99 in the UK. This is a huge 343% monthly increase on the former package previously offered for cycling, which sat at just £6.99 per month or £59.99 per year. Looking back further to before that deal in 2023, GCN+ offered a yearly package of just £39.99.

In the matter of just three seasons, the yearly cost of watching pro cycling in the UK has increased by around 800%. This increase is neither in line with inflation nor with industry trends for similar streaming subscriptions. In fact, the £30.99 monthly price for TNT Sports is well above the standard monthly subscription costs for Netflix (£10.99), Amazon Prime (£8.99) and Disney Plus (£8.99). That said, it is somewhat in line with TNT Sports’ UK competitor Sky Sports (£22-35).

The most expensive cycling TV subscription in Europe

At a yearly rate of £371.88, watching pro cycling legally will soon become a luxury in the UK.

By merging cycling into the £30.99 per month service, TNT Sports will become the most expensive cycling streaming service in the world. In comparison, FloBikes in the USA costs $30 (£24) per month and Sweden’s Max service costs 260 SEK (£19).

In all fairness, TNT Sports is one of the most comprehensive sports platforms on the market, covering races in-depth and live throughout the calendar. That said, throughout Europe, the move across from Eurosport to Discovery+ and Max has been met with little financial change. In the vast majority of European nations, the monthly subscription cost sits between €6.99 and €9.99.

And Europeans can rest easy. The merger with TNT Sports in the UK and Ireland is unlikely to set a precedent for the rest of Europe, where the Eurosport brand will continue.

What does the money go towards?

In merging Eurosport with TNT Sport’s premium package, the subscription will allow viewers to access a vast range of sports coverage including Champions League football, Premier League matches, Premiership rugby, ATP tennis, UFC, the Olympics and MotoGP. This bulked-up subscription will grant cycling fans access to the array of sports offered on the platform unlike before when it was restricted to cycling and a handful of other niche sports such as snooker and winter sports.

Now under the TNT Sports umbrella, the WBD team suggests that cycling will be mentioned and promoted in other sports’ broadcasts as the network will aim to bring in viewers who already have a subscription.

The decline of free-to-air coverage in the UK

The news comes just a few months after it was revealed that ITV would no longer broadcast cycling after 2025. The channel’s cycling programming, which included the likes of the Critérium du Dauphiné, Tour de France and the Vuelta a España, will be stripped bare following the 2025 season as Warner Bros. Discovery will become the exclusive rights holder for the majority of live cycling in the UK. This deal will also force S4C to seize its Welsh-language coverage of the Giro d’Italia, ending a four-year spell as the UK’s only free-to-air coverage of the race. 

In Ireland, WBD have secured the exclusive rights to the Tour de France Femmes, but not the Tour de France. This, in theory, allows TG4 to continue its Irish-language coverage of the men’s Tour.

It marks the end of a 40-year legacy of Tour de France broadcasting in the UK. Channel 4 first showed the race in the 1980s until it was handed over to ITV in 2001. After the 2025 season concludes, live coverage of the Tour de France and other UCI WorldTour events will disappear from free-to-air TV in the UK with only highlights shows available on free-to-air Quest.

Coverage of the domestic racing scene has also suffered a similar decline having disappeared from ITV during the early 2020s. Races like the Lincoln and Otley Grand Prix have now been salvaged by Monument Cycling TV, which offers the racing live through its own platform for £49.99 per year.

Although free-to-air coverage has proved an effective billboard to attract new viewers, no cycling event is included in Ofcom’s list of protected sporting events, meaning that there are no legal requirements for the likes of the Tour de France or the UCI Road World Championships to be shown on free-to-air channels. It is also believed that ITV didn’t bid for the rights after 2026, thus giving way to WBD’s exclusivity deal, which will last until at least 2030.

Will anything be available on free-to-air TV?

In the UK, no Grand Tour will be free to watch live. However, as mentioned, the free-to-air channel Quest will be showing highlights of the Grand Tours. This isn’t new, the channel previously showed Giro d’Italia highlights from 2017 until 2020, before fading out in the early 2020s.

In addition, Quest will broadcast The Ultimate Cycling Show, a monthly cycling magazine programme hosted by Orla Chennaoui and Adam Blythe. Similar shows like GCN’s World of Racing and ITV’s The Cycle Show have been short-lived in the UK, but TNT remain optimistic about this attempt. Chennaoui told Cyclist that the show would be ‘the crossover point between traditional television coverage and what you might see on YouTube’.

WBD has also expressed a greater interest in producing content for platforms like YouTube, TikTok and Instagram in an attempt to attract younger viewers to the sport.

What has the reaction been?

The response online has been largely negative since the news was released. A large swathe of fans have already scrambled to cancel their subscriptions before the increases come into effect at the end of February. Some comments online also display frustration surrounding the sudden nature of this price change.

Some have seen this move as an attempt to turn cycling into football, which underwent a similar change in the 1990s and 2000s when Sky Sports hiked up the price of watching games. However, this doesn’t quite add up to many who argue that cycling lacks the same following and pub licensing structure that football boasts.

For sports fans wanting more than just access to cycling, this move could be considered a positive. The previous Discovery+ platform was fairly restrictive with its sporting selection, focussing on winter sports, cycling and tennis, while now just one subscription can cover a whole host of sports. However those who had the premium subscription before could already watch cycling etc. on their plan, so it won’t change much for them.

What’s next?

What’s for certain is that the Tour de France will not be shown on free-to-air TV in the UK between 2026 and 2030. What we also know is that cycling will occupy less space on linear channels following the closure of the Eurosport network. The days of stumbling across cycling on the TV will be over.

The increased subscription fee is sure to be a hit on British cycling fans. At a yearly cost of over £350, for many an upgrade simply won’t be feasible, but given the increase, WBD can afford to see a huge decrease in subscriptions from cycling fans, so the exodus would likely have to be massive for the company to take notice.

With OneCycling potentially on the horizon, another streaming subscription may be needed too. Reports suggest that if the Saudi-backed series goes ahead it could be on the Dazn platform, which costs between £84 to £115. If this is the case, it doesn’t bode well for its viewing figures.

Perhaps more TikTok videos of Sean Kelly and co. could help bring the sport to a new audience, however the current fanbase in the UK certainly feels as though they’re being punished once again.

One thing is for sure: there will be an increase in VPN usage, dodgy Fire Sticks and illegal streaming.