tl;dr - we're gonna make you pay more and include a bunch of crap you don't want and call it "unprecedented value".
"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"
Okay, I've given it some thought, and here's the play (if WBD execs are as cynical as I think they are):
1. Kill GCN, thereby eliminating easy subscription/cheap access to cycling-only sports viewership. Blame it on "economic headwinds" or whatever.
2. Force cycling viewers to get an expensive, full meal deal Discovery+Sports membership if they want to view any cycling content at all.
3. Most people won't go for the Discovery+ membership, so cycling will see enormous hits to viewership across all sports and platforms. However, the cycling members who did stay on and sign up for a Discovery+ membership will bump up WBD's Discovery+ numbers, which will be reported back to WBD stockholders in a glowing quarterly earnings call, thus showing enormous consumer enthusiasm for the new Discovery+ Sports package. "We have over x million new Discovery+ members. They love it!" No they don't. They hate it.
4. Sell off all cycling assets at a loss, and blame cycling for being a less-than-profitable industry, thus blaming the victim. The whole point was juicing the numbers on their Discovery+Sports platform all along. Who cares about bike content, anyway? As others have pointed out, WBD killed "Batgirl," a completely finished $90 million movie, in order to save peanuts off the costs of post-production expenses.
Okay, I've given it some thought, and here's the play (if WBD execs are as cynical as I think they are):
1. Kill GCN, thereby eliminating...
Okay, I've given it some thought, and here's the play (if WBD execs are as cynical as I think they are):
1. Kill GCN, thereby eliminating easy subscription/cheap access to cycling-only sports viewership. Blame it on "economic headwinds" or whatever.
2. Force cycling viewers to get an expensive, full meal deal Discovery+Sports membership if they want to view any cycling content at all.
3. Most people won't go for the Discovery+ membership, so cycling will see enormous hits to viewership across all sports and platforms. However, the cycling members who did stay on and sign up for a Discovery+ membership will bump up WBD's Discovery+ numbers, which will be reported back to WBD stockholders in a glowing quarterly earnings call, thus showing enormous consumer enthusiasm for the new Discovery+ Sports package. "We have over x million new Discovery+ members. They love it!" No they don't. They hate it.
4. Sell off all cycling assets at a loss, and blame cycling for being a less-than-profitable industry, thus blaming the victim. The whole point was juicing the numbers on their Discovery+Sports platform all along. Who cares about bike content, anyway? As others have pointed out, WBD killed "Batgirl," a completely finished $90 million movie, in order to save peanuts off the costs of post-production expenses.
That's my theory, let me know what you think.
I think you're pretty much dead on, except point 1 should say something about added synergy and removed redundancies. Why pay the money to support a whole another streaming service when you can, dissolve it and roll it into your "flagship" streaming services?
Think of all the money you can save by laying off the tech and support staff, the content editors, and all the supporting roles of a streaming platform and just keep the brands and a few names people know. Oh and would you look at that, we now have a bump in subscribers!
Synergy up, redundancies down = happy(er) execs
(if I seem even more cynical than teamrobot, it is because i have been a "removed redundancy" from a streaming services)
Okay, I've given it some thought, and here's the play (if WBD execs are as cynical as I think they are):
1. Kill GCN, thereby eliminating...
Okay, I've given it some thought, and here's the play (if WBD execs are as cynical as I think they are):
1. Kill GCN, thereby eliminating easy subscription/cheap access to cycling-only sports viewership. Blame it on "economic headwinds" or whatever.
2. Force cycling viewers to get an expensive, full meal deal Discovery+Sports membership if they want to view any cycling content at all.
3. Most people won't go for the Discovery+ membership, so cycling will see enormous hits to viewership across all sports and platforms. However, the cycling members who did stay on and sign up for a Discovery+ membership will bump up WBD's Discovery+ numbers, which will be reported back to WBD stockholders in a glowing quarterly earnings call, thus showing enormous consumer enthusiasm for the new Discovery+ Sports package. "We have over x million new Discovery+ members. They love it!" No they don't. They hate it.
4. Sell off all cycling assets at a loss, and blame cycling for being a less-than-profitable industry, thus blaming the victim. The whole point was juicing the numbers on their Discovery+Sports platform all along. Who cares about bike content, anyway? As others have pointed out, WBD killed "Batgirl," a completely finished $90 million movie, in order to save peanuts off the costs of post-production expenses.
That's my theory, let me know what you think.
