I’ll admit that I’ve missed most of the online furore over Discovery and TNT Sports’ rather baffling decision to limit their ad-free coverage of the Tour de France to a multi-screen ‘quad’ feed.
In case you missed it too, here’s a quick recap: Discovery+’s standard advert-free cycling coverage, which has been in place all year, has now disappeared, forcing those cycling fans who still prefer watching bike racing the old-school way – without four different viewpoints on the go and a big logo in the middle (Luddites, I know) – to endure the broadcaster’s endless array of breaks.
All for the low, low price of £31 a month, of course.
But at least I had a good excuse for missing out on all the Instagram comments fury. I was attending the opening weekend of the Giro d’Italia Women in beautiful Bergamo, where the in-form Marlen Reusser underlined her pink jersey credentials with an impressive win on the race’s curtain-raising 14km time trial through the city’s streets.
As ever with the Giro, it was a wonderfully chaotic few days, dodging both the baking sun and huge thunderstorms (the electricity went out twice in our restaurant in the Città Alta restaurant halfway through our secondi), eating as much casoncelli and cheese as I could physically manage, and running off all that pasta by chasing riders around for interviews.
During one particularly memorable moment towards the end of Saturday’s team presentation, four-time Giro winner Anna van der Breggen and I were ushered out of the way by an overzealous, barrier-moving security guard frantically clearing a path for Wolfie the Giro mascot, who had just fulfilled his on-stage duties and clearly had somewhere to be.
So, with my Tour Hommes viewing limited to brief windows watching Rai 2 in the hotel, Discovery’s latest cycling-related hiccup passed me by.
Until, that is, I arrived back home last night after a day of travelling, eager to catch up properly with British star Anna Henderson’s brilliant breakaway win on stage two to Aprica, and noticed another glaring error in the app’s racing coverage.
Lidl-Trek’s Henderson, who had kicked off her debut Giro with a strong sixth place in the time trial, followed that performance up by attacking alongside French rider Dilyxine Miermont on Monday’s lumpy 92km stage through Lombardy.
Despite looking doomed at one point, the battling duo held off the bunch on the long, sodden drag to Aprica before Henderson kicked clear at the finish to secure a memorable tappa e maglia, becoming the first British rider to wear the Giro’s pink jersey since Emma Pooley in 2009.
Later that night, back in my living room at home, having toiled my way through Discovery+’s cumbersome TV app, I clicked on the broadcaster’s highlights show for the Giro – only to be greeted by images of Tim Merlier throwing his bike to the line in Dunkirk, and the crashes that marred the run-in to Monday’s Tour stage.
I clicked back out, assuming I’d accidentally selected a repeat of The Breakaway or something.
But nope – the first few minutes of the Giro highlights were devoted to the very end of TNT Sports’ coverage of that day’s Tour de France (like when you used to tape things on VHS and the preceding programme would run over, leaving you briefly scratching your head as to why you’d chosen to record Ground Force for posterity).
Luckily, for me anyway, I knew what had happened at the Tour. But still, that would have been one hell of a spoiler.
Anyway, I cracked on, watching the highlights – and skipping through the ad breaks – as Henderson and Miermont drove on through the thick Italian rain.
And then suddenly – nothing. I was thrown back out onto Discovery’s cycling page. I clicked back into the highlights, fast forwarding to the 28-minute mark, right at the end of the show’s scheduled time.
There are 10.6km left to go until we reach Aprica, and Joanna Rowsell helpfully tells us on comms to “stay tuned” for the finish after the break. A quick message from our sponsors, and then the show ends again, Henderson’s victory, in highlights form anyway, erased from the televisual records.
Of course, in the grand scheme of things, none of this is really a big deal. I simply turned it over to Discovery’s full stage replay of the Giro and carried on where I left off. Similarly, any Tour viewer desperate to avoid missing a single second can switch over to the quad screen for a few minutes during the break, before switching back. Or they could turn on ITV4 instead.
But it is, perhaps, indicative of how cycling is viewed by a broadcaster currently asking fans to shell out £31 a month to watch bike racing and which, from next year, will be the sole home of the Tour de France on British TV.
It also says quite a bit about Discovery and TNT’s approach to women’s cycling. Despite being one of the sport’s biggest races, the Giro d’Italia Women appears to be such an afterthought for some that the so-called ‘home of cycling’ couldn’t be bothered to include the stage finish in their highlights package.
Back in Bergamo, Irish champion Mia Griffin told me about a meme she’d seen on social media, depicting the Giro as a sizeable enough building, until you scroll out and see the monstrous monolith that is the men’s Tour looming behind it.
Pink jersey Henderson, meanwhile, also told me that the decision to move next year’s Giro to a late May, early June slot, just after its men’s counterpart, will “flip the sport on its head”. Let’s hope that new position in the calendar will mean someone at TNT will check if the finish of each stage is included before hitting ‘publish’, without the excuse that the Tour was on at the time.
Now, to be fair to Discovery, the Tour spoiler was removed a few hours after I watched the race last night. And, after contacting the broadcaster this morning to inform them of the cut-off issue, a new 57-minute highlights package of stage two of the Giro, featuring the finish, is now available on the app. They haven’t replied to my email yet, though.
But the question remains – do TNT and Discovery really care about revolutionising cycling coverage, or just upending its subscription pricing models? Well, after a few days of quad screens, ad breaks that weren’t advertised at the start of the season, and highlights shows that don’t include the end of the stage until 24 hours later, it’s fair to say the jury’s still out.
9 thoughts on “I tried to watch Anna Henderson’s win at the Giro d’Italia, but Discovery+ wouldn’t let me… Do they care about cycling at all?”
