It all started with a song by Queen. No, not Bicycle Race, or Tenement Funster for that matter. It was I Want It All, which Guy Voisin, now Warner Bros. Discovery Sport’s VP for cycling, sent to his company’s head of rights, when he was asked just how much cycling he wanted to be able to show.
‘All’ is a pretty accurate word to describe the level of live cycling coverage that WBD, through TNT Sports and HBO Max, show in the UK. After the demise of ITV’s cycling coverage, and the closure of Eurosport, TNT Sports is now truly the home of cycling , something the company has taken care to construct.
For all the justified criticism of TNT Sports, including its cost (£30.99 a month on a rolling contract, or £25.99 on a 12-month plan), and the removal of the ad-free streaming option last summer, it is hard to avoid the fact that it is the home of cycling, and that a team of passionate people work hard behind and in front of the scenes. The idea for the audience is to “take me there and make me care”.
(Image credit: Future/Adam Becket)
“It’s a journey, and we’re asking cycling fans to come on that journey with us,” Young says. “We need to demonstrate our commitment to cycling. If Eurosport was the base product, that’s a fantastic base to start with. We need to explain to cycling fans that whilst the price point has increased, so has our commitment to cycling, we continue to invest in cycling at every level.
“I think they just need to come along with the journey. And then it’s really up to the individual, whether they believe the value is there or not. We can’t tell them if the value is there or not.”
To show us how they go about creating that value, Cycling Weekly was taken on a trip to Italy for stage six of the Giro d’Italia, and then to the TNT Sports studios in Stockley Park, west London to see how it all comes together.
The highest-profile member of that passionate team is Orla Chennaoui, who is firmly established as the face of cycling on the home of cycling. Her passion radiates through the screen, and is based on strong foundations – she reveals that she listens to podcast upon podcast of cycling content every night, and reads all the reaction and reports too.
“The whole live programme is quite an orchestrated dance,” Chennaoui explains, taking time out of her busy schedule of watching the Blockhaus stage to talk us through her day. “Everything in that post [stage] show comes from our heads, which I love. It’s the spontaneity of it. It’s the potential chaos of it that never tips over. But it’s that genuine reaction off the back of whatever we’ve just seen. If something shocking has happened, it’s a real shock. There’s nothing fabricated about it, which is the joy of live television.”
(Image credit: Future/Adam Becket)
There’s organised chaos behind the cameras, too, as the director in the gallery back in Stockley Park decides what feed is shown to the viewer, both before, during, and after the stage. The main feed itself comes from the Giro’s organisers, RCS Sport, with TNT Sports having little say over what footage is beamed over from Italy, but everything after that is decided here.
The commentary teams are currently split between WBD’s London and Paris offices, with Matt Stephens, Robbie McEwen and Adam Blythe coming from the UK, and Rob Hatch and Sean Kelly coming from France. Not that you’d know that they were not only in different rooms, but different countries.
For the dozen weeks of the year that she is based in west London, covering the Grand Tours and the Classics for TNT Sports, pro cycling for Chennaoui is everything.
“It’s really hard to switch off, and mostly I kind of don’t want to, I think, when you’re in the Grand Tour bubble,” she says. “I come here for work, my family are all in Amsterdam, so I’m FaceTiming them, but I’m here to work. I’m here to fully absorb myself in the bubble of the Giro or the Tour de France or the Vuelta, and I really enjoy living and breathing all of that. So sometimes it’s actually really hard to switch off and get to sleep, because I’m still hyped about that.”
While Chennaoui is in her Grand Tour bubble metaphorically, ensconced within it are TNT Sports’ on-site reporters, Hannah Walker, Anders Mielke and Jens Voigt, who provide the on-the-ground reporting and insight that the TV commentators are unable to. This might be interviews around the race, general vibe checks, or, in the case of Voigt, reporting from the back of a motorbike during a stage. Or, as Walker showed last week, a brief bit of football.
After finding a ball in the paddock ahead of stage five, Walker attempted some keepy uppies, which ended with the ball flying into an innocent bystander. All of which was caught on film. “I don’t know if you saw it,” she tells Cycling Weekly ahead of stage six in Paestum. “That’s probably the most spontaneous thing to date. Everyone was fine, by the way. VAR didn’t need to get involved. So that was probably the most fun, spontaneous thing. It just happened.”
“There’s not been a time where teams haven’t given us full access to whatever we might need, and it’s always very ad hoc,” Walker told us when we caught up with her in Italy, shadowed by her loyal cameraman, Bob Vanveen, who carries not just a camera but the transponder sending her reports home. “They’re always very willing to allow us that, that access, which is appreciated.
“It’s juggling everything, really. I think it’s a fine balance of knowing when’s the right time, and finding the right tone.”
Jens Voigt’s in-race experience
Voigt gets to his motorbike after a “minimal programme of fitness” every morning, which consists of 40 press ups and squats, and a bonus 10km run before the stage.
After a convoluted journey involving a transmission unit on his bike, a plane circling above, and satellites, his feed reaches our screens – hence the delay in his conversations with commentators.
“If you look at the way the signal travels, it’s mind blowing,” the ex-rider says. “How little goes wrong. There’s a million things that could go wrong.”
“I’m not allowed to talk to the riders,” Voigt adds, with a wink. “If they approach me and say hi, I can smile and so on, but I cannot do an interview. We had that some years ago, but they put a stop to it. Of course, there are really precious little moments when riders talk to you. There have been rumours that people have their microphone covered to talk to the riders but I have never seen that, of course.”
(Image credit: TNT Sports)
It has been an adjustment for the man who rode 17 Tours de France, with many peers now working as DSes. “I ask, as a friend or former colleague, how are you?” he explains. “And then, now I ask as a job question, whatever you see now I’m gonna use later. You cannot mix it up, even if they give you something really precious in private.”
The product team, steered by Voisin, are excited about new technology on it’s way, and those recently adopted, such as multi-view, which has been upgraded for this year’s Giro. With commentary running over the top, it offers different views of the race, along with stats; according to Voisin, it was partly created at the behest of cycling teams. 15 HBO Max passes are handed out to each WorldTour and Women’s WorldTour team, allowing them to keep up with the action in their cars.
Key moments are now logged by an editorial team, allowing viewers on HBO Max to go back to re-watch, or skip through if they’re catching up. Notably, there is a strict policy on crashes to only show them if the rider is known to be OK. Other possible features on the horizon include ‘double box adverts’, meaning that there might not be any interruption in coverage during an ad break, and also a listen-only feature.
It might be more expensive than fans are used to, and on yet another different platform this year, but it feels as if cycling has a good custodian in TNT Sports. They definitely ‘have it all’, and are conscious of that. “Cycling is not a small cog or wheel,” Young says. “It’s a major part of that wheel, and I can’t see that changing in the foreseeable future, irrespective of all the other sports around it.”
In the US, the Giro is currently also being shown on HBO Max. Keep up to date with how to watch cycling in the UK and across the world with our streaming guide, and take a look at our guide on how to watch cycling for free.
TNT Sports is the Home of Cycling in the UK, with every stage of the Giro d’Italia live on TNT Sports and HBO Max.