Cycling coverage in the UK and Ireland is to move to HBO Max from the end of March from Discovery+.
TNT Sports will be part of the new Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) platform from Thursday 26 March. HBO Max is already live in over 100 countries around the world.
The subscription plans will remain the same, with HBO Max with TNT Sports at £30.99 a month. However, moving over to the new service should be seamless, with users able to login to HBO Max with their Discovery+ account. Plans or bills will not change with the switch.
Discovery had bought into Play Sports Group, the company that owned the GCN operation since its inception on YouTube, in 2017 and increased its shareholding in 2019. In 2021 it took a 100% stake in the company in a deal that reportedly valued it at £70m.
Then, last year, Eurosport was closed down in the UK with TNT Sports becoming the home of live cycling. It meant the sport was placed within a broader sports subscription package, priced at £30.99 a month – more than four times the GCN+ offering.
A survey by Cycling Weekly last year revealed that 71% of respondents told us they watched the Tour on ITV. Of those 1,273 people, 1,120 said they would not subscribe to TNT Sports to watch the race live in 2026 (and almost half said they’d never paid to watch cycling on TV). That’s 88%, an overwhelming majority of TV-watching cycling fans in the UK.
Read the full article here
