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Agree. Why can't I go to the UCI site and sign up for the DH season? Or a package deal with road, XC, and DH for a discount? They should stream it from their own site so they can control the entire experience. I don't want Max+ or whatever they are forcing you to get in the US, plus the extra sports package. They could even sell single events for people who just want to try it out. I worry that they are going to reduce viewership because of all the navigating required just to watch. It should be on-brand and straight forward. UCI site, click the discipline you want, click the event you want, enjoy. Why is that so hard?
Amazon Prime allows you to buy subscriptions to other streamers and watch within the Prime app.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/signup?benefitId=hbomaxus
Ya. 100 percent they need to offer MTB as a package in someway. Like F1 does. But I suppose the whole reason WDB buy into running and promoting events is so you have to sign up to their platforms and then hopefully watch more and then they get more advertising dollars?
I like it. Dealing with figures and numbers. Can't argue there.
Although there are maybe more individual countries being visited this season across the 3-4 disciplines?
And what always gets brushed under the carpet for this year is that between xc, DH and enduro. There are seven brand new venues that we have never visited before for world cups.. something the UCI really struggled to so on their own.
Across XC, DH and EDR....
2022 - 12 countries
2023 - 9 countries
2024 - 10 countries
More numbers..I like it. Although a touch unfair as 2022 was separate organisation for World Cups and EWS!
And still no acknowledgement of the seven brand new venues?
Excellent, new venues, sounds great, I guess? Not all riders think so... The horrible things for me with Warner Bros are the decisions they make to "make the sport bigger" by cancelling the best World Cup venues like Lenzerheide or Albstadt (in the future even more) and going to places where we have no spirit of the sport, no community but enormous costs and efforts for teams.
Regardless, new venues wasn't a point made in the statement which is the thing people are reacting to.
Perhaps people wouldn't be calling it bs if it read "reduced races in 2024 but lots of new venues" rather than "we have launched a larger than ever before international calendar" which is easily proven false.
Can you guys just agree to disagree and move on?
This is the internet.....it does'nt work like that.
This is a battle to death..for the honor of my forefathers
It's hard to root for WBD at this point. Other than Aaron Gwin doing commentary, I haven't seen anything in the coverage of the last two years that I could honestly say helped the sport of Mountain Biking.
Lil ole NZ finally got access to the world cups on Staylive - for only $5.99usd per month. Pretty happy with that - not with Ricks commentary, but $5.99 a month is ok.
They have had the coverage for one season only.
XCC coverage yesterday from Brazil was pretty good. Hard to make those tracks exciting
And last season we finally saw top to bottom live runs on most tracks.
I thought XC last year was good. It never felt like a massive step backwards like DH. It was pretty much the same but they also didn’t come and try to do a bunch of fuckery with XC either. I bet the Olympic status has a lot to do with that and UCI saying don’t fuck with it.
Just watched women’s XC. The direction was poor.
Finished men’s XC. The director doesn’t seem to understand the sport.
You mean you don’t want to cut away from an attack at the front group to watch ninth place pass a split that’s displayed on screen uncontested.
I loved last year. Was better than RBTV. But for this year it drove me nuts
1. In Switzerland, whe could watch the races through Eurosport (fine for me)
2. you had to pay for Eurosport (fine for me)
3. Eurosport is geblocked in switzerland! (not fine...)
4. had to subscribe to anoter service that provedes Eurosport through there service, cancel Eurosport subscription (medium fine)
5. COULD FINALLY watch it, but couldn't choose the language. (not fine)
6. cancelled subscription (fine for me)
7. super sad because for the 1st time since the freecaster days, can't watch worldcups. (absolutely not fine and low point)
that's my experience with "taking the two wheeled experience further". I was in the OC for the WC in Lenzerheide. UCI has always been quite annoing, new organisation was better alltough, lacked in communication/information/organisation, were quite qlueless, missed multiple deadlines, lots of improvising etc. but at least they admitted and were like "sorry new to the bizz, at least you guys know how to do it"
but this whole coverage clusterfuck, alltough covering events should be their core service, takes it to a new level
Yeah, seems not having a central provider for streaming of WCs this season is going to be a big mess!
