How to watch pro bike racing in the US in 2023

by Joe Lindsey 06.04.2023 More from Joe +

With the return of January’s Tour Down Under after two straight years of COVID-related cancellations, the WorldTour season seemed to come up fast this year, huh? Pro road racing is back, baby!

Whether your tastes run to the longform Italian tourism video that is Strade Bianche, the gritty cobbles of Flanders and northern France, or the weeks-long bender that is the Tour de France and TdF Femmes, let us pause a moment to marvel that it’s all available for fans to watch live and replay on-demand thanks to direct streaming. 

The downside of this cornucopia of coverage is that, for a devoted racing fan in the US, finding a good stream isn’t always easy or cheap. To watch all the big races with legit rightsholders, you’ll need three different streaming subscriptions, at a cost of up to $260 a year. That would get you a very nice new helmet, or a night or two in a hotel for a weekend riding trip. Do you need all that or could you get by with less depending on what you want to watch? The only way to answer that is to know what’s streaming, and where. We’re here to help.

The basics: the WorldTour calendar is largely dominated by three main race promoters and, of course, they have all selected different streaming partners, because why would this be easy? The ASO, owners of the Tour de France, Paris-Roubaix, and the Vuelta España, have long sold US coverage rights to Peacock (aka Comcast/NBC’s streaming platform). Flanders Classics, the consortium that puts on one-day Classics like the Tour of Flanders and Amstel Gold Race, is with FloBikes. And RCS Sport, which produces the Giro d’Italia, Milan-San Remo, and Strade Bianche, is on GCN+. 

Here are links to the schedule pages for each platform, listed here because events may be added in-season if rights are obtained:

• Peacock (*Note: shows only the current month’s events)
• GCN+ 
• FloBikes (*Note: shows some races that aren’t available in the US)

But the best way to make sense of it all is our handy table below. Continue on past that table for the somewhat-helpful, possibly entertaining FAQ. Don’t live in the US? Fear not, UK and Australia versions are coming soon.

FAQ

Why isn’t my beloved (fill-in-the-blank race) listed in your fancy chart? You guys are as useful as an Astana leadout!

Do you want this chart to be 3,872 rows deep? Us neither, so we focused on the men’s and women’s WorldTour calendars. We added a few select .PRO-ranked events that met the following criteria: important and/or long-standing events that have coverage partners. That cuts out long-running, prestigious events like the Giro dell’Emilia or the Thüringen Ladies Tour, and newer ones that might be of interest to US audiences, like the Maryland Cycling Classic. No streaming partner? Sorry, we are fresh out of rows in the chart, Chuckles.

That doesn’t mean we list every .PRO event that does have streaming coverage; not hardly. Are we consistent? Nope; freely granted that we’re making subjective – debatable, even – choices here and we have a soft spot for Tro Bro Leon. If we missed something truly obvious, let us know. 

Are more women’s races shown this year?

Depends on how you measure. After the wild success of the inaugural Tour de France Femmes last year, and various other races where viewership figures are approaching those of men’s events, streamers seem to be slowly sussing out that people want to watch women’s racing. And although the UCI requires WWT events to have at least 45 minutes of streaming coverage per day, enforcement is fairly loose (hello, RideLondon Classique).

As the Women’s WorldTour has grown, the ratio of events lacking streaming partners is about the same as last year. But, we noticed several races that lacked streaming partners in the past have them in 2023. And, we welcome the Giro d’Italia Donne’s return to the WWT, which got downgraded the past two years partly because it didn’t meet UCI coverage requirements, and now does. For races that don’t currently have streaming partners, we’ve listed event websites in the notes. Sometimes, races host their own coverage feed, although it’s often of lower quality.

How do I watch?

All three services are available to watch via internet browsers or TV apps for Apple, Amazon, and Android operating systems. Flo and GCN+ mobile apps are also available through the Android and Apple app stores.

What should I know about pricing?

