The good news is that the 2024 UCI Mountain Bike World Cup Series kicks off in Brazil next week! The bad news is that South Africans may struggle to watch it live as in the past. Here’s why…
By Sean Badenhorst
As of today, Thursday 4 April 2024, South Africa’s premier sports broadcaster, SuperSport, has not secured broadcast rights for the 2024 UCI Mountain Bike World Cup Series.
We received a very brief reply from SuperSport on enquiring this week: “Unfortunately, we have not confirmed the deal”.
We have asked for more details, but haven’t had a response yet as to whether that means SuperSport is still trying to confirm the deal or if that is the final answer and there will be no further negotiation.
Following the closure of the GCN+ app late in 2023, this leaves South Africans with very little in the way of legally watching the popular series, which features several high-profile South African racers, including Alan Hatherly, Candice Lill and Greg Minnaar.
For now, South Africans will have to acquire a VPN (Virtual Private Network) and try access the live feed in countries that will be broadcasting the series live. Here’s the list of those countries: https://ucimtbworldseries.com/watch. This method is apparently regarded as deceptive and not cool, but what’s also not cool is that we don’t have any live broadcast access in South Africa!
Mountain bike fans in South Africa and abroad continue to mourn the good old days when Red Bull TV used to broadcast the UCI World Cup Series globally for free; and when SuperSport, a subscription-based service, also broadcast the series live, including last year.
Since the UCI allocated the organisation and broadcast rights of the UCI MTB World Cup Series to Warner Bros / Discovery Sports from 2023 (until 2030!), there’s been widespread discontent as the sport has dealt with the upheaval of what appeared to be a good system. Downhill racing format, broadcast access limitations and higher costs, race venue changes, the downscaling of Enduro and Marathon World Cup racing and the sudden addition of a Snow Bike World Championships, have all been topics of criticism since the new regime took control from the beginning of last year.
We will update this article should we get any further news from SuperSport.
