GCN+ is dead

Raoul Duke

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122303227#Comment_122303227

I for one will miss him. I wonder who will replace him?

magicbastarder

pat kenny.

mewso

Big loss. A man who genuinely loves the sport.

StuttgartKY

Pity its not Adam Blythe leaving

dastardly00

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122303227#Comment_122303227

Whaaaa.… I'm really disappointed to hear that. I thought he was very good at being able to do the main commentary and provide expert analysis also. And as others have said, he was clearly a big fan of the sport. He was also able to have the craic and take the p*ss out of himself as well.

Dodge

watched the video last week and it had a weird vibe to it. Tried to straddle the “everything is great now!” outlook with “we really, really need your support” urgency

I enjoyed him on TV, particularly in the “middle slot” of grand tours as he always tried to bring something new each day rather than just telling us what was on screen

Presume Nathan Van Hoijdoink has a bigger role in this tour, and to be fair I thought he brought a lot to the table too.

Paddigol

Can somebody sum up what happened with the whole GCN - Eurosport - Warner Bros thing? I get that Warner Bros are the bad guys for seeing only $$ and not really caring about creativity/ talent/ the sport etc., but I'm more interested in the who actually controlled GCN, who decided to give up control/ sell to who, how/ why GCN are suddenly getting control of the non-broadcasting stuff back, and why this all means Lloyd can't continue with the broadcasting stuff?

It all seems to be waaaay messier than it needed to be. And I'm kind of lost at this stage.

Dodge

it’s not that messy to be fair.

GCN started has a YouTube channel. Expanded up to a paid service with more on offer including live streaming of races Eurosport didn’t cover. Linked in with Eurosport to share live rights with GCN effectively being “Eurosport cycling”. When discovery+ was launched, all live rights switched to that with the GCN coverage finished. When Eurosport was sold to WB, WB assessed all their options and decided they only wanted the live rights as part of their push to have discovery + (in UK & others) and Max (in other countries) as the home of all their content. They didn’t want the “original” GCN material including the website etc

So now GCN is back on its own with no live rights. The individuals involved don’t really matter tbh (to the story) but Lloyd was the only one to make the step up from GCN YouTube to Eurosport/discovery and he’s out now.

JMcL

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122305016#Comment_122305016

It's the usual consolidate and strip out the crown jewels scenario. My guessing is that Eurosport had most of the original rights. From the timeline it was acquired by Discovery about 10 years ago who were content to let them continue to exist as a separate entity. I presume GCN+ made the pitch for the streaming rights that made sense at the time but when Warners bought out Discovery 2 years ago all bets were then off. From their perspective having a single platform rather than multiple discrete channels makes sense so all the broadcast rights were consolidated and Eurosport also shuttering the Eurosport Player. GCN was obviously residue as far as WB was concerned so sold off.

Regarding Dan Lloyd my guess is that having weighed up his options he's seeing opportunities with what GCN have planned and has gone down that road though there may well be conflict of interest/exclusivity issues that would preclude doing both.

All the above is just my reading of it - not based on any particular knowledge

magicbastarder

maybe it was a choice between being a small cog in a large machine or a large cog in a small machine?

Macy0161

My reading of it is the Eurosport commentary isn't that secure either. The likes of Jose Been are left hanging now all summer after being key part of the spring commentary team for the semi classics.

I wonder is there potential for GCN to bid against Eurosport for races, and hence he can't do both? Which would be a balls as a punter, but does happen in the likes of Belgium where other channels than Sporza have some races.

Paddigol

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122305148#Comment_122305148

That makes it sound like just a lot of link ups, as opposed to what has clearly happened somewhere along the line, of their being a sale of some sort. What was bought/ sold, who owned it - was there a GCN Group Structure pre-sale, where different assets/ contracts/ rights/ IP etc were divided up between different GCN entities? What exactly was sold? Why did Discovery buy a load of assets they didn't want?

