The dust has not yet settled on the decision to close Eurosport down in the UK and Ireland, and to move professional cycling behind a bigger paywall in the form of TNT Sports. From the end of February, remember, subscription prices will increase from £6.99 to £30.99 a month, and for those who simply watched Eurosport free via their Sky or Virgin Media packages, a fee will be imposed for the first time. The future for watching cycling in the UK certainly seems a lot more expensive, if not incredibly bleak.
Help might be on the way, however, apparently, in the form of the Saudi Arabia-backed plan to reshape professional cycling, One Cycling, which reportedly has an ambition to develop a single outlet for streaming racing, like GCN+ used to be. For those of you who haven’t kept up with the project - and I don’t really blame you - it’s an attempt to redesign and reorder pro cycling, create a more sensible calendar and restructure the economics of the sport, funded in part by Saudi Arabia.
