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Took this photo of my TV screen over the past weekend (27-28th September). Good to know promoting the sport is one of their most reliable strong points. 🤣
Will be interesting to see how this shakes out
https://about.netflix.com/en/news/netflix-to-acquire-warner-bros
And what this means for streaming in 2026.
someone sent me this AI summary of a potential situation based on recent news reports (link to the full prompt/response - https://chatgpt.com/share/69332148-fa98-8011-874a-3495657e6654 )
some highlights
......
Bottom line
If you loved Red Bull-era MTB coverage… that era is gone.
If you thought WBD was mishandling the property… buckle up.
If you’re the UCI, you start shopping the rights right now because Netflix has zero incentive to carry a niche sport with high production burn.
Tell me if you want predictions for specific disciplines: DH, XC, Enduro, or the whole World Cup calendar.
You said: what if I argued with you, that, netflix execs will see DH and XC like formula one, and turn it into a hit show?, for LESS than formula one? lol
ChatGPT said:
Alright, let’s run that fantasy scenario… but I’m gonna tell you exactly where it breaks and where it could actually work.
And yes, it would be wildly cheaper than F1.
Where your argument could land
• DH athletes are characters built for reality TV
Troy Brosnan, Vali, Pierron, Minnaar, Hart… these people are walking story arcs
• Teams don’t have PR machines scrubbing their personalities like F1 does
• Crashes, heartbreak, wild talent, unfair mechanicals – it’s pure drama
• XC has rivalries, national pride, and the Olympics halo
• Relative cost: you can shoot a full season of DH + XC for less than a single F1 episode’s travel budget
The part Netflix WILL like
• MTB has global youth appeal
• Netflix desperately wants Gen Z sports properties
• F1 was dead until DTS – they know the template
• If Netflix built a Drive to Survive: Dirt Edition, it would hit.
Not mainstream like F1 but big enough to justify a doc-series budget.
Where your argument dies for live coverage
• DTS worked because F1 already had a massive live broadcast ecosystem
• Netflix didn’t take on the cost, they did the doc part
• With MTB, Netflix would be inheriting the full cost
• Live broadcast is the expensive part, not the storytelling
BUT… here’s the real lever nobody talks about
You actually could win this argument if you framed MTB as:
doc-series first, live coverage second.
That’s the crack in the door.
Netflix knows:
• Live audiences are tiny vs. DTS streaming audiences
• The doc carried the sport, not the broadcast
• MTB is way cheaper to produce behind-the-scenes because teams are tiny, budgets are low, drama is high, and athletes aren’t media-trained robots
So your pitch would be:
• Make a DTS-style series about the DH circuit
• Produce scaled-back but high-quality race highlights, not full live shows
• Bundle XC inside the same doc as the “tactical chess match” narrative
• Turn the World Cup into a character-based universe
• Let Red Bull or someone else do the hardcore live stream for the niche fans
If Netflix bought that? It could actually explode MTB.
Not the live ratings. Those will always be niche.
But the athletes? Household names, same trajectory as F1 drivers post-DTS.
Here’s the honest truth
• Live DH is never gonna be a mainstream event
• A Netflix doc-series absolutely could be
• And yes — they could do it for a fraction of what Drive to Survive costs
MTB travel budgets are the cost of catering at an F1 paddock
If you want, I’ll sketch the exact pitch deck Netflix would greenlight, including episode arcs, cost comparisons, and why DH is a better storytelling sport than XC.
My wife and I are big fans of the newish Netflix show "Dinner Time Live' with David Chang. Most of the episodes 'hit' (for us at least), and the ones that don't are mostly due to how wah wahhh the guests are. We don't watch it live, and tend to catch them at our convenience which is nice. If they're dropping 10k on caviar for Seth and Ike, the production budget is obviously there...
There must be other live broadcast shows on the platform I'm not aware of? Point being: The template is there, and I suspect a show and/or broadcast by NF would be far better executed than WBD. Imo at least.
That read like a serial killer's cut & paste letter to the authorities.