The other problem with the
The other problem with the ‘quad screen’ is that it gives no time/distance markers, or other on-screen info. So you don’t know how far it is to the finish, or who’s in which group etc Really poor.
I did exactly the same, I
I did exactly the same, I thought that was so frustrating, but tonight topped it as they did exactly the same again, cutting off the last 6 km of stage 3!
I for one am extremely happy to be paying the extra for the same service as ever.
Complained to the chatbot:
Complained to the chatbot:
I’m Dani, a robot designed to answer your questions about discovery+ UK.
“The last 2 days when watching the Women’s Giro highlights the programme has been cut short how and why?”
After some exstensive dicking around I asked to be connected to a human! It wanted an email address I didn’t want to put mine in but found that “discoverysports@rubbish.com'” worked.
The human was marginally better than the bot:
The last 2 days when watching the Women’s Giro highlights the programme has been cut short how and why?
discovery+ : I understand that you wish to know why the Giro Highlights have been cut short. I am happy to assist you with this.
discovery+ : Allow me please for 2 minutes as I am checking my resources to address your request.
The adverts take up too much time. I am not interested in adverts and would you cut off the final minutes of a football match?
discovery+ : Thanks for staying connected.
discovery+ : Just to confirm, are you referring to the Football match or the Giro?
: I am referring to the women’s giro!
discovery+ : Thanks for clarifying.
: The comparison is that you would not cut short a football match leaving fans unaware of the final few moments and the final score because you had adverts.
: The same happened yesterday!
: Do Discovery+ actually understand sport?
: I used to get this live and advert free, since you have taken over from Europsort it has been diabolical.
discovery+ : I understand where you are coming from, as Adverts on discovery+ are expected during live events/live channels and all the VOD content available on discovery+. We do not have a plan without adverts available at the moment.
discovery+: I have just replayed the Highlights and found that the match was cut short. My apologies for the inconvenience. Thank you for highlighting this, I will go ahead and have this documented and will pass this down to the relevant team here at discovery+ so that this can be investigated and worked on to deliver a better streaming experience moving forward.
: It is not a “match” it is a cycle race. You know where the first across the line wins the stage!
: As I queried before do you actually understand sport?
: Why no advert free transmission?
Blah blah
: We want value for money and when you can’t even get the schedule of the highlight correct it only dmeonstrates poor value for money but also limited competence in providing a basic service.
discovery+ : Thank you for sharing your feedback, . We value feedback from our viewers and appreciate you taking the time to share your concerns. Your feedback is recorded and shared with the relevant team here at discovery+. I can assure you that this will be improved moving forward.
: The multi screen live cyclin, TDF, is add free why can’t this be extended to the single screen as I used to get from Europsort?.
: Did you also review yesterday’s highlights that had the same problem?
discovery+ : Yes, I have reviewed yesterday’s highlights as well and found the same issue. I have passed on this feedback to the relevant team here at discovery+. I appreciate you taking time to bring this to our attention.
: Did you capture the issues with the stupid AI/Bot?
discovery+ : I sure did,
Blah Blah
Thieving clowns!
Of course they have no
Of course they have no “interest” in cycling. They have no inherent interest in any sport. They are purely a commercial endeavour, driven to maximise shareholder value
Eurosport have been doing the
Eurosport have been doing the same for years. If the previous programme over-runs you get 30 minutes of what you don’t want to watch and then miss the end of what you did. Even more frustrating when they still slip the “filler” programme in that nobody ever wants to watch anyway.
Another massive bugbear is when they come in at 30km to go, don’t show you how they all get there ie breaks etc show all the last 30km, show the stage result and then not the GC. On a highlights package, surely the GC is at least as important if not more than the stage result and you showed it on the live. You have the footage! Don’t make me go back and trawl through the live programme as I’ve been caught by that before and always record that too.
This isn’t limited to women’s cycling though, it’s just not understanding the sport, the audience and how best to show it.
I watch through Virginmedia which fortunately gives me the opportunity to fast forward and still see the images so I can do my own editing and ad removal
Making us watch adverts on
Making us watch adverts on top of the extortionate fee for watching cycling is just taking the mickey. I watch the streaming feed about an hour late and zip through the adverts. I initialy tried that watching it on ITVX but it didn’t work so I reluctantly sucbscribed to the thieving bastards for a month. The problem is that we actually got GCN+ far too cheaply and got used to it. The pendulum has now swung the other way and probably has got stuck.
I think we can state with
I think we can state with absolute confidence that the TNT machine only cares about it’s big expensive headline sports of Football, Cricket and Rugby; with the majority of their spend focussed towards the Football. Everything else plays second, third, umoeeth fiddle to Football and in the case of cycling … The distinct impression is that fans exist solely so subsidize the Football.
Needless to say as soon as the ” bargain ” offer price of £15.99 expires … So does my subscription. Perhaps if we all just turn away, football can carry it’s own costs for once.
In the meantime, I notice that there are now numerous alternative available via a variety of means . Whilst I could never condone them, this is a natural reaction to what TNT has done.
If cycling ” only ” was available for say £8pcm I suspect their subscription rates would be huge. … Trouble is, that doesn’t make sense for such a massive broadcasting operation.
When fans turn away, who suffers? Races dont get the coverage, don’t get the broadcast revenue, races become less stable and the calendar thins….
Seems inevitable.
Very sad.
Very very sad.
Apparently the Tour de France
Apparently the Tour de France is “brought to me” by at least 5 manufacturers of cars, windows and cycling gadgets.
Here’s my thinking it was ‘brought to me’ by my ,£32 per month…..
Now Eurosport sold out to the
Now Eurosport sold out to the yanks its just advert centrale !