I'm gonna go cry in the corner because now I can't hide from the reality of what's about to happen.... Pump and dump economics apparently are still viable
Once you have the subscription just close your browser, activate VPN to the UK, fire up your browser and login into your account and you will...
Once you have the subscription just close your browser, activate VPN to the UK, fire up your browser and login into your account and you will see the UK discovery+ content. Just the same way you would do with GCN when there was broadcast restriction.
I am pretty sure the discovery + euro version is different than the NA version. So even if you have NA version it will unlikely swap to UK version.
Okay, I've given it some thought, and here's the play (if WBD execs are as cynical as I think they are):
1. Kill GCN, thereby eliminating...
Okay, I've given it some thought, and here's the play (if WBD execs are as cynical as I think they are):
1. Kill GCN, thereby eliminating easy subscription/cheap access to cycling-only sports viewership. Blame it on "economic headwinds" or whatever.
2. Force cycling viewers to get an expensive, full meal deal Discovery+Sports membership if they want to view any cycling content at all.
3. Most people won't go for the Discovery+ membership, so cycling will see enormous hits to viewership across all sports and platforms. However, the cycling members who did stay on and sign up for a Discovery+ membership will bump up WBD's Discovery+ numbers, which will be reported back to WBD stockholders in a glowing quarterly earnings call, thus showing enormous consumer enthusiasm for the new Discovery+ Sports package. "We have over x million new Discovery+ members. They love it!" No they don't. They hate it.
4. Sell off all cycling assets at a loss, and blame cycling for being a less-than-profitable industry, thus blaming the victim. The whole point was juicing the numbers on their Discovery+Sports platform all along. Who cares about bike content, anyway? As others have pointed out, WBD killed "Batgirl," a completely finished $90 million movie, in order to save peanuts off the costs of post-production expenses.
I'm gonna go cry in the corner because now I can't hide from the reality of what's about to happen.... Pump and dump economics apparently are...
I'm gonna go cry in the corner because now I can't hide from the reality of what's about to happen.... Pump and dump economics apparently are still viable
Not really, in fact not at all. Most of the streaming companies are up shit creek currently, netflix amazon and apple are the only ones breaking even. With interest rates likely to stay higher for longer than expected all the companies are well and truly in trouble.
It's always been curious how cycling, one of the most watched sports in the world is consistently so poor and just lurches from crisis to crisis.
Not really, in fact not at all. Most of the streaming companies are up shit creek currently, netflix amazon and apple are the only ones breaking...
Not really, in fact not at all. Most of the streaming companies are up shit creek currently, netflix amazon and apple are the only ones breaking even. With interest rates likely to stay higher for longer than expected all the companies are well and truly in trouble.
It's always been curious how cycling, one of the most watched sports in the world is consistently so poor and just lurches from crisis to crisis.
Is cycling one of the most watched sports in the world? That would be news to me. I was so surprised by your comment that I googled it, and while I couldn't find any good apples to apples comparisons, it didn't look like cycling was in the top ten. It looks like the top ten sports in the world have viewership from 3.5 billion unique viewers a year (soccer) down to 400 million a year (rugby). I couldn't find a figure for cycling in general, but in 2021, viewership of the Tour De France was 150 million, and the TDF is a big, big chunk of total annual cycling viewership. You can find articles online that cite viewership numbers in the billions for the TDF, but those are counting total views, not unique viewers, which is sort of dodgy. It's a race that has 25-some odd stages, so if someone watches every day should they be counted as one viewer or 25 viewers?
Stating the obvious: whatever the viewership of cycling is in total, downhill mountain bike racing is a very small piece of that pie.
Not really, in fact not at all. Most of the streaming companies are up shit creek currently, netflix amazon and apple are the only ones breaking...
Not really, in fact not at all. Most of the streaming companies are up shit creek currently, netflix amazon and apple are the only ones breaking even. With interest rates likely to stay higher for longer than expected all the companies are well and truly in trouble.
It's always been curious how cycling, one of the most watched sports in the world is consistently so poor and just lurches from crisis to crisis.
Is cycling one of the most watched sports in the world? That would be news to me. I was so surprised by your comment that I...
Is cycling one of the most watched sports in the world? That would be news to me. I was so surprised by your comment that I googled it, and while I couldn't find any good apples to apples comparisons, it didn't look like cycling was in the top ten. It looks like the top ten sports in the world have viewership from 3.5 billion unique viewers a year (soccer) down to 400 million a year (rugby). I couldn't find a figure for cycling in general, but in 2021, viewership of the Tour De France was 150 million, and the TDF is a big, big chunk of total annual cycling viewership. You can find articles online that cite viewership numbers in the billions for the TDF, but those are counting total views, not unique viewers, which is sort of dodgy. It's a race that has 25-some odd stages, so if someone watches every day should they be counted as one viewer or 25 viewers?
