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So, The Tour de France, starting this weekend, is only available streaming on Flosports ($30/mo). It looks like NBC will have brief recaps. I'm not happy. Anyone know of any options for Canadians?
Flobikes is $150 USD for a year, and has all three grand tours, along with pretty much every race of any significance. We signed up for it and it has been worth subscribing to in our opinion. Remember as well there are no commercials. Sportsnet had this annoying habit of just dropping commercials anywhere, and you would miss things. It's not an issue with flobikes. Plus you have all the race on demand for watching later. There is a ton of replays of races on there as well.

All depends on what you value, I guess, but it is worthwhile to us.
 
Anyone know of any options for Canadians?
FloRide is your legal option. What else are you expecting when they have exclusive rights to it? Yeah, it sucks for the casual fan (I won't be paying to watch it), but the diehards will pay and I presume Sportsnet wasn't willing to pay for minimal eyeballs.
 
For those who follow cycling, it appears GCN is getting into the game. From what I can tell, they appear to be the ones who will be carrying the Giro d'Italia. The tour of UAE is on there. The regular pricing is $59.99 annually, but until the end of Feb they are offering a year for $24.99. Currently can only watch on Android and Ios devices(and through web), but they say they are working on getting on to Smart TVs, Roku, etc.
 
For those who follow cycling, it appears GCN is getting into the game. From what I can tell, they appear to be the ones who will be carrying the Giro d'Italia. The tour of UAE is on there. The regular pricing is $59.99 annually, but until the end of Feb they are offering a year for $24.99. Currently can only watch on Android and Ios devices(and through web), but they say they are working on getting on to Smart TVs, Roku, etc.
Exactly my point. We can no longer watch cycling on TV, only using extra cost apps and subscriptions. Mainstream TV now only caters to stick-and-ball sports and roundy-round car races.
 
Exactly my point. We can no longer watch cycling on TV, only using extra cost apps and subscriptions. Mainstream TV now only caters to stick-and-ball sports and roundy-round car races.
Well let's face it, the audience for cycling is not big. And considering organizers can't sell tickets to spectators, TV rights are a decent source of income. And the cost to actually broadcast is quite high. Helicopter(s), fixed wing aircraft, motorbikes, announcer(s)... How do you suggest this is paid for so we can watch?
 
Well let's face it, the audience for cycling is not big. And considering organizers can't sell tickets to spectators, TV rights are a decent source of income. And the cost to actually broadcast is quite high. Helicopter(s), fixed wing aircraft, motorbikes, announcer(s)... How do you suggest this is paid for so we can watch?
True, but this all started tears before the pandemic. I remember when all the classics were on cable. Then it petered down to only the Your de France and last year even that was gone except for maybe one stahe on a weekend. That's inversely proportional to the rising popularity of cycling in North America in the last 30 years.
 
True, but this all started tears before the pandemic. I remember when all the classics were on cable. Then it petered down to only the Your de France and last year even that was gone except for maybe one stahe on a weekend. That's inversely proportional to the rising popularity of cycling in North America in the last 30 years.
It's not a case of the last year causing it. The ROI just isn't there for TSN or Sportsnet. Increasingly popularity... of cycling or of watching professional cycling races? Because they are two very different things. I'll be the first to complain that they go through the motions and re-air their highlight shows far too much when there are some live sports on(Australian Open for example), but they do find the rights to those things are worth purchasing. Obviously that isn't the case with cycling.

I don't know about you, but it was maddening as all get out when sportsnet was carrying it, because the world feed was broadcast as though there were no commercial breaks(because that is likely how it was aired in a number of places. So Sportsnet would just randomly drop a commercial wherever. When it came back to racing, the announcers obviously had no clue an ad was dropped in, so if a crash or something happened while away, you had no idea. Now, yes I'm paying a fee to a company who is seeing to it I am able to watch these races, but I'm also not dealing with that crap.

It all comes down to what one deems the value of watching the races. Obviously you don't feel the value of watching them matches the price for these services. As they say in investing circles, that's what makes a market.
 
So to give a bit of an update on GCN+. Looks to be some kind of partnership with Eurosport, so there are some resources behind it it would appear.

Technically needs some work, though.. Currently, for iOS users anyway, there is only an iPhone/Ipad app. You need to aircast to an AppleTV unit to watch on a TV. No AppleTV 4K app, no smart TV app, no Roku app. My wife and I will watch a race over a few nights if the broadcast is over a couple hours. This works well with Flobikes (who have an APpleTV app)because we can pause it and pick it up the next night. Whenever we pick back up on the iPad and aircast, it kicks back to the beginning. First world problem, sure, but isn't a good look IMHO. Would have thought by now companies would have all the bases covered if they are going this route.

One good thing is when you go to the RaceTV page, they simply show the race name, and don't spoil it. Flobikes had an issue doing so, but they appear to have fixed that.
 
