Lloyds Tour of Britain Women coverage

[pjclinch]

On the Beeb plus "flag to flag" streaming on Youtube...



Shame it's back to 4 stages for now, but better than none, and they look to be good stages with a good roster of competitors.

Pete.

[mjr]

Also a shame there's no highlights show nightly on normal TV. The race seems to be very second-class now that British Cycling Events run it. TV coverage details:

BBC RB 1 HD
Thu 5 Jun
Cycling: Tour of Britain Women - Stage 1
12:00 - 14:20 (140 min.)
Follow live coverage from the first day of the Tour of Britain Women Cycling race, taking place from Dalby Forest to Redcar. [HD]

BBC RB 1 HD
Fri 6 Jun
Cycling: Tour of Britain Women - Stage 2
12:00 - 14:20 (140 min.)
Follow live coverage from the second day of the Tour of Britain Women 2025 cycling race, taking place from Hartlepool to Saltburn-by-the-Sea. [HD]

BBC RB 1 HD
Sat 7 Jun
Cycling: Tour of Britain Women - Stage 3
12:00 - 15:20 (200 min.)
Follow live coverage from the third day of the Tour of Britain Women 2025 cycling race, taking place in Kelso. [HD]

BBC RB 1 HD
Sun 8 Jun
Cycling: Tour of Britain Women - Stage 4
09:50 - 12:30 (160 min.)
Follow live coverage from the fourth and final day of the Tour of Britain Women 2025 cycling race, taking place in Glasgow City Centre. [HD]

So it should be accessible to non-smart TVs. Still can't see details of any highlights shows, though, either on RB 1 (aka 601) or on iPlayer.

[pjclinch]

Moderator note - spoiler removed.

[TrevA]

The stages are so short you don’t really need a highlights programme. Stage 1 all done in under 2 hours.

[mjr]

Please have regard to viewtopic.php?t=156920 and don't spoil the results for those at work who will watch later, especially in a thread about coverage.

[rareposter]

Also a shame there's no Still can't see details of any highlights shows, though,

There's a daily highlights package on the official Lloyds Tour of Britain YouTube channel.

https://www.youtube.com/live/uFWyP9i1gO ... B2klh4aGGg

Live start to finish coverage on BBC Sport website, iPlayer and the same YouTube channel.

Also a shame there's no highlights show nightly on normal TV. The race seems to be very second-class now that British Cycling Events run it.

It's still a great race. 110 riders on 19 teams, the biggest entry ever for the Women's ToB. World, Olympic and National champions riding, it's hardly "second rate".
The TV coverage comes down to who wants to bid for it and if ITV4 don't want it, that's hardly the fault of the event.

[mjr]

Also a shame there's no Still can't see details of any highlights shows, though,

There's a daily highlights package on the official Lloyds Tour of Britain YouTube channel.

https://www.youtube.com/live/uFWyP9i1gO ... B2klh4aGGg

Complete with result spoiler in the title card picture on some stages

Live start to finish coverage on BBC Sport website, iPlayer and the same YouTube channel.

...which is great for existing fans but not going to let new people spot it like they would in the TV guide.

Also a shame there's no highlights show nightly on normal TV. The race seems to be very second-class now that British Cycling Events run it.

It's still a great race. 110 riders on 19 teams, the biggest entry ever for the Women's ToB. World, Olympic and National champions riding, it's hardly "second rate".

I said second-class, not second rate. 19 teams isn't much of an increase from the 17 it used to have before the interruption, but it has shortened from six days to four.

Reportedly, there weren't enough marshals on Stage 3, no contingency plan, and cars driving onto the course in the opposite direction to the race before the broom wagon had passed.

The TV coverage comes down to who wants to bid for it and if ITV4 don't want it, that's hardly the fault of the event.

The organisers need to SELL the coverage, not just put it out for bids and then shrug. If that's what BCE did, then that's definitely second-class behaviour.

Let's wait and see what BCE do with the Men's Tour of Britain in September before we say for sure if the Women have been given second-class treatment, but we already know the MToB will have 6 stages, which is what BC said the 2025 WToB should have.

[awavey]

Reportedly, there weren't enough marshals on Stage 3, no contingency plan, and cars driving onto the course in the opposite direction to the race before the broom wagon had passed.

The TV coverage comes down to who wants to bid for it and if ITV4 don't want it, that's hardly the fault of the event.

The organisers need to SELL the coverage, not just put it out for bids and then shrug. If that's what BCE did, then that's definitely second-class behaviour.

