No free TV Tour de France coverage from 2026

[MrsAvocet]

Grrr. I'm furious.
Eurosport/Discovery+ have bought the rights apparently. At this rate there's going to be no sport worth mentioning on free TV channels. Sport and the news is virtually all I watch on TV so soon it will just be the news.
We do have Eurosport so I will be able to watch but I actually like the ITV coverage and it was one of the few times that cycling got extensive coverage on television. But money talks of course and no doubt ITV were outbid.
I know there's nothing can be done about it but just wanted to share my annoyance!

Oh no! The itv coverage is a delight and I've really enjoyed sharing my love of it with my husband and children!

I'm going to miss Gary!

The situation with sport on free-to-view channels is grim. The coverage of the Olympics on BBC was so sad as they could only broadcast two sports at a time. I also really enjoy the ITV coverage of the Tour. I hate what Discovery have done to GCN too - basically killed off their excellent app and race coverage.

I am also gutted, the presenting/commentary team are great, and the coverage is a highlight of my summer. I don't have Discovery, and I miss GCN+ so much!
Cricket is complaining there is a drop in grass-roots players and support, cycling will go the same way. If people can't watch a sport they won't get into it.

Going to miss Mr Imlach’s sarcastic one liners 🥺

Oh no, that's terrible news! I have Discovery+ but much prefer the Ned Boulting/David Millar commentary team for TdF - knowledgeable and to the point. Carlton Kirby is a gibbering fool and drives me absolutely nuts.

Though I was a bit worried about Gary during the last lot of ITVcoverage - was he trying to run a restaurant as well as present the highlights show? Anyone else notice that...

Carlton Kirby is a gibbering fool, but I really like him! Gary, Ned and David are superb though 🙁

Oh no! That’s very sad news 😢

Bastards.

I absolutely detest Kirby, he always misses the break and his insistence that riders are "smiling" when they're grimacing with effort is utterly wearing. I'll take Robbie McEwen and Rob Hatch any day and José Been too.

This is shit!

Oh that's awful. I find the Eurosport coverage of other cycling terrible to watch. I wouldn't mind paying if it was actually if similar quality.

I'm gutted.

Might not be quite as bad as first reported.

The Spanish Vuelta highlights are shown on free to view Quest, a tv channel owned by Discovery.

Wont be live as some TdF stages have been shown on itv4 but better than nothing.

Aw love ITV's TdF coverage. Veering OT slightly but Cadel Evans in pundit mode always makes me think of Uncle Colm from Derry Girls

Another nail in the coffin Eurosport’s end of an era in Britain casts doubts on future free-to-air coverage | Sport | The Guardian

I was a loyal customer of GCN for years. I paid when it switched to Discovery+. But my council tax, water, phone, mobile and mortgage will all go up in the next 6 months and I can't afford £30.99 to watch my beloved cycling too. I will not be rinsed into paying another £23 a month for sports that I don't even watch. We've got ITV for highlights to the end of 2025 but I suspect if we want to watch cycling in the UK after that we'll have to get a bank loan out.

I feel much the same @PauliesWalnuts
I was a GCN subscriber til it closed and then I got Discovery+ but £30.99 a month is too much. I guess they'll be selling it as "only £1 per day" but when you're not interested in any of the other content of the channel that's a lot - and £365 I could spend on cycling kit! It's bad for the sport as a whole, not just fans. I wonder how it will affect sponsorship deals if viewer numbers drop off. Are other European nations similarly affected?

From what I can understand Europe won't be affected. I really resent paying over the odds to watch one sport that costs more than Disney+ AND Netflix. There are so many cycling fans I know that don't watch any other sport. And there are only so many hours in a day - who has time to watch sport all the time? I feel that it's just bumped up to subsidise football and F1. You can guarantee that the female riders (and most of the male ones) won't see a penny of the increase. Greedy UCI, ASO and Warner Bros.

@PauliesWalnuts £365 would pay for you to go and watch a more local stage of the tour de france, or one of the Belgian classics from the roadside based on a ferry each way being less than £100, a night in a BnB being about £60-70 and then £100 for fuel and food. You can go to 2 if you share the journey with a friend who also refuses to pay £30.99 a month because it's mostly got to subsidise football coverage.

The worst of this is that Ireland is lumped in with the UK,d espite the fact that we are in the EU, have a separate currency etc. The increase will be greater than £30.99 in Euro.

DH is absolutely furious about this. £31a month is just too much.

Gutted! The end of the ITV team, presumably. We've watched them since they were the Channel 4 team, and their coverage was always massively superior to Eurosport droning on. Such a loss, even if we do decide to shell out for Discovery..

Cycling, tennis, motorsport & snooker all gone when Eurosport goes. Gutted. I've got the men's tennis tour via the Tennis Channel for £10 for the year, but the rest?!

I’ve looked at my bills and as a solo householder things are currently manageable but this year my mortgage is going to come up for renewal and will go up, as will my council tax, house insurance, water and utilities - probably about £150 per month in total. My public sector cost of living salary increase was less than the annual fee for TNT. I just can’t justify it at all.

This would make me incredibly angry.

The Olympics too was awful - it’s such a shame compared to the coverage we had for 2012.

Oh I just came on here to see if anyone could work out how to watch the cycling. It's about the only thing he watches on TV (religiously) and feels it's too much of a rip off now.

I said I would check mumsnet as someone would know something!