GCN+ will cease to exist as of the 19th December 2023. In a video posted to the GCN+ YouTube Channel earlier today, Si Richardson and Dan Lloyd announced "with great sadness the closure of GCN+ and the GCN App". Throughout 2023, the service was providing
coverage of the UCI Mountain Bike World Series events globally, with live streaming of finals available with the purchase of a subscription that cost $8.99 USD per month, or $49.99 USD for the year.
The introduction of the pay-to-view service was not initially well received (after eight years of free broadcasts from the previous rights' holder, Red Bull), but the GCN+ subscription was one of the more affordable streaming services offering live coverage. With a clear understanding of how World Cup racing will be accessible next year yet to emerge, the closure of GCN+ has users concerned that watching mountain bike racing will become more complex and expensive. The news also comes as
a blow to road fans who have enjoyed great coverage of the Tour de France and other major road cycling events through the GCN App.
Warner Bros. Discovery, owners of Play Sports Network and the current broadcasters, organizers, and promoters of the Mountain Bike World Cup, has stated the decision to close GCN+ was "driven by its global strategy to consolidate its streaming services to offer more content in fewer places".
Si Richardson states "the reason for its closure is not because it didn't work or it was underperforming, it's that the media industry landscape has changed".
GCN+ email to subscribers, November 15th 2023:
Dear GCN+ Subscriber,
We are sending you this email as a valued subscriber of GCN+. We are very sorry to have to inform you that the GCN+ service and the GCN app will close on 19 December 2023.
What does this mean for you?
Access: Your subscription contract will end and you will be unable to access the GCN+ service and GCN app from 19 December 2023. Following closure, you can still use your GCN account on the GCN website at globalcyclingnetwork.com and the GCN Shop at shop.globalcyclingnetwork.com.
Upcoming payments: The GCN+ service will close on 19 December 2023 and you will be charged for any upcoming subscription payments up to that time. If you do not want to be charged for any upcoming payments, you can cancel your subscription prior to your next renewal date, however your access to the service will then end on that renewal date.
Refunds: If you have a subscription to the GCN+ service which is still running on 19 December 2023, we will arrange for a refund of any amounts that you have paid in advance for access to the service after that date. Please make sure you have a valid and up-to-date payment method. Refunds will be paid automatically, but in some instances may take some time to process for technical reasons.
Data: Following closure, your personal data will continue to be handled in accordance with our Privacy Policy.
We encourage you to contact our customer service team here to answer any additional questions about GCN+ and your subscription.
Thank you for subscribing to GCN+, we are very grateful for your support and for joining us on this journey.
Sincerely,
The GCN Team
We have reached out to Warner Bros. Discovery to find out what this will mean for racing fans worldwide who will want to tune in come the 2024 season, and will follow up when we have more information. We are hopeful that the series will find an accessible home for fans worldwide in 2024.
Update 10:45am PST November 15th with a comment from WBD:  | The GCN+ service and GCN App will close from 19 December. This decision follows Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD)’s strategy to consolidate its streaming services and the ambition to bring more of our sports and entertainment content together in one place.
Looking to the future, we are confident that bringing our live cycling coverage together with our sports and entertainment offer, such as in Europe, will provide long-term value for subscribers. This will also make things simpler for mountain bike fans and provide an even greater viewing experience.
In Europe, GCN+ subscribers can subscribe for live race coverage to either discovery+, Eurosport or Eurosport Extra (Poland) where they can continue to enjoy watching UCI Mountain Bike World Series content they currently access.
All live races that are currently available on GCN+ can be watched on discovery+ in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Ireland. In all other countries in Europe, the Eurosport App provides live streaming of all cycling content currently on GCN+.
In markets outside of Europe including the US, fans will be kept fully informed about future live content.—Warner Bros. Discovery |
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zwABievfNw
That's a bit Rich!
Loic wins the overall even though Goldstone beat him easily if you only count finals points?? Sorry but that kind of BS makes me not want to pay attention. Thank you for at least not defending the horrific announcing.
do something like top 20 women and same LCQ setup.
Sponsor: "How will fans watch your team next year?"
MTB Team: "......"
We already know this. No coverage is going anywhere (at least in Europe).
*by preordering you agree that if access does not work, so does the refund.
I never had a single issue with playback quality / streaming connection consistency etc.
It was weird that they buried the races and the titles were confusing, but the stream itself was fine.
I am concerned about my prospects to watch next year and want to see what refund I get on my 12 month subs!
What a dumpster fire UCI has given us!
Ironically they've now ended up doing this anyway, despite me accepting and even starting to use it more
“the reason for its closure is not because it didn't work or it was underperforming”
Oh. So you just closed it for fun then? Is there something I’m missing?
Pinkbike didn't report on this months ago because Outside was one of the supposed potential buyers.
All the rights for race coverage either already belonged to Eurosport, or were acquired by WB/Discovery after they acquired Eurosport. GCN never owned any rights, with GCN Plus ceasing to make sense as soon as there were other platforms for the live coverage (Discovery+).
In the same period Netflix subscription went from USD12 to USD 22 by December 2023.
I feel like we already tried this.
U23 XC races, mens and womens,
ALL coverage of Enduro
Junior DH finals
Elite DH semi-finals
What wasn't free:
Elite XC racing
Elite DH final
You should did miss a lot of action for your principle of not paying for anything.
