I suppose this was inevitable

I'm a fan of bike racing.  The pedal variety that is, and for many years either during or after my days as a competitive racing cyclist were over, I enjoyed watching the racing on TV.  Here in the UK that meant Eurosport was the main platform, as it covered the vast majority of the big one-day races, many of the smaller ones, the grand tours and the World Championships.

For the more casual fan, ITV broadcast live coverage of the Tour de France every July, and for most people this was more than enough.

Now, in order to access Eurosport one needed a Sky TV subscription - an expensive rip-off but necessary to watch pretty well any sport here from Football to Darts.  The only sports left on mainstream TV were seemingly the incredibly niche ones like bowls, along with those protected from profiteering such as the Wimbledon tennis tournament, major World and European football tournaments (World Cup, etc) and the Olympics.

From this year though, fans of cycling will need to stump up an extra £31 per month to watch the racing, as the rights have been bought by Warner Bros who are then going to bundle it in with their sport package which covers mainly football in the shape of some Premier League and most UEFA Champions League matches.

While this is of course deeply unfair, it's not wholly unexpected.

It seems virtually everything you want to watch on TV these days, well anything of note that is, is behind a "pay-wall" where a monthly or annual subscription is required.

If you're a boxing fan it's even worse, with all the major title fights only available for a one-off, and quite exorbitant, fee.

"eye-witnesses say the fighting started when a lycra-clad man switched channels to watch some Dutch cyclocross racing..."

Now, football (or boxing for that matter) fans can of course probably pop down to the pub to watch the game or fight, etc all for the price of a drink.  But I somehow can't imagine pub owners pandering to cycling fans' needs and popping the Vuelta a Espana on of a Sunday afternoon while Liverpool are playing.

So, what to do?

Either stump up the £31 a month I guess, or get a Virtual Private Network and watch French, Belgian, Spanish, etc. coverage.  Who knows, this might lead to a cultural revolution with us all learning a foreign language, though probably not!

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