Guy Voisin on…Eurosport and Global Cycling Network (GCN)’s preparations for the rescheduled Tour de France:

 “We have to take into consideration the extra details of safety and security. To have [our people] on-site, we had to make sure our staff and crews were in France 14 days in advance...they are being tested regularly to make sure they’re COVID free and able to talk to the racers… [At the race] we have booths where we’re allowed to send our reporters in to talk to the racers as they walk by, where normally we’d be able to go visit them at the buses or in their hotels. 

“As a broadcaster, we have to get original and figure out different ways to do things. There’s zoom calls from the hotels in the evenings. We’re going to be following certain riders with Rider Diaries that we’ve hooked up. Among our reporters we have recent retiree from the peloton, Bernie Eisel, who can attract some attention and bring in his old mates and teammates to talk with us. So I think we’re in a really good place and we’re going to do our community of cycling fans proud.

 “On the broadcast side back home, we’ve gone above and beyond. And we’ve pushed forward on digital. On our GCN digital platforms, we took the time [during the COVID-19 pause in sport] to make sure we have seven localised languages on all events we show. So even if it’s not the Tour de France and it’s one of the other events happening [because they’re simultaneous], we’ll be able to have all the racing on our digital platforms in seven languages. All to better serve our community.

“I think we’re in a really good place for the Tour de France and the entire packed season – the 200 days of cycling that are going to happen in the next 100 days.”

Mike Rich on…the response from brands on live sport’s return:

“Interestingly we’ve had quite a few brands in the logistics sector, the digital entertainment and betting space who have remained very active across the period. I think Zwift would be a classic case in point where we worked very closely with them at a brand partnership level but also expanding that...to become a content provider as well, running some virtual racing events with us during the lockdown period. 

“At the moment I would say there is just an immense amount of pent up excitement at the prospect of live sport [such as the Tour de France and U.S Open tennis] coming back. And advertisers are very keen to capitalise on that level of excitement with our audiences. We’re now gearing up to work with those brand partners to make sure we maximise the level of engagement that we can deliver with our audiences. I’m super optimistic for [the year ahead].

“From a participation point of view, cycling has gone up massively during the COVID period. Including the purchasing of bikes and equipment. That suggests with live racing coming back our commercial partners have a real opportunity to build on that appetite for cycling.

“We’re now looking ahead to a massively packed schedule for the rest of the year, which takes us into Tokyo 2020 [next summer] which we’re heavily in the midst of planning for now.”

Guy Voisin on…Eurosport and GCN’s response to the pause in racing earlier this year:

“GCN saw a massive increase in viewership and [its] community around the world during this period. So even if we weren’t covering live sport, which is an incredible attraction and super important, GCN as the biggest cycling community in the world right now was doing extremely well and performing beyond expectations.

“The cycling team at Eurosport and GCN [asked] ‘how can we get ready for the return of sport? And how can we get ready to technologically be one step ahead of everybody else?’ We then constantly went after all of the women’s cycling to make sure we had as much of it as possible, if not all of it, and the rights for the next years. The point was we had this period to concentrate on what’s coming up, so we went out after women’s cycling. We’ve gone after the cyclocross because we want to expand and we see the growing desire [for this] in our community of fans. 

“Then we said how can we take this a step further and that’s where we [continued the development of] the multi-language broadcasts on digital. We’ve going to have a packed schedule where we won’t be able to offer everything on a traditional linear broadcast. When we have simultaneous events, how can we put them on with three or four events in a day? So we concentrated on getting this multilingual broadcast, event-based commentary on all of our digital products. 

“And then creating content around it has the same solution. How do we get a broadcast such as The Breakaway in the UK on linear TV when straight after the Tour de France we’re immediately [in many countries] going to go live to the US Open tennis, which is a huge attraction on Eurosport as well? So let’s leverage [The Breakaway] on our digital platform as well to really offer the full breadth of experience from Bradley Wiggins, Orla Chennaoui and Dan Lloyd and to make sure we have that team, GCN and Eurosport creating a show on the digital side that really goes through the race in-depth.”

Mike Rich on…the uniqueness of the Eurosport and GCN offer:

“The GCN relationship presents Discovery with a fantastic opportunity to deliver really creative solutions to our commercial partners. Everything from the full live experience through to the ancillary programming and content we create on linear TV through to digital, social, podcasts and more. The way I look at our cycling business, we have an extremely strong passion vertical and the brand partners we work with want to capitalise on the passion that our audiences hold. 

“The Eurosport and GCN products combined allows us to engage with consumers through every touch point, deliver all the requirements that [brands] want and weave strong commercial messages within. We’ve heavily committed to building a creative solutions function within our partnership team to work with brand partners to integrate their messaging in meaningful way that also adds value to the consumer experience.”

Guy Voisin on…how Eurosport and GCN’s consumer offer will evolve: 

“We sat down and said ‘where are we going to go with the future of cycling?’ Let’s not just be traditional or only do men’s races throughout the year, let do all kinds of cycling. I think that’s what we took away from that point in time [earlier this year]. Let’s start concentrating on where we’re going to go as a [cycling] broadcaster.

“We had to start thinking about our relationship with the athletes a little closer. About how we see ourselves as a broadcaster and how do we represent the different enteritis in cycling? How are we going to look at the cycling that is not represented so it’s not only a man’s road racing cycling [platform]? And how are we going to bring that to the community in a way so it’s understood and properly represented? So that everyone realises how exciting those events and that type of cycling really is. That’s where we’re really headed. [As] the Home of Cycling, Eurosport and GCN have to look at everything.”