After a decade of growth and relative stability under Red Bull, mountain bike World Cup coverage has seen a shaky start of Warner Bros-Discovery’s tenure as the organizers and broadcasters. This is especially apparent with the regular format changes being imposed on downhill. But the end of every season seems to find fans of both XC and DH left wondering where they’ll have to subscribe to follow racing live the next year.
The end of 2025 is no different. The announcement of Netflix agreeing to a $83 billion deal to buy WBD, a historic upheaval in Hollywood’s landscape, drags mountain biking into another shift in live race coverage.
Netflix doesn’t want the D
Warner Bros Discovery had already planed to split into two, just a few years after their initial merger. The Netflix deal appears that the global streaming platform would not take over WBD until late in 2026, if the acquisition is approved, until after WB and D split.
Discovery was the original purchaser of the World Cup broadcast rights back in 2022. Netflix does not appear interested in the live sports side of WBD according to early reports of the deal. The Guardian, though, reports TNT Sports in the UK and Ireland, which broadcast cycling as well as Premier League and Champions Leage football and some Rugby, is not among the TV assets currently planned to be on the Discovery side of the WBD split.
As a small fry in this supersized merger meal, no one has officially commented yet which plate World Cup ownership will land.
Riding the roller coaster of corporate mergers and “efficiencies”
The post-Red Bull era is proving a fraught era for fans. With UCI giving Discovery a high level of control to shape the sport, not just broadcast it, the constant changes in corporate structure mean more than just which service fans have to subscribe to in order to follow the action live. WBD has introduced, then altered a semi-final format. There are rumors swirling that the junior category might disappear. Those follow the initial move to improve that category by actually broadcasting its racing live.
All of this power was initially sold to Discovery back in 2022. Before the next season started, Discovery was taken over by Warner Bros and WBD was formed. At the end of that first year, WBD announced it would be shutting down GCN+, which had been…
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