All the talk of 'needing help'… again, who is asking, in what capacity, what involvement did they have in the original GCN 'sale'?

Why does Lloyd have to leave broadcasting - why can't he do both (it's not unusual - presumably he's an independent contractor, not an employee?)

It does seem messy in fairness. If it was just the broadcasting rights that Discovery wanted - those kind of rights are constantly changing between broadcasters without the need to buy companies outright.

I'm still lost as to how things have unravelled in such a short space of time and who the parties are. You hear talk of Lloyd and a small group having set up GCN and built it up themselves… but it reads as if he either sold up to some other entity who in turn sold up to someone else.

It always struck me as absolutely bizarre that Discovery would acquire GCN, ditch all of the content and proceed with just the live broadcasting. It definitely would have been discussed in any deal negotiations, so why wouldn't Discovery just say either 'we don't want them, take them somewhere else beforehand' or 'knock something off the price and we'll let someone else take them'.

Even the fact that GCN still exists - clearly Discovery left some IP outside the deal or Lloyd wouldn't be able to 'go back' to it.

CantGetNoSleep

Forgot to change the YouTube login password maybe

Squidgy Black

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122305586#Comment_122305586

So Discovery originally invested in Play Sports Group - the parent company of GCN - back in 2017, and took a 20% stake.

In 2019 they upped that to 70%, and then in 2021 bought out the remaining 30% or so and completely took over the company. Up until 2021 GCN were left by Discovery to just continue as they were, there wasnt much interference.

Warner Brothers then took over Discovery in 2022, and basically just started gutting GCN, wanted the app closed down and the race coverage into the single Discovery+ app.

Few weeks ago, they sold a majority stake in Play Sports Group back to the original founders, just minus the broadcasting rights for the races.

With Lloyd, could be as simple as a non-compete, aka you can't be employed by any other media company that discusses cycling if you're contracted by WarnerBros Discovery.

magicbastarder

€2.99 a month for 'exclusive access, loyalty badges to show your support to the channel, plus custom emojis for you to use in the comments and in the live chats'.

jesus lads, thirty six quid a year for that?

£12.99 or $14.99 a month for the above, plus 'access to 50 of our feature length GCN+ documentaries from our catalogue (which will rotate over the months)'

£22.99 or $24.99 a month for the above, plus 'an exclusive water bottle and a signed GCN book of your choice'

those prices were dreamt up by someone in the middle of a fevered cheese dream (and there's no mention of a price in euros). it used to be €40 a year for the full membership; so it's over four times the price now for the same access, with no new docs being made.

cletus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122312156#Comment_122312156

Yeah, I couldn't get over the prices when I heard them.

I figured it might be 2 or 3 quid a month for the back catalogue, and I thought I might even pay that, but the top tier is nearly 4 times what I'm paying for Discovery+ with all the live racing.

Madness, really.

magicbastarder

Yep, there's no mention of any new feature length content being created (unless I missed it) and the people who did sign up before have probably seen many or most of the docs they wanted to see anyway.

If you have seen them, there's literally nothing new on offer except a bidon and a book. For an extra £120 a year!

Dodge

the video did say there was a couple of docs that were in the making that they’d like to finish but they stressed they were expensive

They are really leaning on people feeling part of the GCN “community” with those prices. Good luck to them but there’s no value in them at all

magicbastarder

they had said in a previous update that they were finishing off some documentaries which had been left unfinished when the rug was pulled last year. so yeah, 'new' in that sense.

Squidgy Black

The 3 quid a month one you kind of say fair enough, they’ve a bit of a cult following in the UK so there’ll be people who want to support them etc. But that should be including the documentaries etc, I think most Patreon subscriptions which typically do extra content are a fiver at most.

