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news
TNT Sports Paris-Roubaix 2025 (credit: TNT Sports)"More adverts than bike racing": UK cycling fans fume at TNT Sports' Paris-Roubaix coverage
British cycling fans flooded TNT Sports with complaints about the broadcaster's coverage of Paris-Roubaix on Sunday, disgruntled viewers paying the £30.99-a-month subscription to watch bike racing fuming at being "constantly bombarded" by adverts.
Viewers watching the broadcaster's TV coverage on TNT Sports 1 were shown adverts throughout Mathieu van der Poel's win, although viewers using Discovery+ could select a broadcast option without advert breaks, as was previously the case when Eurosport was still providing coverage in the UK.
Mathieu van der Poel hit by bottle at Paris-Roubaix (credit: TNT Sports)> Mathieu van der Poel hit by bottle thrown from crowd at Paris-Roubaix
However, many watching the TNT Sports 1 coverage complained the advert breaks were repetitive and more frequent than on Eurosport, plenty of viewers taking to the internet to express their disgust at the quality of product they are now being asked to pay £30.99-a-month to watch.
On Facebook, one viewer said: "Trying to watch but there are more adverts than bike racing unfortunately!" Another agreed the ad breaks were "far more frequent than [on] Eurosport".
TNT Sports' posts about the race on Twitter were met by a steady stream of similar complaints from British viewers, one saying they "pay to be able to watch the race uninterrupted and not be constantly bombarded by shit ads".
Cycling coverage moves to TNT Sports (credit: road.cc)Another wrote: "Coverage is absolutely shit. Constant ads every few minutes that last around five minutes. Constantly missing attacks and crashes. And advertising football live when it's not an ad break."
"They've somehow managed to turn what was an incredible product, in GCN+, into something awful in two years while also charging about six times as much. Borderline impressive balls up," someone else added.
> How to watch cycling for less now it's moved to £30.99-a-month TNT Sports
Other viewers called the adverts "so frustrating" and "just ridiculous" due to their frequency.
"Six times the price and you still can't afford a proper director who knows enough about cycling to know not to cut to the studio for some inane chit chat rather than watch the sprints for the other placings," another disgruntled viewer wrote after the race had finished and the coverage returned to the studio to discuss Mathieu van der Poel's win.
One viewer suggested they had calculated there "was over an hour of ads in the coverage today" and "the broadcast lasted 6.5 hours in total". They continued: "In a 110-minute broadcast of football games, there's less than 10 mins of ads. Why is cycling the whipping boy?"
It is just the latest controversy that has followed Warner Bros. Discovery closing Eurosport in the UK and Ireland and putting all its cycling coverage on TNT Sports, hiking the price from £6.99 to £30.99-a-month in the process.
Such is the weight of public fury at the situation, the issue was even raised in Parliament and a petition calling on the government to save free-to-air Tour de France coverage in UK has also been launched.
When news of the price hike emerged cycling fans reported Warner Bros. Discovery to the market regulator for "abuse of monopoly" and "price gouging", former UCI president Brian Cookson suggesting you could not "imagine any retailer of any other product getting away with" such an increase.
road.cc has contacted TNT Sports for comment.
Dan is the road.cc news editor and joined in 2020 having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Dan has been at road.cc for four years and mainly writes news and tech articles as well as the occasional feature. He has hopefully kept you entertained on the live blog too.
Never fast enough to take things on the bike too seriously, when he's not working you'll find him exploring the south of England by two wheels at a leisurely weekend pace, or enjoying his favourite Scottish roads when visiting family. Sometimes he'll even load up the bags and ride up the whole way, he's a bit strange like that.
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I gather in Edinburgh (family live there, so booking system I have seen in use), the booking system is actually fairly popular....
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The Washington Post had best watch their step publishing wokery like this in the current climate. Likely to end up in an El Salvadorean megaprison.
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"... struck by a driver..." http://rc-rg.com
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That's only for longer journeys; obviously for short trips he employs the sedan chair.
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No particular sympathy for MVDP, he knew the rules and chose to break them and so gets the punishment. However, isn't it time that we did away with...
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One is permantly in misery mode, the other all blacked out in stealth mode.
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...and go and ride your bike for two hours or less.
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Just put in planning permission for a NASA sized warehouse the area of ten football pitches, right up against local housing. That'll go through no...
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40 comments
But we're the ads up to the standards of ITV4s midweek daytime ads? Those happy donkeys. Or that attempt at the slow mo cycling with the watch?...
And Quest+1 failed to show the women's race.
On the plus side, I haven't taken out any over 50 life insurance plans or felt compelled to arrange any prepaid funerals over the weekend, or visited Halfords or Skǒda. And my eyes aren't itching from the ident bumper showing the rear wheel with the drivetrain on the left. But I'm missing G and MvdP on the Zwift bike in the big flashy room, and the donkeys, and the ability to text WIN or whatever to a 5 digit number for £2 (standard network charges apply) to win a bike I've probably already got.
I think it's more upsetting that I'm paying £30-odd quid a month and still have to put up with that monsterous bellend Carlton Kirby ruining races with his utter drivel.
If you have Sky and watch via the Discovery+ app then there are no adverts btw - this is why i didn't add TNT as an extra to my Sky subcription!
Didn't TNT indicate that although the ad free streams would initially still be available via Discovery+, at some point (can't remember when) they would be removed?