Stating the obvious: whatever the viewership of cycling is in total, downhill mountain bike racing is a very small piece of that pie.
It's borderline nothing but a piece of pepperoni in the box after the pizza has been demolished.
Is cycling one of the most watched sports in the world? That would be news to me. I was so surprised by your comment that I...
Is cycling one of the most watched sports in the world? That would be news to me. I was so surprised by your comment that I googled it, and while I couldn't find any good apples to apples comparisons, it didn't look like cycling was in the top ten. It looks like the top ten sports in the world have viewership from 3.5 billion unique viewers a year (soccer) down to 400 million a year (rugby). I couldn't find a figure for cycling in general, but in 2021, viewership of the Tour De France was 150 million, and the TDF is a big, big chunk of total annual cycling viewership. You can find articles online that cite viewership numbers in the billions for the TDF, but those are counting total views, not unique viewers, which is sort of dodgy. It's a race that has 25-some odd stages, so if someone watches every day should they be counted as one viewer or 25 viewers?
Stating the obvious: whatever the viewership of cycling is in total, downhill mountain bike racing is a very small piece of that pie.
Cycling (road) is viewed and consumed differently to one day/one event sports.
But if you are comparing one day events, then even the tour of Flanders gets around 3-4 million viewers on the day across just Belgium and Nederlands. Tour de France over it's three weeks gets over 45 million viewers in France alone. Cycling is HUGE, but only in certain territories.
I've no idea where ballerstatus get their stats from but cycling is certainly more globally recognized and participated in than say cricket or rugby.
Not really, in fact not at all. Most of the streaming companies are up shit creek currently, netflix amazon and apple are the only ones breaking...
Not really, in fact not at all. Most of the streaming companies are up shit creek currently, netflix amazon and apple are the only ones breaking even. With interest rates likely to stay higher for longer than expected all the companies are well and truly in trouble.
It's always been curious how cycling, one of the most watched sports in the world is consistently so poor and just lurches from crisis to crisis.
Is cycling one of the most watched sports in the world? That would be news to me. I was so surprised by your comment that I...
Is cycling one of the most watched sports in the world? That would be news to me. I was so surprised by your comment that I googled it, and while I couldn't find any good apples to apples comparisons, it didn't look like cycling was in the top ten. It looks like the top ten sports in the world have viewership from 3.5 billion unique viewers a year (soccer) down to 400 million a year (rugby). I couldn't find a figure for cycling in general, but in 2021, viewership of the Tour De France was 150 million, and the TDF is a big, big chunk of total annual cycling viewership. You can find articles online that cite viewership numbers in the billions for the TDF, but those are counting total views, not unique viewers, which is sort of dodgy. It's a race that has 25-some odd stages, so if someone watches every day should they be counted as one viewer or 25 viewers?
Stating the obvious: whatever the viewership of cycling is in total, downhill mountain bike racing is a very small piece of that pie.
It's hard to get exact figures as it's split across so many different markets, but when you look at things TdF Femmes got 4.3 million viewers in France for one stage (https://www.bicycling.com/news/a44735705/tour-de-france-femmes-viewersh…), and the TdF consistently is one of the highest rated sporting events in euro markets (also Aus) each year, yet despite all this, the teams and the TdF aren't exactly rich. They can't leverage their incredible success due to doping scandals.
Obviously DH has a minuscule viewership, which is sad, but its not like the UCI have leveraged the overall popularity of cycling to have a thriving pro scene for any discipline
Okay, I've given it some thought, and here's the play (if WBD execs are as cynical as I think they are):
1. Kill GCN, thereby eliminating...
Okay, I've given it some thought, and here's the play (if WBD execs are as cynical as I think they are):
1. Kill GCN, thereby eliminating easy subscription/cheap access to cycling-only sports viewership. Blame it on "economic headwinds" or whatever.
2. Force cycling viewers to get an expensive, full meal deal Discovery+Sports membership if they want to view any cycling content at all.
3. Most people won't go for the Discovery+ membership, so cycling will see enormous hits to viewership across all sports and platforms. However, the cycling members who did stay on and sign up for a Discovery+ membership will bump up WBD's Discovery+ numbers, which will be reported back to WBD stockholders in a glowing quarterly earnings call, thus showing enormous consumer enthusiasm for the new Discovery+ Sports package. "We have over x million new Discovery+ members. They love it!" No they don't. They hate it.