Few really bad cuts from the action. Especially Blevins attack. Big shame. But overall coverage was good, branding and infrastructure looked pro. Bart's commentary was excellent as always. The racing was some of the best ever. The track was a bit dull overall, but that's the "Olympic effect" I feel, manicured race tracks.
Both men's and women's xco were excellent. Certainly no worse in terms of coverage than many if not all the races on RBtv over the years and luckily for us, some of the best racing ever.
I agree it’s no better or no worse than RB days. They had the same issues at times. Now the real question is did the attack happen because they cut away? 😂
Watching sport specific content is fokking infuriating these days.
It's like a set of toll booths with zero signs at the exit ramps.
You pay your toll, take the exit, look around & there's NOTHING you wanted to visit.
Waiting for you on the other end of town is another toll booth.
Pay your relatively small toll and you wind up in a smaller town with less than the prior town.
Repeat.
We have:
DirecTV sports package
ESPN+
Can watch ESPN & then a bunch of random ass stuff on ESPN+
The ONLY thing we want to watch is ACC, SEC & Big10 softball.
But can't upgrade ESPN+ to watch them. Even though they're right there.
Can't choose an alternate DirecTV package - It's $40 MORE a month
We have Amazon Prime:
See all sorts of things you thought you could watch, but gotta pay
We have:
NetFlix - Can't watch a SINGLE older movie that was iconic without buying it
We have MAX (our neighbors):
It gets really muddied out there on that platform. I'd complain but don't even comprehend it's purpose
We have Peacock:
Watch SX & random stuff all across the board that overlaps with DirecTV & are paying for channels & content overlap we can't even grasp
We had briefly AppleTV:
Binge watched Ted Lasso. Dumped it. There are rabbit holes w/ that service I don't want to know
We tried YouTubeTV:
Sports were ridiculously impossible to stream live
No real clue what that service was about.
My brain hurts. I just want to see MY stuff in one place. But I don't want to sell a kidney to see it
I have YouTube TV and I have no issues it’s basically like cable/direct tv. It on when it’s on that channel unless you set it to DVR.
Max is weird since right now you get the B/R sports for free but later this month it seems to go away. At least first two xc weekends are free I’ll decide what to do when it come to the DH race weekend.
Any Canadians thinking of subscribing to Flobikes for WC... know that the funds are in fact in USD and not CAD as reported on PB. On the sign up page there is absolutely no indication of currency. Works out to roughly $230 CAD annually.
You need to see the CX World Cup calendar for 2024/25........entirely in Europe.
For all their faults, Discovery are far better at spreading the sport around the world.
The CX worldcup needs to be solely in Europe, though. Flying team staff, 3 bikes and 6 sets of wheels to America to race in front of no crowds, on a course covered with banners from sponsors that don’t do business in North America makes zero sense financially or from a sporting perspective.
Interbike was the “anchor” of the former early season north american worldcups. Since only one American bike brand even makes CX worthy race bikes any more, and there is no tradeshow to justify flying over star cx athletes to sign autographs at, it was clearly time to return to a more compact world cup that actually races in markets where the sponsors are.
Cross Vegas was pretty awesome. It was really one of the saddest losses of Interbike.
Max failing to show the men’s race today, at least in the US. Feed cut off after the women’s podium and that was it. Trying to watch the “live” feed shows a replay of the women’s race.
Did that ever happen in the Red Bull days?
Any Canadians use flosports yet to watch the xc? Worth the 150usd/year?
Flo has a decent app on both mobile and smart tvs. Lots of coverage of smaller sports that can be fun to watch. I kind of wish the us was on flo as I already have it for worlds and national champs and i would not need to invest in a max sports package.
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