Cut. Paste. Cut. Paste. CUT. pastE.
Why do Netflix even need to bother with biking other than TdF. How well did that series go? Gen X? Live Content?
If you are a suit wearing, business excec, maybe you run the park in your city, or you tennis at an exclusive club whilst your wife and kids play, and you get the documents: mountain bike racing: cost drain, resource heavy, low viewership (less than SX/SMX): cut it. Unless you hear some Saudi's knocking, but I think they are after WSX at the moment.
I hope I am wrong, I hope that deep inside Chris Ball he is second guessing himself.
On his recent Downtime interview, Wyn made the point that it’s pretty difficult to differentiate between race runs these days. Occasionally a rider or two will do something wild that no one else is doing. Or there may be a crash… but the reality is that all the runs kinds of look the same even to him, and even more to to random viewers who can’t spot the differences. The real “story” of any given race run is really just the split times
Working off that assumption: it’s a pretty big leap to make watching 30 runs live compelling viewing. I know it’s sacrilege, but maybe a more narrative storytelling of behind the scenes would have a better chance of capturing a broader audience than trying to increase viewership of live racing.
Netflix isn’t taking any sports part it seems, WBD is supposed to be branched out before the deal goes through. Whether or not it’s good is an open question, but seems like Netflix wouldn’t care about live sports anyway.
Am I wildly misreading this? Seems like Netflix will not be the new boss, as they’re buying the studio parts of WB as the streaming and sports are clumped into something called Discovery Global for some different shitty dudes to shuffle around?
And Trump’s Saudi friends wanted it all…am I gonna have to bail on the whole thing if they end up buying the Discovery Global stuff? Oof.
They were going to show full runs live AND tell more stories, remember that claim?
DH has a ton of interesting stories that have wide appeal to sports and motorsport fans. Beyond the cookie cutter days-in-the-life (which I always love) and boring injury comeback interviews, there’s actual tech (with secrets and gamesmanship), a truly interesting athlete group, and scandal. It’s mind-boggling how bad they are at any of it.
I’ll repeat this until it’s not worth repeating: give your audience the benefit of the doubt, they’ll love you for it.
Seems like the Netflix WBD deal isn't quite as done and dusted as they let on, with Paramount Skydance now having launched a hostile counteroffer directly to the WBD shareholders. Paramount is bidding for the entirety of the WBD business INCLUDIND the sports broadcasting portfolio:
--------------------------
LOS ANGELES and NEW YORK, Dec. 8, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Paramount, a Skydance Corporation (NASDAQ: PSKY) ("Paramount"), today announced it has commenced an all-cash tender offer to acquire all of the outstanding shares of Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. (NASDAQ: WBD) ("WBD") for $30.00 per share in cash. Paramount's proposed transaction is for the entirety of WBD, including the Global Networks segment.
Paramount's strategically and financially compelling offer to WBD shareholders provides a superior alternative to the Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) transaction, which offers inferior and uncertain value and exposes WBD shareholders to a protracted multi-jurisdictional regulatory clearance process with an uncertain outcome along with a complex and volatile mix of equity and cash.
The Paramount offer for the entirety of WBD provides shareholders $18 billion more in cash than the Netflix consideration. WBD's Board of Directors recommendation of the Netflix transaction over Paramount's offer is based on an illusory prospective valuation of Global Networks that is unsupported by the business fundamentals and encumbered by high levels of financial leverage assigned to the entity.
David Ellison, Chairman and CEO of Paramount, said: "WBD shareholders deserve an opportunity to consider our superior all-cash offer for their shares in the entire company. Our public offer, which is on the same terms we provided to the Warner Bros. Discovery Board of Directors in private, provides superior value, and a more certain and quicker path to completion. We believe the WBD Board of Directors is pursuing an inferior proposal which exposes shareholders to a mix of cash and stock, an uncertain future trading value of the Global Networks linear cable business and a challenging regulatory approval process. We are taking our offer directly to shareholders to give them the opportunity to act in their own best interests and maximize the value of their shares."
