Fans concerned about following the Tour de France in the UK this summer after the demise of ITV’s coverage can have hope that at least some of it will be shown on free-to-air television.
Speaking to journalists last week, Scott Young, EVP at Warner Bros Discovery Sports Europe, said: “I think you need to have a free-to-air product. And there will be a free-to-air product.
“It could entail having a partner that will show parts of the Tour de France to a free audience, but we’re just working through how much [of the race], what duration, frequency, we’re working through all the elements of that.”
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Young would not be drawn on what the FTA package would look like, and there was no suggestion that it would include live coverage, but this was also not ruled out.
This season will be the first season in decades that the Tour will not be shown live, in full, on television for free. In 2025, it was revealed that ITV would no longer televise the Tour, the exclusive UK rights having been sold to Warner Bros Discovery (WBD), parent company of TNT Sports.
Last year, Eurosport also closed, with the price of a monthly subscription to HBO Max with TNT Sports going from £6.99 to £30.99 a month, although it can be purchased for £25.99 a month on a 12-month contract.
Full details of the coverage are promised in due course. Daily highlights of the current Giro d’Italia are available nightly on free-to-air channel DMAX, along with YouTube and social media clips.
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“We have relationships with free-to-air partners across nearly everything that we do,” Young said, which includes with the BBC for the Olympics and the FA Cup, and ITV for rugby union.
A survey by Cycling Weekly last year revealed that 71% of respondents said 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 had never paid to watch cycling on TV.
“Companies like us and Sky invest in sport, and that’s why sports like the [football] Premier League have been going since day one behind a paywall,” Young said. “There’s a clear audience in this market that accepts paying for sport. Sport in this market generally sits behind a paywall one way or the other.
“We need to have a relationship with free-to-air to do exactly that for us to continue to have the value coming in through the subscription, so we can invest in sport and have a free-to-air partner, so that a certain amount of that content is also accessible to people who choose not to subscribe and maybe watch the entire 21 stages, but get to see enough of it through free.”
“There are some people who will not convert from a free-to-air point into paid television,” Young admitted. “I think you have to accept that there’s an audience out there who will do that. But there is also an audience that will watch content, either on free-to-air or on YouTube and actually want the rest of the story. They don’t want to just watch highlights, they want to watch the entire Tour de France.
“There is a genuine package and offer that says, If you subscribe for a year, we haven’t left any cycling that we know about untamed.”
For critics who suggested that the inflated subscription fee was subsidising football, Young said: “Cycling is not a small cog or wheel. It’s a major part of that wheel, and I can’t see that changing in the foreseeable future, irrespective of all the other sports around it. So the Champions League coming or going makes no difference to our cycling strategy.”
Last year’s Tour also saw TNT Sports’ ad-free streaming option dropped. Young said: “I think, as a commercial sports broadcaster, an ad-free product doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
However, it is understood that a different way of showing ads might emerge soon, where the action is shown as a dual screen alongside the commercials.
Despite the noise, Young and his team, including Guy Voisin, the VP of cycling at WBD, are looking forward to their debut Tour as exclusive rights holders in the UK.
“It’s really exciting, because I know we’re going to commit to it,” Young said. “I know what we’re going to deliver on the Tour is going to be extraordinary. Guy guaranteed it’s going to be epic. What we’re going to do on the Tour will elevate our coverage of cycling.”
In the US, the Giro is currently also being shown on HBO Max. Keep up to date with how to watch cycling in the UK and across the world with our streaming guide, and take a look at our guide on how to watch cycling for free.
