The loss of GCN+ and what it could mean for women’s racing

Photo credit: Anete Lusina (Pexels.com)

An ambitious project

In 2021, the Global Cycling Network announced an ambitious project, GCN+. It promised live racing, feature-length films about cycling, and an online community. It came at an opportune time for me. I started cycling and developed an interest in bike racing just before COVID hit. The same seemingly applied to many others who started cycling during the COVID lockdowns.

For a price comparable to Netflix or other film streaming sites, it allowed us hobby cyclists to dive deep into our passion. The racing on-demand stoked my interest, and for two seasons I religiously followed the Tour de France, as well as various monuments and cyclocross. Being able to view the live racing and post-race highlights on my phone rather than waiting for it to show up on TV allowed me to concentrate on the commentary and follow the racing action over various stages and over the entire season.

Living in Europe, most races were available on GCN+, but often some races weren’t accessible by users in different countries, such as New Zealand and the US. This was due to the complex world of licensing rights of the companies filming the races, but GCN+ appeared to make significant efforts in cutting through these restrictions to make a truly global offering over a single platform.

The GCN+ app introduced me to the exciting world of women’s racing, which doubtlessly provided a much needed boost to the sport in viewer numbers over more “passive” offerings on TV. The quality of the coverage was sometimes questionable, but this issue lay with the companies filming the race rather than streaming providers.

The GCN+ feature length documentaries were a breath of fresh air. They showed people who presented racing, bike touring, history, and wild adventures and challenges with passion never before seen just for us bike lovers. GCN+ arguably did for cycling what Top Gear did in the 1990s and 2000s for cars – it offered engagement and passion to a niche activity.

I loved the touring videos with Jack Thurston, who took various presenters and GCN alumni on short, slow bike tours around beautiful parts of England and France. In my stressful job, these videos provided much needed tranquility and inspiration. Not forgetting various gravel adventures, tours of the Faroe Islands and Iceland, Jenny Graham and Mark Beaumont’s world record rides around the globe, stories on the history of cycling and bike building, biographies of ex pros, famous climbs, ex pros getting up to mischief – the range of content was amazing and high quality.

I’ll confess I didn’t enjoy all the films as much as some others, but that’s not the point. There was something for everyone.

An abrupt ending

In November 2023 however, the surprise news came from GCN that its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery, was discontinuing the service after just 2 years due to a consolidation of its products. This was disappointing for many reasons. Clearly there may be legitimate grounds for a company to close a service such as GCN+ from a financial or logistical perspective, but it has sadly taken away an incredible asset for a relatively small but very passionate and committed group of people.

Racing will apparently still be available live on other services such as Eurosport, but the type of races and the geographic availability isn’t clear yet, and they will likely be much smaller on GCN+. I may register with another service to watch racing, however I kept my membership primarily because of the more engaging documentaries, and to be honest I only watched a few key races during a season. Some may have watched more racing than I did, but at least the races were there and on-demand.

It will be a great shame to lose the documentaries, but to be fair there are an increasing number of excellent cycling videos on YouTube, which will continue to inspire me. The quality and budget of these individual efforts is however incomparable to that which GCN+ offered.

An unexpected victim?

After some reflection, what actually concerns me the most about the loss of GCN+ is the impact on women’s racing. Frankly, it is absurd how underdeveloped women’s racing is compared to men’s in the 21st century after over 110 years of bike racing. Tour de France founder Henri Desgrange was notoriously against women’s racing – whilst perhaps a symptom of the times, this chauvinistic sentiment sadly seems to have entrenched itself for an entire century.

Whilst there have been several attempts at female racing over the years, a major milestone was met in 2021 with the first Paris-Roubaix Femmes was held. The quality of racing was excellent and certainly as good as the men’s race. This was of course covered by GCN+, and I enjoyed being able to scroll back to rewatch key racing moments.

Women’s racing now seems to be sustainably developing, with a Tour de France Femmes and Giro Donne featuring prominently in the race calendar. In many cases however, the races are shorter with fewer stages, video coverage often captures the second half of the race, and the salaries and prize money are a fraction of the men’s equivalent.

Things can only improve, but there is clearly a strong interest from the fans. My club, the VICC RD (and the newly founded women’s club Verge), is a local trail blazer in tackling the issue and promoting grassroots women’s racing and cycling in general. Hopefully there are many others local clubs around the world which will encourage and promote talent, girls and women who may join the ranks of amateur and professional racers in years to come.

Nevertheless, a major hurdle in women’s professional racing is financing – a sustainable salary from their teams and attractive prize money. Where male professionals can afford to dedicate a full-time career to bike racing, many women currently need regular jobs to afford equipment and pay their bills, which of course takes away time from training. Financing of athletes is largely linked to team and race sponsorship, which of course requires viewers – either in person (limited) or over media such as TV or streaming apps (global).

Not only did GCN+ present women’s racing, but also a large number of its documentaries followed women touring and bikepacking. This not only inspired me as a man to get out and ride, but it hopefully inspired women to try the same. And whilst I’m not aware of many such videos having been published to date, but there was a great opportunity to produce documentaries to inspire and encourage LGBTQ+ riders and those from minority backgrounds.

I am concerned that the loss of an affordable, central app which offered almost global coverage of bike racing, with its equal treatment of men’s and women’s racing, may take away an important source of viewership for what remains a very nascent and fragile sport. It’s loss will also remove a source of inspiration for many people to get out on their bike and commute to work or ride around the planet.

GCN+ certainly wasn’t the sole driver in promoting women’s racing and inspiring cyclists generally, but in its absence, there are questions about where one can easily follow women’s racing, rather than just waiting for what pops up on the TV from time to time. Hopefully I’ll be proven wrong.

Let’s raise a glass to GCN+, to the joy it gave us and to what it could have been. It was good while it lasted, it was the service we didn’t deserve but badly needed.