I love watching XC races online. And for the first time ever, I did not subscribe to anything to do just that in 2025. I just waited an extra day or two to watch all the World Cups and other races on various platforms. I am just flat out tired of paying for stuff I don’t need. Does anyone remember when most everyone paid for regular cable tv? $100+ a month for a bunch of channels you didn’t want, but it was either that, or the 10 you could pull in with an antenna.
Then real home internet came along, and suddenly you could watch things online. I quickly bought a giant antenna, spent an entire weekend installiong it in my attic, running cable down to my basement, installing a special splitter device (a pro level box, not available at a home store) and added a Roku box to every TV. It was glorious. No more $100. The best part is when GCN took over most all of the road and MTB video streaming. For $69 a year, I not only could watch every bike race, from great Classics, road, CX, MTB, all of it. It was all a few clicks away in the GCN app. That came out to roughly $6 a month.
Why am I boring you with all this? Because that ship sailed, and now if I want to watch the same races, I need to pay FloBikes, Max, Peacock, and probably a few others. $60-70 a month minimum to do them all. And with it I get tons of stuff I will not watch.
We are back where we started. Pay $100 for a bunch of services, when you really only want a few things. The short lived experiment of ala carte video programming isn’t coming back.
Okay. So what does that leave? Well, February 5-8, we cal ALL now watch The SCOTT Mediterranean Epic MTB 2026 live on YouTube. The reason this is news, is because they will now have an English commentary in place. And some real vets of XC racing will be your hosts.
4 day stage racing, XC bikes, from all over the world, in a beautiful location. What’s not to like? And yeah, it’s free for everyone.
Rejoice!
And I’m rooting for Hannah Otto…she rocks.
Then real home internet came along, and suddenly you could watch things online. I quickly bought a giant antenna, spent an entire weekend installiong it in my attic, running cable down to my basement, installing a special splitter device (a pro level box, not available at a home store) and added a Roku box to every TV. It was glorious. No more $100. The best part is when GCN took over most all of the road and MTB video streaming. For $69 a year, I not only could watch every bike race, from great Classics, road, CX, MTB, all of it. It was all a few clicks away in the GCN app. That came out to roughly $6 a month.
Why am I boring you with all this? Because that ship sailed, and now if I want to watch the same races, I need to pay FloBikes, Max, Peacock, and probably a few others. $60-70 a month minimum to do them all. And with it I get tons of stuff I will not watch.
We are back where we started. Pay $100 for a bunch of services, when you really only want a few things. The short lived experiment of ala carte video programming isn’t coming back.
Okay. So what does that leave? Well, February 5-8, we cal ALL now watch The SCOTT Mediterranean Epic MTB 2026 live on YouTube. The reason this is news, is because they will now have an English commentary in place. And some real vets of XC racing will be your hosts.
4 day stage racing, XC bikes, from all over the world, in a beautiful location. What’s not to like? And yeah, it’s free for everyone.
Rejoice!
And I’m rooting for Hannah Otto…she rocks.
