“Can you imagine any retailer of any other product getting away with that?” Ex-UCI president Brian Cookson uses baked beans analogy to hit out at “outrageous and incompetent” Warner Bros. Discovery for “trying to kill cycling for British customers”

The backlash to Warner Bros. Discovery’s controversial decision to close down Eurosport in the UK and Ireland and shift its cycling coverage to the £30.99-a-month TNT Sports channel continues to rumble on, amid reports that pro teams and sponsors have raised concerns that the move could lead to a substantial drop in viewership in a key market.

Eurosport’s closure at the end of February, after over three decades of broadcasting in the UK, comes as Warner Bros. Discovery integrates all the channel’s content onto its main TNT channels, meaning cycling will now be broadcast on TNT Sports rather than Eurosport and, as it is already, available to stream on discovery+.

However, Discovery’s longstanding integration project – which was cited as the key factor behind the demise of cycling-specific streaming platform GCN+ in late 2023 – also means that cycling fans will now have to pay a £30.99-a-month premium discovery+ subscription to watch bike races on TNT, a package which includes the channel’s other sports coverage, such as Champions League and Premier League football.

(ASO/Charly Lopez)

That £371.88-a-year package is a whopping 443 per cent more expensive than Discovery’s previous £6.99-a-month basic subscription, a price hike that has understandably been condemned by fans, who have branded it “exploitation” and a decision that will “destroy our sport”.

> How to watch cycling for less now it's moving to £30.99-a-month TNT Sports

The news that watching bike races in the UK and Ireland is about to get a whole lot more expensive has also been criticised by some riders and pro cycling stakeholders, with former UCI and British Cycling president Brian Cookson the latest to weigh in on cycling’s controversial transfer to TNT – by comparing it to buying baked beans at the shop.

As we first reported on the live blog, Cookson, who held the top position at the UCI between 2013 and 2017, took to his LinkedIn page when the news broke last week to criticise the “outrageous and incompetent mishandling of this by Eurosport/Discovery/Warner Bros.”, asking: “Are you trying to kill cycling for your British customers?”

Then, responding to road.cc’s story on the fans threatening to report Warner Bros. Discovery to the UK market regulator for “abuse of monopoly” and “price gouging”, Cookson later suggested: “So maybe this is not going to be quite so easy for WBD.”

In another post, Cookson – inspired, perhaps, by his weekly shop – said: “Here’s an alternative way to look at this. I like a particular brand of baked beans, which I can buy at a number of different supermarkets at a reasonable price. I don’t like any other beans or any other sort of canned vegetables.

“Now I find that in future I am only going to be able to buy these beans from one particular supermarket, and I will have to buy several other brands of beans and canned vegetables that I don’t like and don’t ever eat.”

The former British Cycling president continued: “Can you imagine any retailer of any other product getting away with that? Can you imagine that company and people in that industry telling the people who objected that they just didn’t understand that industry?

“I think the many people who are objecting to this move by WBD to scrap Eurosport in the UK and Ireland, to package its coverage of sports like cycling in with sports we don’t wish to watch, whilst hiking up the price for this combination by a ridiculous amount, well, I think we understand it very well indeed. And we don’t like it.”

> Cycling fans report Warner Bros. Discovery to market regulator for “abuse of monopoly” and “price gouging” after moving cycling behind £30.99-a-month paywall, as Tory MP slams “terrible decision”

Cookson’s comments come after several cycling fans told road.cc that they had reported Warner Bros. Discovery to Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), arguing that cycling’s move to TNT constitutes price gouging.

According to one reader who submitted a complaint to the CMA, the principal competitive regulator in the UK, responsible for promoting competitive markets and tackling unfair behaviour by businesses, Warner Bros. Discovery’s ‘integration’ policy represents an “abuse of a monopoly position”.

“I, like many, am flabbergasted at the Discovery+ change to cycling coverage,” Ben Taylor told us last week. “I’ve reported them to the Competition and Markets Authority for abuse of a monopoly position, quoting the price increases since they built that position.

“I would encourage others to do the same. If we hit the CMA with lots of demands, it’s more likely that they’ll take action.”

(ASO/Charly Lopez)

Meanwhile, Escape Collective have reported this week that some professional teams are preparing to state their concerns about the price hike set to impact British and Irish fans, which they believe will lead to a massive drop in viewership in a key market, along with the loss of free-to-air Tour de France coverage in the UK from 2026.

> "A huge problem": Pro cycling disappearing behind £372-a-year TNT Sports paywall a "huge shame", Tao Geoghegan Hart says in lengthy post questioning "how many people have cancelled subscriptions" over price hike

The website also reported that, with cycling being placed behind an ever-larger paywall in the UK, One Cycling – the Saudi investment fund-backed group which aims to ‘revolutionise’ the sport by streamlining its race calendar and overhauling its business model – is considering creating a specialised live cycling streaming service, in the style of the now defunct GCN+.

Described by a source as a “medium to long-term ambition”, One Cycling’s ‘media hub’ would see the group acquire the rights to broadcast all televised races “directly to the consumer”, cutting out what it describes the “middlemen” broadcasters, therefore placing more power – and money – in the hands of the teams, at least in theory.