4. Sell off all cycling assets at a loss, and blame cycling for being a less-than-profitable industry, thus blaming the victim. The whole point was juicing the numbers on their Discovery+Sports platform all along. Who cares about bike content, anyway? As others have pointed out, WBD killed "Batgirl," a completely finished $90 million movie, in order to save peanuts off the costs of post-production expenses.
That's my theory, let me know what you think.
Sheesh, I hope you're right. But they are saying this is literally the plan for most of Europe, if that saw the plan for NA, why not just say that? Unfortunately, I think we're about to lose a ton of access to bike racing in NA, and I see no reason that WBD thinks that is a loss. who is to say that WBD just said "nope." Do they even need a reason? this is such a small problem for them, and they have some many other ways they are trying to print money, in a year with so many problems for streaming services generally, compounded by sponsors needing to turn inventory into cash so bad they might even sell at a loss.
Okay, I've given it some thought, and here's the play (if WBD execs are as cynical as I think they are):
1. Kill GCN, thereby eliminating...
Okay, I've given it some thought, and here's the play (if WBD execs are as cynical as I think they are):
1. Kill GCN, thereby eliminating easy subscription/cheap access to cycling-only sports viewership. Blame it on "economic headwinds" or whatever.
2. Force cycling viewers to get an expensive, full meal deal Discovery+Sports membership if they want to view any cycling content at all.
3. Most people won't go for the Discovery+ membership, so cycling will see enormous hits to viewership across all sports and platforms. However, the cycling members who did stay on and sign up for a Discovery+ membership will bump up WBD's Discovery+ numbers, which will be reported back to WBD stockholders in a glowing quarterly earnings call, thus showing enormous consumer enthusiasm for the new Discovery+ Sports package. "We have over x million new Discovery+ members. They love it!" No they don't. They hate it.
4. Sell off all cycling assets at a loss, and blame cycling for being a less-than-profitable industry, thus blaming the victim. The whole point was juicing the numbers on their Discovery+Sports platform all along. Who cares about bike content, anyway? As others have pointed out, WBD killed "Batgirl," a completely finished $90 million movie, in order to save peanuts off the costs of post-production expenses.
Sheesh, I hope you're right. But they are saying this is literally the plan for most of Europe, if that saw the plan for NA, why...
Sheesh, I hope you're right. But they are saying this is literally the plan for most of Europe, if that saw the plan for NA, why not just say that? Unfortunately, I think we're about to lose a ton of access to bike racing in NA, and I see no reason that WBD thinks that is a loss. who is to say that WBD just said "nope." Do they even need a reason? this is such a small problem for them, and they have some many other ways they are trying to print money, in a year with so many problems for streaming services generally, compounded by sponsors needing to turn inventory into cash so bad they might even sell at a loss.
It sounds like they're still working on rights in the US. Could just be that it's more complicated working around rights for that territory than it was elsewhere.
Seems odd to have actioned this without a clear plan in place but my understanding is their financial year ends at the end of the calendar year so maybe it's something to do with that? I guess they have time before the season begins to put it all in place.
Lifted this WBD statement from the PB article:
tl;dr - we're gonna make you pay more and include a bunch of crap you don't want and call it "unprecedented value".
"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"
Are the refunds automated or you need to apply or some shit?
Okay, I've given it some thought, and here's the play (if WBD execs are as cynical as I think they are):
1. Kill GCN, thereby eliminating easy subscription/cheap access to cycling-only sports viewership. Blame it on "economic headwinds" or whatever.
2. Force cycling viewers to get an expensive, full meal deal Discovery+Sports membership if they want to view any cycling content at all.
3. Most people won't go for the Discovery+ membership, so cycling will see enormous hits to viewership across all sports and platforms. However, the cycling members who did stay on and sign up for a Discovery+ membership will bump up WBD's Discovery+ numbers, which will be reported back to WBD stockholders in a glowing quarterly earnings call, thus showing enormous consumer enthusiasm for the new Discovery+ Sports package. "We have over x million new Discovery+ members. They love it!" No they don't. They hate it.
4. Sell off all cycling assets at a loss, and blame cycling for being a less-than-profitable industry, thus blaming the victim. The whole point was juicing the numbers on their Discovery+Sports platform all along. Who cares about bike content, anyway? As others have pointed out, WBD killed "Batgirl," a completely finished $90 million movie, in order to save peanuts off the costs of post-production expenses.