""More adverts than bike racing"
and I thought it's about the road.cc - website. *SCNR*
*To avoid some shitstorm: Yes, I know that road.cc has to generate an income and yes it's moslty comming from adverts, but the amount of ads on road.cc is insane.
While typing this comment, the input field is surrounded by 4 ads. (one to the left, two(!) to the right and one at the bottom). When scrolling most articles I get nagged by videos and tons of adverts.
I watched on Discovery+ with no ads whatsoever. Commentary was great with Carlton and Rob Hatch and supporting others. Assumed that was the norm? Great race
There's usually two feeds on Discovery+ and one is full of ads, the other is ad free. Usually the front page link to a cycling race is the one full of ads and the 2nd one in the details page is ad free but its not always consistent
The only way I think to tell is to start it and if it says TNT Sports 1 (2,3 or 4), itll be full of ads, if it doesn't have a number, it'll be ad free.
Didn't happen.
And this is why things like Netflix took off. Because the younger generation couldn't quite fathom how you could be paying £100/month for your sky package and still get constant, obnoxious adverts.
Netflix and co however are all moving back towards the cable TV model of charging you through the nose and showing you ads slowly but surely.
Where is British Cycling with their stance on TNT. Radio silence. No response to direct contact. No statement. No recognition of the issue. This, the body that is supposed to represent cycling in this country. They are pathetic. Cancelling my membership.
I watched it all on Tiz for free with no ads.
Let keep this our secret before Big brother finds out
Was the same with Eurosport but was cheaper - paying to be able to watch a tv channel to then be made to watch ads, make it make sense - 🙃
"Enshitification" It feels like a gag from an early Black Mirror episode that's now a dystopic reality
I watched several hours and can't say I noticed any difference from Eurosport. I still don't quite get the issue with the coverage to be honest. There seems to be an assumption that cycling fans only watch cycling and no other sports and that none of us have ever had TNT sports or Eurosport. All the people I know who watch cycling have always watched it as part of a TV subscription through Eurosport on sky or virgin. Can't say I have every meet a person in the real world who used a streaming service only to watch live cycling.
I also hate this current trend of lazy journalism around these days of creating news articles based on a few random comments on social media. It's pathetic.
You must work for Disney+. No one would want to pay more for the same coverage that was cheaper Only you would like a higher rate for the same quality
Have Disney got the cycling now?
Technically Disney do own part of ESPN so coverage in the US is
I'm not paying any more. Like I said many cycling fans are also sports fans who have a sports package with their TV. I had Eurosport for years, even before I was a cycling fan. I realise this is a cycling website and the views might be a bit skewed but this reporting that we are paying more is not correct. It's only true if you subscribe to a streaming service to watch cycling which many people don't.
GCN+ used to have 3.3 million subscribers so quite a few people did when it was available.
I think that's more likely to be the number of YouTube subscriptions rather than GCN +
And yet they operated at a loss and WBD had to write of 33million GCN had accrued in debt so you can see how well that operating model worked.
Strangely despite 3.3million paying for GCN, only on average 57,000 people bothered watching ITVs "free" highlights from Paris Nice.
A lot of that debt was loaded onto GCN by WBD from its original purchase, the well-known "Glazer model" used in purchasing Manchester United, borrow the purchase price and then load it on the company you have just purchased as a debt. Effectively WBD purchased GCN in order to get their hands on the cycling rights, stripped the company of the main thing that made it valuable and put that in their Discovery+/TNT portfolio and then said this company is now virtually worthless, we will have to write off its debt and get rid of it. Before blaming GCN and/or believing WBD's narrative you might like to consider that they have a total net debt of an astonishing $34.6 billion so I would think carefully before accepting their statements shifting blame for debt onto others.
How d'you do, I don't own a television and used to have a Discovery+ subscription solely so that I could watch cycle racing online. I know several other people who had D+ subscriptions so that they could watch at work and avoid marital/offspring strife by wanting to hog the TV for eight hours every time a good race was on.
I've watched cycling for years.. can't stand watching overpaid footballers. I do watch free to air tennis and rugby but it's mainly cycling for me. Subscribed to Eurosport player for years, then gcn+, and then was still ok with Discovery+.. the price was fair for the coverage. Since the TNT takeover I've cancelled. I don't want to watch football, really... It's crap. Now I'm watching some live streaming and free highlights... I look at and take in the kits pro cyclists wear, companies that advertise on the kit actually put something in to cycling, not take it away. TNT is the result of a broken American system.
It's been near enough identical to Eurosport coverage imo (largely because Eurosport were operating as Discovery for a while before the channels were finally merged ) and Ofcom regulate the amount of ads allowed in broadcasts, so it's not going to have broken those rules.
Hello
Only for one year, but I loved GCN+ because it was what I wanted (cycling) plus a bit more of what I wanted (cycling documentaries) and nothing that I didn't (all other sports).
By contrast the free SBS Australia coverage was excellent, really enjoyed the commentary too. The occasional advert breaks are often audio muted on the on demand player. Imagine paying £31/month and still having to listen to Roberto Hachio
Yepp, fantastic coverage. It seems strange that WBD have forced me to spend less and get better coverage! Thing is, I would have been happy with a small pay hike, but I'm not going to get rinsed to fund football that I am not going to watch.
Crikey memories of Eurosport soon vanished didn't they, they were never shy of an ad break
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