This decision comes from our parent company Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) and is driven by its global strategy to consolidate its streaming services, and to offer content in fewer places, making it easier for customers to access and discover more content. In Europe, GCN+ subscribers will now have the option to subscribe to access Discovery+, Eurosport or Eurosport Extra, where you can continue to watch live cycling. In markets outside of Europe, WBD is reviewing how content is delivered to its fans.
Definitely a shocker. Definitely wasn’t because it’s not popular. Likely it’s because it IS popular, so their parent company is going to try to push their membership base into their other existing apps and services that are not doing as well. Like Max (formerly HBO) and Discovery+.
Very frustrating for cycling enthusiasts here in the US whose only other options for live cycling has been the Tour on Peacock/NBC and a handful of races on FloBikes that costs triple the price of GCN+. And GCN+ also had a ton of quality cycling documentaries and adventure films to boot. Plus the races were full length and ad-free.
This is going to be brutal for those of us in North America who love watching live cycling races. I really hope they provide more info and a real way for us to watch racing in 2024.
+1 on this. The GCN+/Eurosport commentators were great, and I’ve really enjoyed their coverage of the cyclocross racing, both here in the US and in Europe.
Ugh. Yep. Just as you would expect. Take all those happy GCN+ subscribers from a flourishing service and push them into a higher-priced app with content they don’t need to try to make extra money to save their other floundering services.
So they’d rather make ALL their customers unhappy rather than most of them to try to save their services that aren’t as popular and are costing them money.
I think there is an annual option at £59.99 pa. I used Discovery+ for a while after the Eurosport app closed and pushed everyone to Discovery. It worked fine just a lot of extra clicks to get past 90-Day Fiance, 1000 lb sisters etc etc to find the cycling content. Some of the other sports content might be of interest. Hopefully the GCN docs will make it onto Discovery.
Yes. Either that or back onto the free YouTube channel.
They GCN docs were awesome. There was a lot of great adventure docs and films when they were on the free YouTube channel. And at first the docs on GCN+ were amazing. But it seemed that the quality started to slip a bit as they tried to continue pushing out extra content on a regular basis to fill out the app enough. Don’t get me wrong, there were still a lot of great films, but some of them seemed a bit more rushed and not quite as thought out. Maybe by being inside the Discovery+ app they won’t feel the need to push out as many of them and can focus on making the fewer they release at a higher quality.
Find popular product with dedicated fan base. Buy it. $&@% it up. Alienate fan base. Drive it down the drain. Cancel/sell it.
Rinse & repeat.
On behalf of my countrymen, I feel like i should apologize for the dystopian hellscape that is American corporate culture. (Motto: “we can make anything worse!”).
GCN has really brought me back into enjoying cycle races. The cycle industry has a lot to thank these people for. I feel for the affected staff, such a committed bunch, they deserve better.
Putting the cycle race broadcasts under a different umbrella as part of a bigger package can only be good for the corporate wallet. There is absolutely no benefit in it for me.
I’d rather pay the Discovery+ fee to keep GCN+, than having to wade through the other content of Discovery+.
Fact that outside of Europe, viewers are left in the dark is just mind boggling.
I’ve not been able to track done an annual £59.99 option and only see £6.99 per month with no annual option. The basic package is £39.99 per year but from what I can tell doesn’t include any cycling. It’s far from clear to me, but I am rather simple…
Unless they sort it out by credit card mailing address, anyone who watches on a computer or phone can be “inside Europe” using a VPN. Google’s VPN doesn’t let you choose where you appear to be originating on the internet (as far as I can tell, I have not dug deeply). BitDefender’s does, or at least did, I didn’t use it often enough to justify the minimal annual fee so dropped it when Google’s free one appeared for PCs, it does all I need. Google’s may not be free unless you use some other non-free Google products, I don’t know, but there are free/almost free VPNs out there.
I liked the email telling us they’d refund the current subscription onto a last valid credit card combined with them removing the ability to adjust the card. I lost my wallet a couple of months ago and will still have 8 months left when they shutter it. There is no way for them to refund me because they have no clue as to my card number.
Discovery are essentially going to steal my money and then expect me to pay an increased price. I think it is much more likely I will just no pay anything out of anger. They’ve handled this really badly.
even more so for those in the US 
.