In just three years World Cup downhill racing has gone from a free-to-watch sport to one that’ll set you back £30.99 a month. Turns out, we never knew we had it so good.

Red Bull lost the rights to show live racing as recently as 2022, with Warner Brothers Discovery taking over control for the 2023 season. With a basic Discovery+ subscription though, you could still catch all the racing for £3.99 a month… annoying, but arguably reasonable value for money, given the steps to improve coverage. Even if some might say that certain aspects of the experience have taken a step backwards.

Now we learn that a basic Discovery+ subscription will no longer include any live World Cup mountain biking, while Eurosport, which also hosts the downhill, closes in February. To follow World Cup downhill racing in 2025 here in the UK and Ireland you now need a £30.99 TNT Sports or Discovery+ Premium package, as cycling including road and off-road gets lumped in with mainstream sports like football, rugby and cricket.

If you’re keen on watching cycling you also have to pay for football, rugby and a bunch of other sports I’m just not interested in

“I don’t think the sport is big enough yet to warrant people paying that much to watch,” Ollie Morris, team manager at Intense Factory Racing told us. Meaning, core fans will be put off by the sky high price.

“I guess there are heaps of people who already have TNT for other reasons, so it might be good for catching new viewers, which is important,” he added. “I wonder if we gain more than we lose!?”

We’ve reached out to other teams and riders, with only Atherton Racing coming back with a polite decline to comment so far.

Ollie Morris manages Intense Factory Racing, and owns Pro Ride MTB Coaching @ollym1

UCI sign-off

What about the role of the UCI in this? It’s clearly signed off the new deal in an effort to grow the sport as WBD looks to monetise it, and while its mission statement includes “inspiring more people to ride bicycles, by making the sport more attractive,” this isn’t the best way to go about it in my view.

The old adage ‘you can’t be what you can’t see’ has never been more appropriate, fewer young riders will be exposed to the sharp end of racing, and mountain biking could well be throttled. Yes £30.99 isn’t an impossible sum for lots of people to stump up, but in my experience and judging by the social media reactions to the news, it’s a sum most won’t pay.

Want to see more of this? Of course you do, but it’ll cost a packet | Ronan Dunne celebrates at UCI DH World Cup in Loudenvielle / Bartek Wolinski / Red Bull Content Pool

Is there a way around the premium subscription?

The short answer is yes, but you have to get creative. The first and most obvious thing to do is just pay for the months of the year the World Cup season lasts. The first round is at Bielsko-Biała in Poland in May, and the series finishes in October at Mont-Sainte-Anne. You pay for Discovery+ Premium month by month anyway, there’s no way to sign up for an entire year, meaning you’ll pay £185.94 to watch the entire downhill season. Not great, but not as much of a sting as £350 or more for the whole of 2025.

The next hack is available to existing Discovery+ subscribers paying £3.99 a month… and may or may not work! When I cancelled my subscription I was offered 50% off Discovery+ Premium for seven months, effective from February 28 (when the basic Discovery package ends). That takes you nearly all the way there, with one payment of £30.99 to be made for October, or £139.46 for the season.

The final option is pretty cool, sign up for a new Samsung TV for £10 a month through EE and you’ll get 24 months worth of TNT Sports included. You do have to be an EE customer though, either on a pay monthly phone or via a 12 month sim plan, but the latter can be bought for as little as £10 a month. You can add the TNT Sports bundle after one month of taking out a phone contract, or six months as a sim plan customer.

Red Bull Hardline is now a two-event series, I’m hoping it’ll grow

Last year I put down six reasons why Red Bull Hardline would be a better race series than the UCI World Cup. I guess we can add to that list now, number seven being it wouldn’t cost as much to watch as Premier League football.

When will the cycling content on Eurosport finish?

From February 28, Eurosport content will integrate onto the TNT Sports channels in the UK and Ireland. All UCI Mountain Bike World Series coverage previously broadcast on Eurosport will now be available to view on TNT Sports. Coverage will be available to stream via the discovery+ Premium subscription for £30.99 per month.

I approached the UCI for comment and will update this page when I hear back.