That's my theory, let me know what you think.
I think you're pretty much dead on, except point 1 should say something about added synergy and removed redundancies. Why pay the money to support a whole another streaming service when you can, dissolve it and roll it into your "flagship" streaming services?
Think of all the money you can save by laying off the tech and support staff, the content editors, and all the supporting roles of a streaming platform and just keep the brands and a few names people know. Oh and would you look at that, we now have a bump in subscribers!
Synergy up, redundancies down = happy(er) execs
(if I seem even more cynical than teamrobot, it is because i have been a "removed redundancy" from a streaming services)
I'm gonna go cry in the corner because now I can't hide from the reality of what's about to happen.... Pump and dump economics apparently are still viable
I am pretty sure the discovery + euro version is different than the NA version. So even if you have NA version it will unlikely swap to UK version.
Not really, in fact not at all. Most of the streaming companies are up shit creek currently, netflix amazon and apple are the only ones breaking even. With interest rates likely to stay higher for longer than expected all the companies are well and truly in trouble.
It's always been curious how cycling, one of the most watched sports in the world is consistently so poor and just lurches from crisis to crisis.
Is cycling one of the most watched sports in the world? That would be news to me. I was so surprised by your comment that I googled it, and while I couldn't find any good apples to apples comparisons, it didn't look like cycling was in the top ten. It looks like the top ten sports in the world have viewership from 3.5 billion unique viewers a year (soccer) down to 400 million a year (rugby). I couldn't find a figure for cycling in general, but in 2021, viewership of the Tour De France was 150 million, and the TDF is a big, big chunk of total annual cycling viewership. You can find articles online that cite viewership numbers in the billions for the TDF, but those are counting total views, not unique viewers, which is sort of dodgy. It's a race that has 25-some odd stages, so if someone watches every day should they be counted as one viewer or 25 viewers?
Stating the obvious: whatever the viewership of cycling is in total, downhill mountain bike racing is a very small piece of that pie.
It's borderline nothing but a piece of pepperoni in the box after the pizza has been demolished.
Im just sad because I would like like to continue watching bike racing.
This last season was so fucking good.
Cycling (road) is viewed and consumed differently to one day/one event sports.
But if you are comparing one day events, then even the tour of Flanders gets around 3-4 million viewers on the day across just Belgium and Nederlands. Tour de France over it's three weeks gets over 45 million viewers in France alone. Cycling is HUGE, but only in certain territories.
I've no idea where ballerstatus get their stats from but cycling is certainly more globally recognized and participated in than say cricket or rugby.
Tour de France gets 25 million viewers PER STAGE. And there's usually around 21 stages , https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327274166_Forecasting_Tour_de_…
It's hard to get exact figures as it's split across so many different markets, but when you look at things TdF Femmes got 4.3 million viewers in France for one stage (https://www.bicycling.com/news/a44735705/tour-de-france-femmes-viewersh…), and the TdF consistently is one of the highest rated sporting events in euro markets (also Aus) each year, yet despite all this, the teams and the TdF aren't exactly rich. They can't leverage their incredible success due to doping scandals.
Obviously DH has a minuscule viewership, which is sad, but its not like the UCI have leveraged the overall popularity of cycling to have a thriving pro scene for any discipline
Sheesh, I hope you're right. But they are saying this is literally the plan for most of Europe, if that saw the plan for NA, why not just say that? Unfortunately, I think we're about to lose a ton of access to bike racing in NA, and I see no reason that WBD thinks that is a loss. who is to say that WBD just said "nope." Do they even need a reason? this is such a small problem for them, and they have some many other ways they are trying to print money, in a year with so many problems for streaming services generally, compounded by sponsors needing to turn inventory into cash so bad they might even sell at a loss.
It sounds like they're still working on rights in the US. Could just be that it's more complicated working around rights for that territory than it was elsewhere.
Seems odd to have actioned this without a clear plan in place but my understanding is their financial year ends at the end of the calendar year so maybe it's something to do with that? I guess they have time before the season begins to put it all in place.
I can see NA it ended up on Discovery + or Max. Max already has some live sports with BR sports so it’s seems most likey landing spot.
I don’t think Max is available in Canada though
Why does Canada always have to be so difficult 😂😂
Bro we just up here trying to mind our own business and watch some dang racing lol.
Not our fault everyone and their mothers in the states F'ing trying to start a streaming platform I apparently need. Lol
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