DISCOVERY SPORTS UNVEILS UNRIVALLED COVERAGE AND CONTENT PLANS FOR 2022 CYCLING SEASON

Whether it’s the brutal battles from the Cobbled Classics, the historic Grand Tours, or races from the world’s greatest velodromes – cycling fans will be treated to the very best coverage across Discovery’s platforms in 2022.

Producing more than 600 individual broadcasts including over 1,200 live hours of cycling for coverage in 65 markets via Eurosport and discovery+*, and 208 territories via GCN+, 2022 is set to be Discovery Sports’ biggest year of cycling yet. As well as a host of live cyclocross, BMX, track and mountain bike events, once again every minute of coverage produced from the Giro d’Italia, the Tour de France Hommes and Femmes, and La Vuelta a España will be shown live across Discovery’s platforms.

Meanwhile, Discovery’s incredible mixed reality studio, the Cube, will also be activated for the Tour de France Hommes et Femmes - the first time it will be used during a Grand Tour event - adding another layer of analysis to its critically-acclaimed coverage.

Cementing its position as the true Home of Cycling for everyone, Discovery will bring more women’s cycling to fans than any other broadcaster in the world this year with the addition of new rights to territories outside its Europe-wide offering including the inaugural Tour de France Femmes.

Scott Young, SVP Content and Production at Discovery Sports, said: “As part of the leadership team at Discovery Sports, we're looking how we can make sure we have equality and balance across all our sports including cycling. You're going to see a really immersive part of our coverage, which will be to give you the best storytelling around the female athletes competing.

“Furthermore, for the Tour de France, we're also going to have the Cube as our host set and you'll be here front and centre for The Breakaway. This is a phenomenal storytelling tool. It's one of the great innovations of broadcast. You've seen it across our recent Olympics in Tokyo and Beijing, across our tennis coverage and now it's coming to cycling.”

Unrivalled international expert line-up
Complementing the live action, the expertise of some of the most recognisable names in cycling will offer unparalleled insights and analysis for millions of viewers around the world. For 2022, once again seven-time Grand Tour winner Alberto Contador will front coverage of major races including the Giro d’Italia, Tour de France and La Vuelta a España. Sir Bradley Wiggins also returns this year - including ‘Brad on a Bike’ - which will see the 2012 Tour de France winner and five-time Olympic gold medallist report live from the heart of the peloton during selected one-day races and Grand Tours in an innovation which has proved incredibly popular with fans, bringing them closer to the action.

Robbie McEwen, 24-time Grand Tour stage winner, is the newest star in Discovery’s galaxy of cycling legends, bringing his recent experience of competing at the highest level on the road to viewers worldwide. Bernie Eisel, Jens Voigt (Germany and international); Iris Slappendel (the Netherlands); Jacky Durand (France) and Guillaume Di Grazia (France); Bobbie Traksel (Netherlands); Brian Holm (Denmark); Sean Kelly, Adam Blythe and Hannah Walker (UK) form Discovery Sports’ cycling team.

On the track, Discovery will provide its unique perspective of the thrills and spills of competing in the world’s greatest velodromes with multiple Olympic and World champions Sir Chris Hoy, Kristina Vogel, Laura Kenny and Joanna Rowsell to front coverage of Discovery Sports Events’ UCI Track Champions League, with the eagerly anticipated second season kick-starting in autumn of 2022.

Guy Voisin, Director of Cycling at Discovery Sports, said: “It's a pretty incredible beginning of the season and now we're moving into our summer of Grand Tours. We start off with the Giro - it's going to be incredible. And then we're going to move into the Tour de France Hommes and Femmes. We're going to the end of the summer with La Vuelta a Espana. This is going to be an incredible summer. We're going to be covering the Women's WorldTour. We're covering the cyclocross racing. We’re covering the UCI Track Champions League, we’re going to be doing some mountain biking and some BMX.”

