After a decade of growth and relative stability under Red Bull, mountain bike World Cup coverage has seen a shaky start of Warner Bros-Discovery’s tenure as the organizers and broadcasters. This is especially apparent with the regular format changes being imposed on downhill. But the end of every season seems to find fans of both XC and DH left wondering where they’ll have to subscribe to follow racing live the next year.
The end of 2025 is no different. The announcement of Netflix agreeing to a $83 billion deal to buy WBD, a historic upheaval in Hollywood’s landscape, drags mountain biking into another shift in live race coverage.
Netflix doesn’t want the D
Warner Bros Discovery had already planed to split into two, just a few years after their initial merger. The Netflix deal appears that the global streaming platform would not take over WBD until late in 2026, if the acquisition is approved, until after WB and D split.
Discovery was the original purchaser of the World Cup broadcast rights back in 2022. Netflix does not appear interested in the live sports side of WBD according to early reports of the deal. The Guardian, though, reports TNT Sports in the UK and Ireland, which broadcast cycling as well as Premier League and Champions League football and some Rugby, is not among the TV assets currently planned to be on the Discovery side of the WBD split.
As a small fry in this supersized merger meal, no one has officially commented yet which plate World Cup ownership will land.
WBD has stepped up coverage standards in some areas. But couldn’t hold back the fans in Les Gets, despite stepping up finish corral security. Photo: WBD
Riding out the roller coaster of corporate mergers and “efficiencies”
The post-Red Bull era is proving a fraught era for fans. With UCI giving Discovery a high level of control to shape the sport, not just broadcast it, the constant changes in corporate structure mean more than just which service fans have to subscribe to in order to follow the action live. WBD has introduced, then altered a semi-final format. There are rumours swirling that the junior category might disappear. Those follow the initial move to improve that category by actually broadcasting its racing live.
All of this power was initially sold to Discovery back in 2022. Before the next season started, Discovery was taken over by Warner Bros and WBD was formed. At the end of that first year, WBD announced it would be shutting down GCN+, which had been the sole broadcaster for Canadian viewers. Eventually, Canadian rights were bought by FloBikes just on time for the start of the 2024 season.
What does this mean for Canadian fans?
Who knows, to be honest. As mentioned, FloBikes currently buys the broadcast rights for World Cup racing from WBD in Canada. The online streaming service is actually one of the only places to watch most cycling, legally, in Canada as road and cyclocross rights are also in FloBikes control.
But, with it not being totally clear where World Cup, and cycling more broadly, will end up at the end of the split and subsequent potential acquisition, it’s not even clear yet who FloBikes would be paying to continue broadcasting World Cup racing going forward. If Netflix has, unintentionally and probably unknowingly, bought the rights to organize and broadcast World Cup mountain biking, who knows what they’d do with it.
The good news, though, is that all of this shouldn’t, or at least hopefully won’t, start messing with live coverage until after the 2026 season concludes. Maybe. The first rounds in South Korea already aren’t that far off, so we’ll all find out soon.