Read more HERE if you want more details.
Mission Impossible 9: Save the WC DH Series.
Better tell Tom he's not done yet.
it just didn’t have enough corruption…this feels so much better!
DH is a hard sport to watch because it’s too fast and subtle for the average viewer to get it all visually and the background is so much more complicated and distracting than F1 or moto or ski races, which are on neat clear tracks and it’s generally obvious when something happens. Been said a million times but it’s the announcing and cameras that are ruining the show. And I’m not picking on Ric because Rob and Claudio weren’t much better. Eliot Jackson was great. Neko and Gwin can be great when they aren’t being constantly interrupted.
I’m a longtime fan and watcher and I miss half the subtlety of lots of these runs. I think DH requires the kind of announcers that soccer or baseball have, running play by play that you could listen to on the radio and still know what’s happening. Like how Cam McCaul announces slopestyle- he tells you everything they’re doing and judges it in that moment.
Compare “Troy Brosnan, out of the gate. Tidy in these first three corners, greases the big gap, hard left into that mangled berm. They’ve destroyed that poor thing. Manages a few pedal strokes as he drops into the trees. Smooth in these chunky rocks just floating through it like we’d expect from him. Cut tight inside the wide left, first one we’ve seen take that, shorter but rougher with sniper rocks. Sam Hill would be proud. Big pull and he clears those enormous roots! Risky move, we’ve seen it take out others. Hard braking at the end of the straight and nearly horizontal in that huge right berm! then back on the pedals.At the split And he’s up by 0.5!
With what we’ve got “Troy’s been looking great all weekend. Let’s see what he can pull off today. Got that new baby at home. He’s fit, if anyone can do it today, it’s Troy. Into the trees now, looks tidy as always, Troy does. Smooth on the inside. Always looks neat, that’s why he’s Mr Consistency. Let’s see that next split. Up by 0.5 seconds!”
Which do you want to hear? Which is better for attracting new fans?
This is the best description I’ve heard yet about why people are so unsatisfied with the current commentary
100%! As you said Gwin, Neko and Elliott Jackson do a great job of that. It's great knowing about the racers, their struggles, why a lighter rider like Troy took a different line that bigger rider, how the lines changed from practice, etc.
I’m really glad you called out the “if anyone can do it, he can” line, which gets mentioned at least 5 times every final. Pretty easy saying to understand yet there still ends up being a handful of “if anyone can” riders. 😂
And also “we know he has the fitness”
Thanks guy. Wasn’t aware that the riders in the World Cup finals had the fitness or capability to win a World Cup. Ben Cathro - also qualified to be an announcer.
I don’t see why DH can’t be super popular. XC is total garbage to watch and so is road racing. This low speed repetitive grind and someone always goes off the front and there’s rarely a sprint for first(women’s XC is more interesting than men’s, with a deeper talent pool). DH is everything people love - high speed, crazy terrain, nutso riders, big crashes. Half the time it’s scary to even walk parts of the track. But it has to be filmed and commentated right because it’s such a complex sport. Here’s an example. There’s a woods section at MSA where at the end a few riders do a HUGE pull and launch like 40 feet to gap a bunch of crap (that one Minnaar pioneered in like 2018 or something). And where do they put the camera? At the very end, where all you see is some guy hump his bar and be three feet off the ground for a second. You don’t see the massive effort to launch through the trees. You don’t see what he cleared or the effort involved to precisely hit a tiny backside for a landing.
I enjoy races so much more if I’ve had time in the week to watch vital raw or Ben Cathro’s videos because then I have a sense of the track and what the lines are and what challenges are, where someone might surprise us. Again - this is easy on an F1 track with like 12 turns, or left/right/super fast ski racing.
In an effort to keep this thread on point, I don’t give a shit who owns the TV rights so long as I dont end up needing one more fucking subscription draining my bank account. No broadcaster this far has given this sport what it deserves or is capable of. And, unfortunately, in a huge billion dollar deal, dh probably isn’t being discussed. The buyer will figure out after the fact they are now stuck with DH. This is like super rich grandma died and during the fight over the estate we’re the dorks figuring out who gets the silverware. Meanwhile there’s Picassos and Rembrandts on the wall. I don’t expect much to change under new ownership.
