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No, it’s not just you: the cost of watching pro cycling in the United States has increased significantly recently. And now prices are set to go up once again.
Warner Bros. Discovery, owner of the Max streaming service, has announced that its B/R Sports package, which includes all of the pro cycling races it has rights to stream in the U.S., will only come on the Standard and Premium packages starting March 30. Previously, the sports package was also included in the entry level Basic package, which is supplemented with ads.
Max has been offering the B/R Sports add-on, which also includes NBA, MLB, and NHL games, for free as a promotion for over a year now, and has long said that the Basic package would eventually lose access to sports content. That time has finally come.
Going forward, that means a monthly cost of $16.99 to watch cycling on Max, a $7 per month increase over the ad-supplemented Basic package that previously also included live sports content.
There are some ways to reduce that cost. Paying annually for the Standard package brings the total cost to $169.99, effectively providing two months for free. Fans interested only in cycling could cancel their monthly subscriptions during the offseason to save money.
Previously, Warner Bros. Discovery’s catalog of races was available to watch on GCN+ for $50 per year, but the races moved to Max after that service closed in late 2023.
Races in the U.S. are spread across three platforms, Max, Peacock, and FloBikes, and the annual cost of subscribing to all three at the cheapest level offered is currently about $400.
In the UK, cycling fans have also encountered an expensive new reality as Warner Bros. Discovery has shut down Eurosport and moved all races to the Discovery+ service which costs £30.99 ($39 USD) per month. Previously the same content could be accessed for £6.99 per month.
A fragmented streaming market
Subscribing to the Standard package on Max will give you access to the cycling races that Warner Bros. Discovery has rights to in the U.S.
Notable events include:
- Strade Bianche
- E3
- Tour of Romandie
- Giro d’Italia
- GP Quebec
- GP Montreal
- Il Lombardia
But other major races, most notably the Tour de France, are not available on Max; you’ll have to head to Peaccock for cycling’s premier event.
The fragmented rights to stream races in the U.S. means fans wanting to watch all major road racing events need three subscriptions: Max, Peacock, and Flobikes.
That has been the case for years, though fans have been known to circumnavigate these restrictions with a VPN to reroute their traffic and make it appear they are in another country where a platform has rights to stream different races.
