No Tour de France on ITV from 2026 as Eurosport becomes exclusive UK broadcaster

Real loss.  Not sure if it's just a general opinion, or an actual award, but the ITV TdF sports team were regarded as one of the best across all sports.  Gary's dry humour pulling it all together, Ned going from clueless to an addicted commentator, David the flawed ex-pro, Pete is a good pundit, occasional Chris Boardman, Daniel Friebe and Matt Rendell the multi-lingual (incl published award winning sports authors) interviewers (who I bet get interviews that others don't); its got it all and they're all total TdF addicts.  I reckon they'd do it for free.  The commentary has the odd guest on it and the highlights 'magazine' style inserts make it more interesting; Boardmans articles on european cycle city culture show how it could be.  Ned, David and Pete's bromance whilst following the race.  There are people I know who aren't at all into cycling, some don't even own a bike, who are totally addicted to the ITV coverage when the Tour is on.  A friend of mine had got into road cycling and I put him on to the Tour; his first remark was how good the ITV team were.  Eurosport's OK but just doesn't have the X factor that ITV has.

So there might be a free to air highlights show https://www.cyclingweekly.com/racing/british-free-to-air-tour-de-france-hig...

Latest episode of Neds Never Strays Far podcast discusses the news… apparently, Ned learnt from a Eurosport colleague.......

Not a great loss. With streaming so widespread I don't want to have to sit down at 8 to watch it. The on demand didn't come available until later on. Eurosport coverage is on demand and I can watch it when I like. 
I've not watched the ITV coverage for years and won't miss it. For me the value is also in the wider cycling coverage, money well spent to get full seasons coverage. Now, GCN + I do miss....

ITV losing the rights is no loss as their coverage, especially their love of taking four minute advert breaks every 12 minutes or so, or with less than 8km to go, makes their coverage unwatchable. 

Give me advert free flag to finish line coverage on Eurosport everyday.

Now.... if Eurosport would sign up for the Tour of Britian we could get rid of ITV completely: my funeral is arranged; I don't need non stop adverts for such. As to hungry donkey's... 

Thank the Heavens for the Pirate Broadcaster I use for all year round race coverage when ITV aren't Live.   IYKYK 

Shame.

At least one more year.

ITV 4 did a vuelta highlights for a couple of years, was good too.

Quest or Dmax for highlights then of everything else and short subscription for the month of July.

Hopefully itv will continue the with the tour of Britains.

ITV gave up the NFL highlights show very last minute, though they still have the superb owl and two of the London games, Craig was developing a good sidekick role to jbell and osi, not as good as mark when it was back on the BBC, but the best since.

Aww, that's a proper shame, ITV's highlights package was incomparably better than Eurosport's.

If they haven't just put the darts on instead (like America's Cup coverage this week), then it's always just the last 50mins of the days riding. Even if all the action was earlier in the day.

Then it's just Roberto Hatchio (he studied Italian doncha know...) and his painfully slow surname pronounciation, yelling 'oh no, oh no, oh no' because someone has dropped a chain, and Sean 'Yus, wull...' ignoring him.

We only tune in now to see how Orla has courageously defied her wardrobe department guidance in footwear and accessories...

Will this affect the highlights programs ? To be honest all the C4 / ITV  TDF coverage I've watched since 1983 has been the highlights programs only .... 1983 I missed the TDF as was in the Falklands ... again ... I got back 2 days before Christmas... my Christmas present was the C4 highlights on video cassettes .... that music ...that music ! ... was the best ever ..... 

Sports competitions go to who can afford to pay the organising body the most money, and really couldn't care if people can't afford to watch (or choose not to): look at how restricted the BBC is in showing Olympics coverage, look at how football has pretty disappeared from terrestrial broadcast TV (except the women's football - not sure what message that is giving), or read the news coverage of how the Six Nations rugby is likely to disappear behind a paywall…

This is so sad. I wouldn't mind as much if Eurosport coverage and highglights was even half as good ITVs. I wonder how much this will impact future generations love of the TdF. It's certainly what got me in to a lifetime of enjoying the sport and as a form of travel.

Ah well.. there goes the last of my interest in racing. Won't be getting Eurosport just for this. I will miss the ITV coverage though, the commentary team were brilliant and part of the summer for me since the mid 80s. Maybe I'll plan a tour out to France to see it by the roadside. 

road.cc on the click bait train again. Read the official ASO announcement https://www.ebu.ch/news/2024/10/ebu-a-s-o-reach-a-new-tour-de-france-agr...

I strongly suspect that ITV have done this as a cost cut, and it's not WBD that are the baddies. 

I'll throw in my agreement: the ITV production is always an excellent package of interviews, punditry, racing narrative, and contextual (or geological!) asides. I'm impressed that they get it out by 7pm each day.

Discovery+ with all the cycling content is rolled in to most Sky subs at no extra cost, however I'll miss Ned, David, Gary, etc on ITV. 

I agree with the other comments that the entire ITV TdF team have got it exactly in the Goldilocks zone, and will be sadly missed.

Personally I'm happy to shell out my £6.99 a month for all three GTs, all the monuments and major stage races that you get with Eurosport/Discovery but I think it's a real mistake not to have a least a highlights package available on free to air. As I suspect many on here of my vintage did, I first got into cycle racing through seeing the Channel 4 highlights from 1984 (?) onwards and it formed the basis of a lifetime of devotion. My other two favourite sports, rugby union and cricket, have been severely damaged in terms of fanbase and encouraging young people to get involved by making shortsighted decisions to grab the cash and not have any free to air coverage, even highlights; sad to see cycling going the same way. So now any kids whose parents can't afford/don't want to pay for Eurosport will get to see cycle racing on TV once every couple of years at the Commonwealth Games and the Olympics?