TNT Sports has announced a multi-year deal with Channel 5 for the Tour de France to remain on free-to-air television, beginning this summer.
Channel 5 will broadcast a daily highlights programme of cycling’s biggest race at 7pm each evening. This year’s Tour starts in Barcelona on July 4.
The deal will also include live coverage of the UK Grand Départs of both the Tour de France and Tour de France Femmes next year – the first time both races will depart from the same country outside France and the first time the Tour has been in the UK since the successful Grand Départ in 2014. There will also be daily highlights shows of the Vuelta a España and the Giro d’Italia during the term of the agreement.
Cycling fans in the UK were up in arms after TNT Sports’ parent company Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) secured the exclusive rights to the Tour de France in the autumn of 2024, then announced that it was axing Eurosport UK. It meant cycling fans in the UK had to shell out for the full TNT Sports subscription to access bike races in the UK.
A TNT Sports subscription costs £30.99 per month. Two years ago the same content could be accessed for £5 a month on the GCN+ app.
There was also dismay at the demise of the much-loved ITV coverage, particularly the daily highlights show, at the end of last year’s race. At the time, it looked as if it would end 40 years of the Tour de France being shown on free-to-air television with Channel 4 first screening highlights back in 1986.
On Wednesday, however, TNT Sports announced that some cycling coverage would remain on free-to-air television between 2026 and 2028. The daily highlights show on 5 will be fronted by Rebecca Charlton.
“The Grand Tours are the most prestigious cycling events in the world, watched and adored by millions, and we are delighted that 5 will be their new free-to-air home in the UK,” Reemah Sakaan, the president of 5, said. “Our daily highlights show for the Tour de France will be available to everyone at 7pm each evening this July and we’ll also have daily highlights through both the Vuelta a España and the Giro d’Italia for the next three years, plus next year we’ll have live coverage of the Tour de France’s historic return to the UK.”
Scott Young, executive vice-president of Warner Bros Discovery Sports Europe, added: “By combining a strong free-to-air highlights offering with our comprehensive live coverage, we are delivering unprecedented access to the sport across every platform. Expanding reach and engaging new audiences across our rights portfolio remains a key strategic priority, and partnerships such as this play an important role in achieving that ambition.”
New deal could ease anger over demise of Tour coverage
Anger last year at the presumed loss of cycling’s blue riband event from free-to-air television was such that outraged fans threatened to boycott TNT Sports. Facebook and Reddit message boards lit up.
The debate even reached the Houses of Parliament with Ben Obese-Jecty, the Conservative MP, securing a debate on the merits of free-to-air coverage of professional cycling in Westminster Hall last March.
Describing the demise of Eurosport UK as “a hammer blow for coverage of cycling in this country” the MP for Huntingdon argued that cycling going behind a paywall would have a number of unintended consequences.
It would, he said, mean children in the UK were not exposed to a sport which was patently good for their health. It would also impact on the next generation of wannabe Bradley Wigginses.
“Will the Government consider how it can inspire a new generation of [Chris] Froomes and [Mark] Cavendishes to take up the mantle,” Obese-Jecty asked. “And consider what they are doing to restore a sporting jewel, in which we have enjoyed such recent success, to the masses, lest its absence from our screens cause the sport to wither on the vine?” It seems someone was listening.
In TNT’s defence, it always insisted last year that it would investigate the possibility of keeping Tour highlights on its free-to-air Quest channel. But the intention was clearly to try to keep the eyeballs in-house. And ultimately, to get as many people as possible to sign up to TNT Sports.
Is this new deal with 5 an admission that that strategy has not worked? That WBD was worried by the lack of subscriber uptake? That the sport might “wither on the vine” in the UK, as Obese-Jecty predicted?
Potentially. As other sports – cricket, rugby etc – have shown, there is always a trade-off when pay TV takes a sport behind the paywall. The money it pumps in can help to grow the game. But the game itself can suffer if not enough people watch it. In TNT’s defence, the coverage is excellent. But maybe cycling was not quite there yet.
Either way, UK fans will be delighted. It’s not ITV. It will not be Gary Imlach and Ned Boulting and David Millar et al. But having a daily highlights programme during the Tour on a major free-to-air UK broadcaster can only be a good thing for cycling in this country.
Van Aert ruled out
Meanwhile, it has been announced that Belgium’s Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike) will miss this year’s Tour because of an elbow injury sustained at last week’s Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.
The news comes a day after Tom Pidcock’s Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team said they were withdrawing the British rider from the upcoming Tour de Suisse following a “mild viral infection”. Q36.5 said Pidcock would instead race, “health permitting”, in the Andorra MoraBanc Clàssica on June 21. There was no mention of next month’s Tour de France, in which Pidcock is expected to compete.