If any owner wants this to succeed, it seems pretty easy. Just take the people who already do a rad job filming and put them in charge, and take the pro level riders who can commentate and put them in charge. Imagine if Misspent Summers or Lawson or Alex Rankin were the film crew and Ben Cathro and Eliot were the announcers? Holy shit we’d be in for a good time.
if anyone can do it
IS so annoying, over and over. Every other ride.
It really is terrible, my wife makes fun of it all the time. She asked once if it was a couple of guys making fun of the announcing by doing a bad voice over. Nope thats the show!! I will keep paying and watching because I love it but it's bad.
From a visual perspective more riders and less air time per rider is the way to go. You’ll see more alternate lines. See more variance in speed in different splits. With full runs reserved for the last 5 riders. F1/supercross do a great job of showing the action. And American football is the best at it. If people tried to watch football without highlights on a wide panned lense to show the whole playing field it would be complete garbage to anyone without a high level of ability to understand the game in real time. The magic is in the ability to show the live game but really distinguish what is happening thru the broadcast with highlights and mostly quality commentary.
while announcing split times is somewhat important, it’s also displayed on screen. Along with other critical info. The focus needs to be on high quality color commentary and a rob warmer like hype man to keep the energy high and provide a backing track when the winning run hits YouTube. Really doubt Danny’s world champs run has the reach it does (especially a dozen years later) without rob’s super quotable lines.
All I know is I haven't watched races live in a couple years since stupid subscriptions were part of the need to watch 8 whole short races over the span of 4 months. This junk is going to kill wc dh long-term.I have found myself slowly losing interest over it.
Hopefully not another paywall. Usabmx did this for the pro races with Flo , it’s like $135 for the year or $30 a month if you only want to watch one weekend
I agree.
Please folks- don’t post LLM generated content here.
3 seasons of WB/Discovery....So, is the sport better off? Are we getting better coverage from the non-MTB media, which is what I thought the UCI were hoping for. Are we seeing more non bike industry sponsors?
If WB/Discovery is sold, how do we know the new rights holders are interested in the MTB World Cup??? The viewing figures are miniscule........it won't be of much importance to them.
I don't think the sport is big enough for a paywall - especially one which has increased in the last year to a ridiculous amount; only 2 years after being free to watch. £40 per year to £6.99 per month, to then £30.99 per month........Really?????
The racing has been phenomenal, I will say that. They cranked up the urgency to near-desperation levels…not sure how it’s sustainable but in the short term, World Cup DH is bananas.
I am ok with paying, but I want quality. The quality of the video camera placement sucks.The camera team should have looked at what Red Bull did at the yearly hosted races, and then looked at Vital Raws, and rider videos to pick better action spots. Perhaps have a camera or two that has their placement figured out during the week based on what is happening on the track. Each year, change up the camera placement. I'd go up to MSA to watch the races, and I couldn't understand why the upper sections were not on camera even when they were important splits towards the bottom of the fun. The long shots out in the wide open that shows the gondola's, and whole French country side need to be few and far between.
Im sure their choice of camera positions is an economic choice to cover the track with the least amount of camera men which is why we get so much blurry drone footage
I know that money is probably why they had the shitty footage. That needs to stop, especially with it being a paid service now.
Warner and C.Coluori would tell me how fit Marcelo Gutierrez was approximately eight times a run. Just saying. RicMc has some clunkers to be sure but are you really missing Tracey Hannah saying “fierce” for 20 minutes straight?
GhoulieFan out
Ric, Josh, and Neko are akin to listening to paint dry. Watch 10 minutes of 2025 hard-line and then watch 10 minutes of any 2025 world cup. The Discovery gang is utterly dull. They barely even comment on the action. It's just bland, boring, noise to fill the air
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