GCN+ is dead

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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!