Im sure the organisers would say they did sell the coverage and got it live coverage on the BBC (and Discovery+ too of course), actually by UCI rules they had to provide live coverage else the race would lose its WWT status. Now fwiw I dont feel iplayer really counts as "coverage" in that sense, but its how alot of sports (except football and of course the soon to be wall to wall coverage of hitting a ball over netathon) get treated by the Beeb thesedays, as they get to tick box theyve shown something even if its non linear tv, and the sports organisers get to claim they were on the BBC.

but the reality is twofold, firstly coverage of a stage road race like this is really really expensive, more so when you dont appear to have any real sponsorship of the race, Lloyds kind of got top billing because of their overall sponsor deal with BC, so would appear regardless, but I presume they were using BCs normal 5g approach, and helicam for the last 20k, but most broadcasters would baulk at the costs involved, and ITVs issue with cycling coverage is they cant get sponsors to cover the costs, and actually old repeats of shows from the 70s or 80s get more viewers in

because secondly theres no audience for this, the numbers watching the youtube live coverage tended to be around 1800 up to 2500 near stage ends. That might sound alot but compare it to youtubers who do live streams and they get 10,000 plus quite easily and they could be just watching planes take off, or completely mundane random chat about stuff, so theres no incentive for any broadcaster to show the race in greater coverage terms than it actually got.

and yeah for sure its chicken and egg, more coverage would drive more audiences,but probably still not enough to justify its place in the schedules on regular tv given the costs involved

will the mens race fare better coverage wise, I dont know ITV have been showing stages live for a while I think with their whole shake up of cycling coverage thats not likely to continue anyway, even if they may show this years race which is basically Geraint Thomas' retirement ride, that alone might sell enough ad space so its doable for them one last time kind of thing.

[awavey]

It's still a great race. 110 riders on 19 teams, the biggest entry ever for the Women's ToB. World, Olympic and National champions riding, it's hardly "second rate".
The TV coverage comes down to who wants to bid for it and if ITV4 don't want it, that's hardly the fault of the event.

realistically how many of those 110 riders actually were good enough to be in a WWT level race though ? yeah sure they had 19 teams, but 5 of them were British domestic conti teams, and 1 of them was a BC national team.

only 1 pro team turned up, no VolkerWessels, no Cofidis all who are pushing World team status

and the rest World tour, though no Fenix, with team selection which was a mix of Brits to please sponsors, and some very young and inexperienced riders, nearly 25 I think I counted qualified for the young riders jersey. PCS gave the race a quality rider ranking of 671, its been as high as 1421 in the past.

yeah there were some big names there, alot more were missing though, and they seemed to treat it like a training camp set of rides to build for bigger races in the next few months.

for me the race is really running on fumes, it picks poor parcours for stages, and it feels very second rate now to how it was at its peak

[rareposter]

realistically how many of those 110 riders actually were good enough to be in a WWT level race though ? yeah sure they had 19 teams, but 5 of them were British domestic conti teams, and 1 of them was a BC national team.

Is that a bad thing?!
Most races (outside of the Grand Tours) have riders who are "learning the ropes", riders there for experience, a bit of sponsorship exposure (and you can't argue about lack of sponsorship on one hand then complain that there were riders there only to please the sponsors on the other!).

Cat Ferguson has said in a couple of interviews that her inspiration was seeing Lizzie Deignan racing. And given that one of the many many points of having these races (other than the basics of seeing who can pedal a bit faster) is to inspire future generations, surely having a good complement of young British riders in the race is the perfect way to go about that?

The Olympic and European champions were both there. Five National Champions.
https://www.britishcycling.org.uk/touro ... in-Women-0

it picks poor parcours for stages...

Much as with the TV coverage, the race has to go where it's been given permission. Every council along the route has to sign it off. If one council says no, the race either has to re-route or that stage (or some of it) is no longer an option. There's also elements of logistics - team parking, nearby hotels, highways risk assessments etc.

You might have a start town super keen to host but there's no town nearby that can / will host the finish on the same day. You might have a finish town super keen for Saturday but the only day the race is in that area is Thursday. Likewise, there are rules in how long the transfers can be at the start and end of each day. No good having Plymouth all set to host a stage, offering the cash etc if the only other towns able to host are in Scotland.

Much of that is the political background that got referenced on the Lincolnshire Mayoral Election thread. Doesn't matter much how good your product is if you've got some vehemently anti-cycling dinosaurs in power in the local authority.

[pjclinch]

It's entirely fair to say it wasn't as good as at its previous peak, but OTOH it's also entirely valid to point out it was a lot better than when it didn't run at all. It's also worth considering that although Sweetspot's best effort was better than the recently concluded race that that took a while to get to get to that point, and it turned out Sweetspot's business model was unsustainable.

So I say at least 2 cheers for the recent edition, with any reservation being that it needs to carry on growing back better.

Pete.

[mjr]

[...] and it turned out Sweetspot's business model was unsustainable.

I think we can't say that safely, because we don't know the truth of the accusations that Sweetspot asked and was refused a reduction in BC's fees for the mourning-curtailed edition of the men's race. The most we can say is that the Sweetspot business had become too vulnerable to disruption and one curtailed race was enough to kill it.

I suspect Sweetspot overestimated how keen BC would be to see them survive and didn't realise BC would be happy to let their own events team have a go.