Warner Bros Discovery says there will be a free-to-air Tour de France product in the UK this summer, ending a run in which the race had been shown live and in full for free on television for decades. Scott Young said last week that the company was working through how much of the race would be shown, how long the coverage would last and how often it would appear.
Young said: “I think you need to have a free-to-air product.” He added: “And there will be a free-to-air product.” The comments matter because ITV will no longer televise the Tour de France in the UK after the rights were sold to Warner Bros Discovery in 2025, making this season the first in decades that the race will not be shown live, in full, on free television in Britain.
The move lands at a difficult moment for viewers who have followed the race on mainstream television for years. Last year, Eurosport closed, and the monthly price of HBO Max with TNT Sports rose from £6.99 to £30.99 a month, though it can also be bought for £25.99 a month on a 12-month contract. For many fans, the shift has already turned one of cycling’s biggest events into a more expensive proposition.
That pressure was reflected in a Cycling Weekly survey last year, when 71% of respondents said they watched the Tour on ITV. Of the 1,273 people surveyed, 1,120 said they would not subscribe to TNT Sports to watch the race live in 2026, while almost half said they had never paid to watch cycling on TV. Those numbers suggest the audience for a paywalled Tour is far narrower than the one that has watched it free for years.
Young also said: “We have relationships with free-to-air partners across nearly everything that we do,” a line that points to a broader strategy rather than a one-off exception. But he also stopped short of giving the detail that viewers and broadcasters will now be waiting for: whether the coverage will be live, how much of the 21 stages will be shown and how frequently it will appear. That uncertainty matters because the difference between a highlights package and full live coverage is the difference between keeping a mass audience and asking it to find the race elsewhere.
For now, cycling fans can look at the Giro d’Italia as a sign of how the new model may work. Daily highlights of the current race are available each night on free-to-air channel DMAX, as well as on YouTube and through social media clips. But the Tour de France is a different test, with a bigger audience, a longer tradition on free television and far more at stake for a sport trying to stay visible to casual viewers. The question is no longer whether some free coverage will exist, but whether it will be enough to replace the old habit of turning on ITV and watching the whole race unfold.