Well, I bit the bullet and installed the Flosports app on my Android device so I could watch the Tour de France on my Samsung Smart TV. Looks pretty good and I already watched a few events from a month or 2 ago. I had no choice as far as I could see and was automatically signed up for a year's subscription. My intention is to cancel my subscription after a month, so I contacted them. Turns out the monthly subscription has been discontinued, but I can change mine if I want at $30 for the month. However, since my 1-year $150 subscription actually cost $190.72 CAD, I expect the $30/month one would be about $38 CAD. And I don't know if I have to proactively cancel that at the 11th hour to avoid another month. The Giro is gone, but there's still the Vuelta. What do you think? Has anyone just had Flosports for a month just for the Tour?


 
We haven't had it for a month only, so can't tell you anything there. I will say we will be watching to see if they lose the Tour rights as well. As you say, there are a lot of on demand races from quite a way's back. I think we watched all three grand tours from 2019 during lockdown. We knew who won overall but with every day being a race on its own, we had no idea who won on the day.

What has me really ticked off is that GCN+ has rights, but so far you can only airplay to a TV from a tablet/phone. And their app crashes. A lot.

I know you've railed at having to get on to flobikes to watch, but when you consider no commercials, easy ability to watch later on(no worrying about correctly setting PVR), it's worth forking out for. One could argue whether $150 is that number, but there is decent content for that money.
 
I know you've railed at having to get on to flobikes to watch, but when you consider no commercials, easy ability to watch later on(no worrying about correctly setting PVR), it's worth forking out for. One could argue whether $150 is that number, but there is decent content for that money.
At this point I've decided to stay with the $192 CAD annual subsciption rather than terminate it at $38 CAD for just a month. There's so much cycling to see from months before. I doubt I'll ever watch every minute of every stage of the Tour, just FF through it and watch anything interesting and the final 10k of stages, just like I did when I recorded if on cable. And there will also be highlights, like they used to have on cable a few years ago. But casting the app to my 55" Smart TV will be great. Given that I pay over $200/month for my Internet, IPTV and home phone bundle, $192/year seems like a bargain for practically unlimited cycling.
 
At this point I've decided to stay with the $192 CAD annual subsciption rather than terminate it at $38 CAD for just a month. There's so much cycling to see from months before. I doubt I'll ever watch every minute of every stage of the Tour, just FF through it and watch anything interesting and the final 10k of stages, just like I did when I recorded if on cable. And there will also be highlights, like they used to have on cable a few years ago. But casting the app to my 55" Smart TV will be great. Given that I pay over $200/month for my Internet, IPTV and home phone bundle, $192/year seems like a bargain for practically unlimited cycling.
I don't know if Matty Keenan and Robbie McEwen will be back on the call for this year's Tour, but if you can, at least keep it on in the background while you do some things. Especially if they are on site. They discuss a number of things going on in the peloton, and they won't sugar coat things. My wife particularly enjoys that they aren't simply PR people for the riders.
 
I've been watching the Tour for the first 8 stages now using my Android tablet casting to my Samsung Smart TV. It's not bad, but not as good as a PVR. I watch the replays, which appear some time after each stage is over, which is fine. One disadvantage is I can't fast forward and see what I'm skipping over, just tap on a point ahead on the timeline. Sometimes the screen will freeze after this, so I have to remember the time, stop, and do it again. There is also a back-30-seconds button, which is handy. There are also replays of key events and interviews for each stage if I missed them. However, what's different from a PVR recording is there's an hour in a very short segment of the timeline from the finish to the results and presentations, which are easier to find on the web. Anyway, I opted to cancel at the end of the month and get a refund, which was easy to do. Since I'm only interested in the 3 Grand Tours, nothing else on Flosports, I may resub for the Vuelta and Giro and save some money when the time comes, or not.
 
Since the Grand Tours were no longer available on TV in Canada, I signed up for Flosports. Only a 1-year subscription for $150 US is available on line, but after contacting support, I was given the opportunity to switch to 1-month to just see the Tour and get a $120 US refund, which I did. That works out cheaper if I just want to see the three Grand Tours.

I would never pay that kind of money to watch on a phone or tablet, but fortunately I can cast from my Amazon Fire 7 tablet to my Samsung 55" Smart TV. I don't watch the livestream, which you can't pause or rewind, but the replay that's available after a stage is over, However, it's nowhere near as good as a PVR or IPTV recording, because you can't fast forward and see what you're skipping, just tap on a later point on the timeline, or tap to back up 30 seconds to see something again. Also, at least in my case, when skipping ahead, the cast sometimes freezes and I have to stop it and hit the same spot in the timeline again. The Replay tab also has many highlights from each stage. This is a typical screenshot from my tablet.
12151
 
I think the NBC network is going to show the final stage of the TDF on sunday at about 11am pacific time
Did this air? I could have sworn I set this to record, but didn't realize until later in the week that I didn't see it in my list of recordings. It's possible that I forgot. It's also possible that they didn't get the rights and it didn't air...
 
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