The proposed One Cycling project has a medium- to long-term ambition of developing a media hub that broadcasts all televised races, providing a single outlet for live cycling content similar to the glory days of GCN, Escape Collective can reveal.
One source familiar with One Cycling discussions told Escape that the “intentions are to place the media rights into One Cycling in order to trade them. The plan is also to show live races directly to the consumer to cut out the middleman [broadcasters].” Sources indicate that media content from teams, such as behind-the-scenes films, would also be included into a subscription-based platform.
Major stakeholders within the sport are concerned over the loss of free-to-air race coverage at broadcasters like ITV, which will stop delivering the Tour de France to UK households after this year. The pending closure of Eurosport UK and the subsequent 443% price rise for British fans to continue watching cycling on TNT has prompted outcry among fans, and multiple WorldTour teams are preparing to express their own dismay with the broadcaster, according to sources inside those teams. They are concerned that a key market for both their respective teams and One Cycling will be priced out and viewership will drop.
Tomas Van Den Spiegel, the CEO of Flanders Classics, who has been a firm supporter of One Cycling, confirmed the project’s desire to build a live coverage media hub when speaking exclusively with Escape. “Possibly, yes,” he said when asked if replicating the now-abandoned GCN model is part of the ambitions. “It [a platform] could be part of something broader and bigger.
“As cycling fans I think we all miss GCN – it made our lives easier,” he said. “What I think GCN could have done better was that while it serviced existing fans, it wasn’t up to thinking of ways to attract new fans through innovative content concepts. There are other examples of sports and entertainment forms doing that right today and I think that’s what we need to do.”
Aggregating all the broadcast rights into one singular platform will not be possible in the short-term: though the current rights deal of RCS, the organiser of all the Italian WorldTour races, expires at the end of 2025, Flanders Classics has agreements in place until the end of 2028, and ASO – the Tour de France promoters who have so far refused to be part of One Cycling talks – recently signed broadcast deals with European partners until the end of 2030 and with NBC Sports in the US through 2029. Escape asked the UCI for details on its broadcast rights for the World Championships, but the organisation didn’t respond in time for publication.
“2026 is right around the corner, so I’m not sure to be honest if it’s feasible to solve something like that in the short-term, but that should be the goal: that we’re easy to access, we centralise all of these rights, or at least we try to have a less fragmented rights landscape,” Van Den Spiegel said. “We have to come up with something that is easy to understand and that has easy access.”
Van Den Spiegel – who along with Visma-Lease a Bike manager Richard Plugge has been one of the key figures in discussions – wouldn’t put a timeline on One Cycling’s launch. But he expressed confidence that the venture – which appears to have funding from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund – is coming closer to an agreement. An official business has been registered in the UK, and a shell website has also been created.
“Let’s say that we’ve never been closer to some type of change,” he said. “What exactly change will look like is defined but will still require work in the coming weeks and months. I think the change, whether it comes from the teams or from us [race organisers] or from the governing body, it’s always been said that 2026 was the goal. And there is no time to waste until 2026 because that’s right around the corner, so that’s still the goal. The international calendar will be announced in the summer so it’s quite imminent.”
The UCI has shown its hand in recent months, eager to remind Van Den Spiegel and co. that as the sport’s world governing body, it ultimately controls and drives changes. Its president, David Lappartient, has sounded his general backing to the proposals but has repeated his red lines, such as the refusal to sanction a private league. Rather than being spooked by the UCI’s involvement, Van Den Spiegel has welcomed it.
“I think the position of the UCI is quite important in this,” he said. “We really want this with the UCI – it will have to happen with the UCI. Of course it is still challenging because you have so many stakeholders. A lot of them have shown concrete interest … [and] we are on the same line now. But between being on the same line and finalising agreements with all these different stakeholders, we still have work to do. But I think we can be very optimistic about it.”
ASO, however, has not taken a seat at the negotiation table. “I hope and am also convinced that at a certain point they will see the upside for them of working together, and I really mean that,” Van Den Spiegel said. A build-it-and-they-will-come approach is being pursued; once One Cycling exists, the group will be better placed to exert pressure on the French family business. “If we work together I think there’s an upside for everyone and eventually we will end up with a well-balanced business model and that should be the goal,” Van Den Spiegel added.
The official line from ASO is: “No comment.”
At least in cycling’s English-speaking countries, public reaction to the One Cycling plans has so far been mostly negative, with fans voicing concerns over a range of issues, from the expected financial investment from Saudi Arabia, a country with a poor human rights record, to the idea of ticketed entry in certain parts of race courses. On the latter issue, Van Den Spiegel sought to ease worries. “As we run races and events in the public domain, it will still be possible to attend cycling for free. It’s the people’s sport in many ways,” he said. “At the same time, what we [Flanders Classics] have tried to create quite successfully is to offer people some type of experience that goes beyond just standing along the road waiting. And I think there’s still some options to even make that better and upgrade that.
“We’re not against free cycling and I have repeated that many times here in Flanders, but I do think there is a huge upside in servicing people with certain things. That can go from being [positioned at] a very important segment of the course to just providing fans with a parking spot and some food or drinks that they don’t have to carry all day, up until what we [Flanders Classics] do today, which is very high-end hospitality.
“I think in cycling as a whole we have some of the best heritage that we can’t neglect and we have to embrace it, we just have to translate it to how sport and entertainment is being consumed today, whether it’s physically live or as a product on the first, second or third [TV] screen. But that doesn’t mean you have to throw all of your heritage out of the window. Formula One still goes to Spa-Francorchamps and Monte Carlo but they’ve expanded and translated what they had into a very modern product and that’s the challenge that we have now.”
Van Den Spiegel looks to football as proof that unwanted change can win over dubious minds. “Change is always something that provokes pros and cons,” he said. “I was speaking at a football conference recently and the speaker before me asked everyone in the room, of which there were 60, who liked the new Champions League format [introduced six months ago] before it started, and two people raised their hands. When he asked who likes it today, everybody raised their hands.
“Change will come, it won’t be perfect from tomorrow, but we need to make sure we take the right steps, involve the right stakeholders, and that we create support for change. That’s the challenge, and I think we’re making a lot of progress lately. A lot of people realise all of this and understand that there’s a certain sense of urgency that we can’t neglect.”
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