{"id":445935,"date":"2026-01-31T21:31:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T21:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/445935\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T21:31:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T21:31:09","slug":"loss-of-itv-tour-de-france-coverage-a-shame-before-uk-grand-depart-says-tnt-sports-pundit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/445935\/","title":{"rendered":"Loss of ITV Tour de France coverage \u201ca shame\u201d before UK Grand D\u00e9part, says TNT Sports pundit"},"content":{"rendered":"

The lack of free-to-air television coverage of the Tour de France is a \u201cbig loss\u201d for British cycling and has the potential to reduce the sport\u2019s audience ahead of next summer\u2019s double UK Grand D\u00e9part, says TNT Sports pundit Brian Smith.<\/p>\n

The 2025 Tour de France marked the last time cycling\u2019s biggest race will be shown on ITV for the foreseeable future after Warner Bros. Discovery announced the previous year that it had agreed a new exclusive rights deal<\/a> for cycling\u2019s biggest race.<\/p>\n

The rights deal, which will run until at least 2030, will mean that the Tour de France will not be freely available in the UK for the first time since the 1980s, when Channel 4 began broadcasting its now iconic evening highlights programmes.<\/p>\n

>\u00a0\u201cThe Tour is the only race that matters. And that\u2019s gone now\u201d: Ned Boulting on the end of free-to-air Tour de France coverage in the UK and his \u201cdeep sense of loss\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

That development coincided with the closure of Eurosport in the UK and cycling\u2019s move to TNT Sports, placing the sport behind a \u00a331-a-month paywall<\/a>, a steep price hike that has been roundly criticised by fans and was the subject of a petition to parliament<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"20242024 Tour de France peloton (credit: ASO\/Charly Lopez)<\/p>\n

And with the men\u2019s and women\u2019s editions of the Tour de France starting in the UK in 2027<\/a>, as part of a bumper festival of racing on British roads, questions marks remain over whether the race, and even the Grands D\u00e9parts, will be freely available to watch at home.<\/p>\n

The organisers of the Tour\u2019s visit have given little away when it comes to the potential of the opening stages being broadcast on terrestrial TV, only admitting that talks are \u201congoing\u201d over a potential deal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

>\u00a0\u201cHistoric day for British sport\u201d: Leeds, Liverpool, London, and Cardiff confirmed as 2027 Tour de France host cities \u2013 as talks over free-to-air TV coverage of UK Grand D\u00e9part \u201congoing\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Speaking to the road.cc Podcast this week<\/a>, double British road race champion Brian Smith \u2013 who has worked as a pundit and commentator for TNT Sports for 15 years \u2013 admitted that the Tour\u2019s split from ITV could have a severe impact on viewing figures.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think a lot of people, the general public, watch the Tour de France on ITV and terrestrial TV. To take it away from them, I think it\u2019s losing a lot of fans,\u201d Smith told the podcast.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour cycling fans will always watch on Warner Brothers, Discovery, Eurosport. And I can totally understand why they\u2019ve put it behind a paywall, because you\u2019re not just getting just cycling, they want to appeal to people who watch snooker, football, rugby union, you name it. There are a lot of sports behind that paywall, but I can totally understand why cycling fans don\u2019t like it.<\/p>\n

\u201cNowadays you have to pay for most sports. But I do think it\u2019s a big loss not having ITV. That\u2019s how I got into watching cycling. People I know who aren\u2019t cycling fans will tell me they\u2019ve watched the Tour de France, and say \u2018that Scottish boy is doing alright\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we\u2019re not going to have that anymore, because they\u2019re the sort of kind of punters that aren\u2019t going to pay to watch the sport. They\u2019re just watching it because it just happens to be on TV. Nobody really knew who Mark Cavendish or Bradley Wiggins were until the Olympics and now they all know about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor Joe Public, it\u2019s a shame to lose these guys, because they\u2019re not going to pay, so how are they going to find out about the Tour de France? I know of some cyclists who are cyclists because they watched it on ITV, they saw it, and they saw the British riders.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

>\u00a0‘Oscar Onley shouldn\u2019t have gone to Ineos\u2019: Brian Smith on Scotland\u2019s new Tour de France hope, calendar congestion, and how pro teams \u201cuse and abuse\u201d riders<\/a><\/p>\n

And with the men\u2019s Tour starting in Edinburgh in 2027, Smith admits that it\u2019s a \u201cshame\u201d that fewer people will be able to watch how new home hero Oscar Onley gets on after the race leaves British shores.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook at look at Scotland now, Scotland has someone that\u2019s a contender,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd there are a lot of Scottish people out there that have really no interest in cycling, but will think, \u2018oh, this Scot is in this race in France, I\u2019m going to watch it\u2019.<\/p>\n

\"OscarOscar Onley on Superbagn\u00e8res, stage 14, 2025 Tour de France (credit: Zac Williams\/SWpix.com)<\/p>\n

\u201cBut how are they going to watch it? They\u2019re not going to pay to watch it. That person watching it with their son might go, \u2018well, I might try that\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can see both sides, of course. That paywall pays for a lot of things, the production, the coverage we get, and everything around it. And what Warner Bros. Discovery, Eurosport bring, the studio, the behind the scenes, it\u2019s not cheap, especially at the Tour de France.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I can totally understand [the disappointment of] losing the ITV coverage, because it\u2019s been a kind of stalwart, you had Channel 4 before that, then ITV. It does bring a certain audience. And that certain audience is required in cycling.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need that that platform, we need that kind of general person that sits there and it might be the only race they watch all year.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd for the Scots now, having someone in there and they can\u2019t watch it. It\u2019s a bit of a shame.\u201d<\/p>\n

To listen to Brian\u2019s full interview with the road.cc Podcast, in which he also discussed Onley\u2019s \u201cdesperate\u201d move to Ineos and the pressures of life as a pro cyclist, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The lack of free-to-air television coverage of the Tour de France is a \u201cbig loss\u201d for British cycling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":445936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":["post-445935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/445936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}