Cycling coverage to move to HBO Max in UK and Ireland from Discovery+

Cycling coverage in the UK and Ireland is to move to HBO Max from the end of March from Discovery+.

TNT Sports will be part of the new Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) platform from Thursday 26 March. HBO Max is already live in over 100 countries around the world.

It will be the third time cycling has moved around a streaming service online in the last few years, after the closure of GCN+, and the end of Eurosport last year. On live television, cycling will remain on TNT Sports, as before. This year will be the first year for decades that the Tour de France won't be broadcast on free-to-air TV.

The subscription plans will remain the same, with HBO Max with TNT Sports at £30.99 a month. However, moving over to the new service should be seamless, with users able to login to HBO Max with their Discovery+ account. Plans or bills will not change with the switch.

It's understood that the move is WBD consolidating its multiple avenues. HBO Max will bring together content from HBO, Warner Bros Pictures and Television and DC Studios, as well as TNT Sports.

Cycling has been a very small part of the WBD empire since Warner Bros Discovery was formed in 2021 after a merger of AT&T and Discovery.

Discovery had bought into Play Sports Group, the company that owned the GCN operation since its inception on YouTube, in 2017 and increased its shareholding in 2019. In 2021 it took a 100% stake in the company in a deal that reportedly valued it at £70m.

That included the YouTube channel, and the then newly-created GCN+, the streaming service which comprehensively covered professional cycling with a dedicated platform and app.

However, at the end of 2023, the GCN+ streaming service and app were closed, with Warner Bros. Discovery moving the television rights to its Eurosport, Discovery+ and Max, leaving Play Sports Network responsible for just the YouTube channel.

Then, last year, Eurosport was closed down in the UK with TNT Sports becoming the home of live cycling. It meant the sport was placed within a broader sports subscription package, priced at £30.99 a month – more than four times the GCN+ offering.

Late last year, it emerged that WBD had entered exclusive talks with Netflix over a potential takeover. However, it is not known at what stage that process is now at, or what this might mean for the future of cycling on TV.

A survey by Cycling Weekly last year revealed that 71% of respondents told us 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’d never paid to watch cycling on TV). That’s 88%, an overwhelming majority of TV-watching cycling fans in the UK.