The top one is just laughable

MangleBadger

I'm a massive fan of GCN, was a subscriber for the last number of years, and watch a lot of their youtube content. But to expect you to pay quadruple the old price to rewatch the old documentaries and a handful of new one and without the live race coverage is a ridiculous ask.

magicbastarder

they've a problem now in how they distinguish themselves; with the divorce from live coverage properly official, what can they produce that they've not produced before? how many more 'let's compare the best bike of the eighties to the best bike of this year' videos can they make?

Tell me how

The prices are off the charts, there's no question. If we were going from what they're offering now at 40/Yr to what we had last yr at 279/Yr, you'd say it was steep but you're getting a lot of top docs and the live racing.

But to flip it like this is just mental. The only justification is to 'support' the channel. But a channel with the commercial partnerships they have (who all got a mention in recent videos) and with a 3M subscriber count, its madness to set these price points with virtually nothing to offer along with it.

If there was a free high quality jersey from the Shop or something to take it down to circa 180/yr, again, you'd have takers. But this is incredible. Feel really sorry because to be honest, I can't see the uptake and if not, then they'll either have to admit they were looking to cash in, or shut the doors. and the latter looks the most likely of those 2 options.

The most expensive option is the same price as the most expensive Netflix option. And its like comparing a Dunnes Store to a Circle K. Maybe it was never profitable and always required investment from parent company whether that was Eurosport of Discovery. Sad to see.

casion3

I agree on that point. They are top heavy with presenters now I think.

Dan was predominantly doing the GCN live and Simon doing docs.

They are in competition with youtubers who do it on their own. I can see more presenters leaave GCN in the next few months as they slim down.

I enjoy the channel but some of the content is just filler. Comparing cyclists to cross fitters or cheap bikes to expensive bike. Who cares.

The best content they did recently was Cillian training for Flanders. Relatable and realistic. He wasn't even a presenter!

MangleBadger

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122315142#Comment_122315142

It must be tough coming up with enough new content ideas. There’s only so many new ideas out there. It happens across YouTube. They find an idea and end up doing it to death. Cheap bike v expensive bike etc.

But you’re correct the more vlog style videos about different sportives etc are the most interesting.

CantGetNoSleep

What annoys me about so many cheap Vs expensive bike videos is that they haven't even covered what I would call the more interesting point - what is the sweet spot where an expensive bike becomes pointless for 99% of people.

They always use a 15k super bike. I'd like them to compare that to a 4.5k Canyon Ultimate with Ultegra Di2, DT Swiss carbon wheels, 7.7kg. Don't think there would be much difference at all.

gmacww

I've been watching GCN from near enough day 1. I think they've hit the simpsons problem now. How many times can you retell the same joke before it loses it's punchline. They've covered pretty much everything. Their earlier videos, what not to eat on a ride and bus tours etc… in GT's were a breath of fresh air at a time when the sport was pretty closed off. Now Manon is the latest to cover the 5th video on how to setup a tubless road tyre.

5 things every cyclist should bring with them. We've had that one about 4 times as well.

5 tools every cyclist should have? Yeah we've done that multiple times as well. We've even had Dan Lloyd giving us a breakdown to Pog's bike. A video that's been done very recently also. I hate to say it after all this time but I've pretty much checked out their youtube channels.

MangleBadger

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122324495#Comment_122324495

That is why I think they need to lean more into the vlog style videos which have endless different opportunities as each one can be different. For example they had a few videos following Andrew Feather and his prep for the hill climb season. They could do a series 2 of that which would be much more entertaining than a new video on tubeless setup.

magicbastarder

interesting; seems a bit more pointed than the content produced before they went 'independent' again?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_4GZnGl55c

traco

Just watched that on the TV while having brekkie. A fascinating piece and if I'm honest I agree with pretty much all of it and for clarity I am a total petrol head. However in saying that I drive for the enjoyment of driving and urban driving is torture so I'd rather walk or bike.

I'm a bit surprised at how much bias there is out there in relation to cars vs bikes but I'm not surprised. They way the survey was run was very interesting and the bias it showed.