Racing on TV

scottdurand

Does anyone have a good link to a website with links to when Road racing will be on Tv?

Frigo's Luggage

I'm not sure about TV. However, www.cycling.tv has a ton of racing. I highly recommend it.

cycling.tv

www.cycling.tv had 116 days of live racing this year.

lance_armstrong

Now that Americans have totally screwed themselves in July, will OLN still insist on broadcasting the TDF with multiple commentators several times a day?

Also, are Americans only willing to watch UCI cycling on television if one of their own has a chance of winning? Is this why there's hardly any coverage of the other great races on the calendar. (I'm not talking about the pathetic hour-long recaps of the other races every week)

CyclingTV.com is o.k., but it would be nice if fans in the U.S. could get some live coverage of events other than the Tour de France.

cycling.tv

Im not sure exacly how to reply to your post, but Im going to give it a try:

U.S. fans can - and do - get live coverage of events other than the TdF on Cycling.tv. We broadcast live the Giro, Vuelta, Amstel Gold, LBL, HetVolk, Tour of Romandie, Tour of Suisse this year to American viewers.

Our viewership figures dont increase when an American has a chance to win one of these races, which suggests the answer to your question is "No". Americans ARE willing to watch UCI ProTour cycling no matter who is favored to win.

There isnt more coverage of other races on US television simply because the size of the viewing audience doesnt warrant it. There is no other reason. There are not enough people interested in these races to be broadcast live on American tv.

cyclingfan07

I subscribed to Cycling TV in August, and haven't regretted one minute of it. I watched the D-Tour and the ENECO Tour live. I then subscribed to the Vuelta channel and saw my first grandtour other than the TDF. It's an amazing website for us Americans that don't get a whole lot of cycling coverage.

lance_armstrong

I appreciate the info and do agree that cycletv has excellent racing coverage. My post was really more of a commentary of how fickle the general American viewing audience seems to be. You can't actually believe that the average American cycling fan isn't more likely to watch coverage of racing on television if an American is favored to win. It's a fact that viewership on OLN increased because Lance was favored to win the Tour.

cycling.tv

You are clearly right about that Lance. The caveat is "average American cycling fan". Ours is a more hard-core audience that is not nearly so fickle as the average fan.... but I certainly agree about your main argument.

Cycling.tv obviously needs to get to a critical mass, both in terms of number of people interested, willing to pay the small annual subscription fee, and have enough bandwith to watch. One of my jobs is to get coverage of more American races, and Im working hard to make that happen.

My guess is over the next 2-3 years you will see set-top boxes that will replace your computer when recieveing incoming video stream. The game will be changed in your favor once this is in place, as you will easily be able to watch the best races whenever you want right from your TV, without the need for a PC (or Mac).

cyclingfan07

I look forward to that day, I currently am struggling with an unpredictable internet.

lance_armstrong

You've got me really interested in the cycling.tv service. I am definitely a hard-core road racing fan and don't mind paying to see live coverage of just about any racing event. I'm just curious about the cost and how reliable the service is.

Thanks for the feedback.

cycling.tv

Great... every viewer helps the whole system work better. The Premium channel is $35 per year.

As for reliability, if you have a cable, DSL or bigger connection to the Internet, and if you arent sharing your bandwidth with any bandwidth-hungry applications at the same time, you will get a good-to-very good view of the races.

If you want, you can just check out the free channel to get a feel for what we do. The Premium channel races come to you at a slighly higher bandwidth, but the free channel is still good enough for you to get a feel for what you can expect.

Thanks!