Bringing women’s cycling to a wider audience
Discovery’s coverage of women’s cycling in 2022 will be underpinned by a brilliant new ‘Home of Women’s Cycling’ campaign, an initiative created to raise awareness of lower salaries and gender bias. The campaign, to air on Eurosport and GCN, will feature interviews with some of the biggest names on the UCI Women’s WorldTour including Annemiek van Vleuten, Lizzie Deignan and Audrey Cordon-Ragot.

Building on 2021, where Discovery Sports produced 100% of the Women’s WorldTour for the first time, Discovery has added a raft of new women’s cycling rights including the inaugural Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift as well as the Paris-Roubaix Femmes. After previously securing the rights to show both events across Europe**, Discovery Sports has added Asia-Pacific territories** exclusively until at least 2025, France and Australia on a non-exclusive basis to 2025; Middle East and North Africa until 2023 and Latin American markets for the 2022 editions.

Audrey Cordon-Ragot, Trek Segafredo rider, said: “I think GCN, Eurosport and Discovery is doing a really great job in finding the right people to talk about women's cycling. It's really helping to know more about women's cycling, to know more about the riders, and to get the public interested in women’s cycling.”

Local programming for local fans
As part of its most comprehensive cycling production plans to date, new features and formats will also be unveiled across Discovery’s platforms throughout the year while for the first time for a Grand Tour event, viewers around the world will witness the unique innovations available within Discovery’s immersive augmented reality studio - the Cube - applied for the world’s most historic cycling race, the Tour de France.

Alongside this, six localised studio shows will provide the best analysis and highlights for viewers in the UK and Ireland (The Breakaway), Denmark (Radio Tour) France (Les Rois de la Pédale), Germany, Spain (La Montonera) and the Netherlands (Kop Over Kop) during the Grand Tours and major one-day races with Discovery looking to exceed its 2021 cycling audience in Europe with more than 100 million viewers reached. On top of this, the largest commentary line-up of 70 commentators providing commentary in 21 languages will serve Discovery Sports’ global cycling markets.

As well as the live racing, added content and programming across the season includes regular episodes of the Eurosport x GCN Cycling Show featuring interviews with the biggest names in the sport; new episodes of The Bradley Wiggins Show podcast by Eurosport; local news and reporting via Eurosport.com; added documentary content, interactive features and how-to demos via GCN+; and exclusive documentaries coming to discovery+ including Back on Track - the five-part series going behind-the-scenes to tell the stories from the athletes and teams involved in the first season of the UCI Track Champions League.

For the passionate cycling fan, GCN+ cycling coverage goes even deeper all year round, including all the big races live across Road, Cyclocross and Track including Grand Tours and Monuments, extra content and interactive features plus over 100 exclusive cycling documentaries.

Sir Bradley Wiggins, Discovery cycling expert and 2012 Tour de France winner, said: “One of the most successful things and one of the most well received things the last couple of years has been ‘Brad on a Bike’ so me on a motorbike in the heart of the action in the peloton, bringing to the viewer the bits you may not see on the TV on the live coverage. 

“We've already done the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Strade Bianche. We’ve got the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix. I'll be doing the Giro d'Italia and of course, the Tour de France again. There’s lots for the viewer to look forward to this year.”

Discovery Sports has the most complete cycling offer in all its forms of any broadcaster globally. In addition to offering fans live coverage of the widest range of races on the UCI WorldTour and Women’s WorldTour, it also shows every classic road race, it shows every track, cyclocross, mountain bike, BMX and urban cycling World and European Championship events.

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*Live cycling will be available to stream on discovery+ in the Denmark, Finland, Italy, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands and the UK. Eurosport’s linear channels will serve 50 markets in Europe with streaming on the Eurosport App. GCN+ will offer streaming and added content in 208 territories.

**Discovery Sports’ Tour de France Femmes and Paris-Roubaix Femmes rights:
2022-2025
Exclusive coverage in more than 40 markets in Europe with non-exclusivity in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway and Spain.

Exclusive coverage in Asia-Pacific with non-exclusive coverage in Australia.

2022-2023
Non-exclusive coverage in Middle East and North Africa with the full races on GCN+.

2022
Non-exclusive delayed coverage in Latin America.