It’s pretty simple:

• Peacock Premium is $4.99 a month ($60/year)
• GCN+ is $50 a year
• FloBikes is $150 a year

So, $260 total. Peacock Premium has an annual billing option as well for $50/year, a moderate discount that drops your total bottom line to $250. But wait! Since Peacock is a Comcast/NBC product, it’s included for most Xfinity cable and internet subscribers (you’ll just need to create a Peacock account). Also, read the fine print: while Peacock Premium’s month-to-month pricing subscription can be cancelled at any time, FloBikes and GCN+ are annual deals, with no pro-rated refunds for mid-season cancellations.

Wow! Why is Flo three times the price for fewer races?

It’s, um, a lot, right? Flo’s allure rests on two big exclusives: the Flanders Classics lineup (dominated by the Tour of Flanders) and its deal with the UCI for Road World Championships. That, however, leaves a conspicuous hole between April and August where the only big race on the schedule is the Tour de Suisse.

Flo has just 30 total days of WorldTour and World Championships coverage, less than half that of the other sites. Flo did not respond to a list of emailed questions about its coverage, including why its service is so much more expensive than other providers.

Wait, Flo says it has the Tour de France – why do I need all three services?

You do in fact see the TdF listed when you check Flo’s schedule page. But there’s a catch: if US residents click on the race listing they’ll see “not available in your area.” That’s because Flo owns rights for ASO races for its Canadian customers, but not in the US, where NBC/Peacock has the exclusive.

We’ve checked, we’ve done the math, carried the one, and the irreducible truth is: if you want to watch legit rightsholders streams for all WorldTour races, you’re gonna need all three services. As for the Tour, an NBC spokesperson said some races will be shown on cable and broadcast networks, but details of which races and air dates and times won’t be announced until a later date. 

You said “legit rightsholder streams” but can’t I watch for free?

Absolutely! In the Year of Our Lord Mark Cavendish’s 35^th Tour stage win (you heard it here first, folks), we won’t pretend that you lack options: VPNs, pirate streams, things of that nature. But we’d avoid pirate streams unless you like pixelated, ‘80s-video-game picture quality over HD footage. And using them miiiiight just raise your risk of getting digital herpes via malware.

As for VPNs, broadcasters are getting better at making sure you’re not spoofing your location with a VPN, so you might feel all smart and thrifty only to find out one crucial day that no, actually, you can’t watch the RAI feed of Milan-San Remo, and in the time you spent searching for an alternate feed, the race is now over because of course, like all but the most ardent fans, you logged in for the finishing Cipressa and Poggio climbs and not the 8,793 km of prologue.

We won’t sugarcoat it: watching bike racing via legit rightsholders is expensive. That said, there’s more than 200 race days of coverage here for just the listed races alone (again, there are many more we didn’t mention). Is it worth it to get them all? Only you can answer that.

OK, fine, what else do I get?

Glad you asked! Each of these streaming platforms comes with other content you might consider when making your subscription choices:

Peacock is, well, NBC, so you get all kinds of shows and movies from its considerable content catalog, but not much in the way of bike-racing stuff.

FloBikes has the rights to the Cyclocross World Cup, and also has some .PRO and lower-tier races. In 2022, they also showed a few gravel events like Unbound, although coverage wasn’t quite up to the production quality found in road racing. Unbound is not listed yet in the 2023 calendar – Flo didn’t respond to our request for comment, and Lifetime Fitness (Unbound’s owner) has not yet sorted out its coverage plans for races in the Grand Prix series.

GCN+ has the biggest catalog of cycling media:

• Live: SuperPrestige, X2O, and Badkamers cyclocross race series
• Live: UCI Champions League track racing
• Live: UCI Mountain Bike World Series (formerly World Cup)
• Live: A ton of .PRO and lower-tier road races
• Original content programming like films and documentaries 

What else should I know about watching bike racing this year?

There’s one major cycling video production coming in 2023 that’s not part of any of these streaming services: Netflix’s Unchained, the eight-episode documentary series on the men’s Tour de France. The release date isn’t set yet, but our bet is a late spring or early summer debut (depending on if they release episodes sequentially or in one big drop), to maximize viewer interest before the race itself.

The really fine print: Escape Collective has no association with any of these platforms and earns no affiliate commission on any signups. We’re doing this because, like you, we just like to watch bike racing.

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