The point of Warner Bros is that they don't want 'yet another streaming service' either. They are putting everything they have into one streaming service.
I'm not particularly fond of the whole 'consolidation' thing, but I don't want everything scattered over 57 different paid streaming services either. And in terms of cost, I see D+ is 6 euro/month for me, while Eurosport alone is 7. So I get 1 euro discount for having access to '90 day fiance' and other crap like that. Sounds like a fair compensation.
Preferably, it just became event by event ppv on YouTube. Simple.
But the first couple of rounds screened without any commentary option (at all, just very quiet ambient sound), then the by the third round the men's elite replay just wasn't even there. Gave up.
The app was fine for me. Their No Spoiler Mode put it over Red Bull’s.
But ummmm not great news. Warner Brothers out here drowning their completed movies in a bucket, but I’m sure that can’t happen to bike racers in Europe…
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/warner-brothers-discovery-seeks-buyer-for-cycling-specialist-play-sports-group-03cgx983s
See here: escapecollective.com/gcn-is-for-sale
Thanks Warner Bros for ruinning downhill.
No1: Puffer Gilet
No2: Sweater vest
No3: 90s DH Jersey
No4: Corset
No5: Hide in the garage
The semi finals idea was terrible from a viewer standpoint. I tried watching both semi's and finals for the first race, but ends up being like 6 hours of racing to watch by which point I had lost interest. Fair play for trying something new, but it doesn't work in my opinion. The racing is diluted and loses its excitement.
I originally liked the idea of consolidating the enduro, XC and DH to the same venue but again I don't think this works. The appeal of enduro was racing at all these new venues, with epic scenery, and spread across different continents. A lot of the races this year looked too bike park and boring. And then the coverage got lost amongst the rest of the racing and news from DH and XC, so I ended up not watching.
Will see what happens next year and what the coverage is like before I subscribe, but I don't think merging it all will be a good thing for the World Cup.
And I was hoping for more coverage from the Enduro events, interviews, racing, discussion the different stages.mit could have been really great. I’m hoping (still) that it’ll be better or better as time progresses.
I’ll have a few beers while I wait…
There was nothing about the broadcast that was better from my perspective as a fan. Finding the race, the announcers, the format, the leader board, it was all worse. Even if all that didn't suck, I want to see them hang it all out there, but i'm not spending 6 hours watching semi's and then finals.
I get that racers had become a bit frustrated with how things were organized but there's consequences to selling rights to a company that views you as a small part of what they do instead of a company that values you and exploded the racing scene to a much larger fanbase.
Redbull made the UCI feel relatable, it connected the rest of the mountain biking community to the pro racing community. Discovery/GCN+ has felt like it's on a mission to destroy that connection and if they're not they are doing it anyways.
So what do we have to do to get redbull back? let's do that! or just go ride our bikes, either or.
This is the "Bust" of the 2021 "Boom." I just hope the world cup season to happen somewhat normally, but It doesnt look like that is going to happen.
€ per year. Discovery+ is ~10 € per month. Well, only good thing about the short DH season is the saving on sub fees.
Went to my national Disco+ website, found "cycling". Scrolled through kilometres of road events. Gave up, searched for "MTB". One search result: a road event.
I don't do linear TV. Haven't done so for 20 years. My only guess is that Warner Bros is modelling the user experience of MTB based on UCI (really naff) jersey laws.
Worlds on SKY TV with awful commentary again? Not sure when the rights run out for SKY on that front. They have already lost most of the cycling world pro tour except for TdF and the Vuelta.
Can you get the numbers of how many watched DH and EWS / EDR in 2022 and 2023? It would be interesting to see the result of the change from Warner (the one and only) to Warner (the greedy corporate one with his brothers).
Equivalent to 18 USD per months is at least 12 USD too much...
M'kay.
Regardless, this isn't an antitrust issue. It appears that GCN+ didn't have a successful business model or had trouble executing and WB/Discovery decided to reallocate resources.
It sucks to have this consolidated into discovery+ which has all sorts of crap I don’t want. The streaming services are trying to reinvent cable.
PLEASE just move to peacock like supermotorcross.
Redbull player was nice cause it gave you a rider list and you could skip around, but gcn+ was perfectly easy to use
Open app-->GCN+-->racing-->MTB, then look for the event I want to watch among all of the highlights, other events, upcoming events, etc. Do I want to watch the version with a pre-show? Probably not, but how come the runtime is shorter than the one without?
The whole thing was shit. That said, the actual race coverage was better than I expected.
as already stated REDBULL is licking their lips, they truly understand media coverage and broadcasting and how to create revenue
Redbull generally doesn't charge anything to view its content as it serves mostly just as advertising for the energy drinks. They aren't really trying to turn a profit on the media they produce. I've seen reports that somewhere around 95%+ of Redbulls revenue and profit come from selling drinks. Everything else is just a marketing expense to sell cans of Redbull.
That's what I did all year. It's the same price as the GCN+ monthlies and you get a bunch of other stuff to watch too.
I went with Discovery+ as they had an Xbox App and GCN+ didn't.
I use my Xbox to stream everything.
Girls Cam Now
Gamma Circumference Nebula?
Or it's not a funny joke, therefore bad comment.
edit: actually reading it a 5th time, With is actually correct, it's just awkward sentence construction. "yet to emerge" technically makes "With" correct, but "without a clear understanding of how World Cup racing will be accessible next year," is probably clearer and more concise.