With the first UCI Mountain Bike World Series event kicking off with the XC in Mairipora, Brazil, on April 12, there are still plenty of questions about where to watch the World Cup in 2024 following the closure of GCN+ by parent company WB Discovery last year.
While the good ol’ days of the Red Bull TV broadcasts are well and truly behind us, GCN+ proved to be the ultimate subscription for cycling fans with basically all of the racing, from road to CX, MTB and even disciplines you’d never hear of. As someone who happily paid for GCN+ it was a great app.
Related:
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The Best of the Best | How seasoned racers tackle a World Cup Track
Warner Bros Discovery killed GCN+ under the guise of simplifying access to content. But with the racing now spread across multiple apps requiring different tiered subscriptions it has become vastly more complex to watch mountain bike racing.
Wait what happened to GCN+
In a video released back in December 2023, GCN presenters Simon Richardson and Daniel Lloyd announced the sudden closure of the app.
“This decision comes from our parent company Warner Bros Discovery 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,” said Lloyd.
“The reason for its closure is not because it didn’t work or it was underperforming, it’s that the media landscape has changed,” continued Richardson.
Putting our business hat on consolidating everything into one place does make sense provided that service is available across the markets that consume it. There are still different apps and subscriptions you’ll need depending on where you live, and unfortunately, those Warner Brothers Discovery platforms that the World Cup has been siphoned into are not available in Australia.
What does Warner Bros say?
Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen announcements from UCI about how markets outside Europe will be able to watch the racing, but here in Australia, we’ve been left to speculate.
Back in February, we started to get sweaty palms and reached out directly to WBD Sports.
“More information on Warner Bros. Discovery global cycling coverage, including the UCI Mountain Bike World Series, will be released in due course. This will include more details on where to watch live action across our platforms (Max, discovery+ and Eurosport), our social media channels + our portfolio of sublicense partnerships in other markets,” Laura Cueto, WBD Sports’ Events, Communications / Media Relations Manager said in an email.
At the end of March, the Where to Watch section of the UCI Mountain Bike World Series had yet to be populated with any streaming partners other than the WBD properties. Upon following up with WBD Sports at the end of March, a second press officer copied and pasted this same response into an email.
Warner Bros didn’t have any info as to how Aussies can watch the World Cup, nor did they offer up if anything was in the works.
How bout local broadcasters?
With SBS still the home of UCI road racing in Australia, and streaming the AusCycling National Champs we tried our luck with the broadcaster.
Jordyn Bryne, SBS’s Sport Publicist got back to us saying:
“Thank you for reaching out to the team; SBS does not have the broadcasting rights to the 2024 UCI Mountain Bike World Series; apologies I don’t have more info for you.”
In the meantime, there has been quite a rumour going around that Stan Sport had won the rights to broadcast the World Cup in 2024 alongside the UEFA Champions League, Wimbledon and IndyCar. We reached out to confirm the veracity of that rumour; however, the Stan PR team poured cold water on that one too.
“At this stage, there is no news of any UCI content on Stan Sport, unfortunately. If we hear otherwise, however, we’ll be sure to let you know,” says Jason Evans, a Senior Publicist at Stan.
Foxtel Group, which owns Kayo, did not reply to multiple requests for comment but a very friendly customer service rep said that the World Cup did not currently appear in their catalogue of upcoming events. Seven Network, Nine Network, and Channel 10 did not reply to multiple requests for comment.
How to watch the UCI MTB World Series in the US and Canada?
With the lack of information about where to find the UCI MTB World Series here in Australia the first race in Brazil basically here, it’s worth laying out what options are available for the folks who know their way around VPNs or Smart DNS, and for our overseas friends who may have found their way here — G’day!
In the US, all of the racing will be on MAX which starts at $9.99 USD per month. Initially, it was announced that you’d need the Bleacher Report sports add-on, but according to MAX delays with “tech-integration” mean they’re just including it for the time being.
For folks in Canada — or looking to make it seem as though they’re located in Canada — WBD just announced that FloBikes will be carrying the entire World Cup Season. Unfortunately, FloBikes don’t have the best reputation in North America, a “this content is not available in your region” error message is a regular occurrence with content listed in its catalogue. Given the announcement came straight from the UCI MTB World Series press team, it’s probably a safe bet. For folks based in the Great White North a FloBikes subscription is $29.99 USD a month, or $150 if you buy an annual subscription.
While the US options are pretty well geo-blocked for Aussie fans, there are workarounds — which of course we do not encourage you to pursue.
We should note that if you are using a VPN or smart DNS to circumvent geo-blocking restrictions — which, of course, we do not officially condone or advise — often these services will require a local bank card or credit card to sign up. There are of course ways around this and services that offer virtual cards which can be linked to a PayPal account.
We won’t detail those here, but they are easily found with a bit of time spent on Google.
To reiterate, we do not recommend going this route, but for those cavalier enough, it is possible.
How to watch the UCI MTB World Series in UK and Europe?
In Europe and the UK the races will be streamed via the Discovery+ app and Eurosport. It appears you’ll need the standard tier subscription to access the World Cup racing which costs £6.88 GBP per month.
While you can have a look around the Discovery+ app with a VPN set to the UK or much of Europe, you’ll need a UK or Euro bank card AND a UK or Euro phone number.
For folks aiming to spoof their location and make the robots think they live in the UK or Europe, it’s a bit trickier, but there are workarounds. Again, we won’t detail them here, nor will we encourage folks to go this route, but we also won’t pretend that the solution isn’t easily found on Google.
The UK and Euro options are a bit more locked down than some on the other side of the pond.
How to watch the UCI MTB World Series in Australia?
CX fans have been living what we’re all afraid of, as no Aussie broadcaster picked up the rights to live stream cyclocross in Australia. While cyclocross is a niche within a niche, it’s wildly entertaining to watch, and it’s a shame — albeit an unsurprising one — that local fans were left hanging.
A week ago, I had full confidence that the Aussie market wouldn’t be left out to dry based on who has been repeating a particular rumour about a blue app bearing the same name as the Marvel Comics founder. Now, I’m not so sure.
The licensing deals that come with broadcasting live sports are wildly complex and take a fair bit of negotiation and fine-tuning. By hooly dooly, they are cutting it close, with the first race in Brazil kicking off on April 12. Frankly, it sucks for Aussie fans who live for racing. It would be a real shame for WBD to fumble the ball at the expense of Aussie mountain bike fans after they had already built the infrastructure that was, by all accounts, working.
Given the UCI’s latest push to have a winter Olympic event with the Snowbiking World Championships — however odd it may have seemed from afar — was more or less unavailable to Australians, it doesn’t bode confidence for us to easily access the racing. But I would love to be proven wrong, and will happily eat a big ol’ helping of crow should a last minute deal be struck.
Obviously, we’ll be watching all of this closely — because we want to watch the racing too — and as soon as we have more info will update this story
Photos: Bartek Wolinski / Red Bull Content Pool
The post How to watch the UCI Mountain Bike World Series in 2024 appeared first on Flow Mountain Bike.
With the first UCI Mountain Bike World Series event kicking off with the XC in Mairipora, Brazil, on April 12, there are still plenty of questions about where to watch the World Cup in 2024 following the closure of GCN+ by parent company WB Discovery last year. While the good ol’ days of the Red Bull
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