On 6/29/2025 8:24 PM, Mark J cleary wrote:
I don't have a television never watch it. I am thinking of getting the Peacock livestream that will carry all the TDF from start to finish. I
don't want to watch in live everyday but they claim the race is saved
and you can go back and view it.
Any thought here on watching or if anyone here follows it. Normally I
never do just because of commercials and the high lights get compressed.
But for $8 and a month subscription it might be worth it. Are there commerials on livestream.
For the TdF I have peacock. They have two tiers - one commercial free
and one not. The commercial free tier also offers live start to stop
coverage of each stage. The tier with commercials starts the show at 9AM
every day with regular commercial breaks. The commercial free coverage
is worth it to me.
The Commercial free coverage has UK commentators Rob Hatch, Carlton
Kirby, and Sean Kelly (yes _that_ Sean Kelly) until 9:00 AM, then they
switch over to Phil Ligget and Bob Roll (The UK commentary is soooo much better).
Peacock does have full replays available after the broadcast is
finished, but I don't know if the commercial free replays are available
with the commercial free subscription.
There is rumor that the commercial coverage will be available on cable
on NBC sports, CNBC, or USA. I know in years past you could watch on the
USA streaming platform, but I can't find any info on that now. Might be
worth a shot to check your local cable system schedule and see if anyone
is carrying it.
IF you have the resources to set up a VPN, you could stream it through Discovery+. that would be free except for the VPN fees, but Discovery+
is getting smart enough to detect when it's hooked up to a VPN service
and block the feed.
If you feel like babysitting the connection you could try TIZ cycling.
It's a free rebroadcast (yes, it really is free) of the Eurosport live
feed but it's essentially pirated through a VPN in russia. They usually
have 3 or 4 alternate feeds (you simply click on the one you want to
watch), but IME they all don't always work. It goes down frequently
(sometimes getting blocked), so you have to keep refreshing until the
owner resets his VPN address to get past the blocks. Also, one of the
feeds is a low bandwidth feed that generally stays up with no issues,
except that it will put up splash video advertisements, often
pornographic (complete with screaming female orgasm audio).
I have both peacock and MAx Sports so I get most of the races that are broadcast. Peacock carries all the Amaury Sport Organisation races (ASO,
the company that owns the Tdf). This includes stage races like The
Dauphine, Paris-Nice, and the Vuelta a Espana, as well as one day races
like Liege Bastogne Liege, PAris Roubaix, and La Fleche Wallone. HBO/Max
Sports carries almost every other race on the calendar except for a few
of the "spring Classics" which are carried by Flobikes.The problem with flobikes is that it's more expensive than both Peacock non-commercial
and MAx sports put together, and they only carry like 6 races in the US.
I'm not going to pay $250 a year to watch the only 6 races not covered
by Peacock and Max.
Flobikes is the major bike racing content provider in Canada, so they
carry everything that Max carries in the US for our Canadian friends.
However, because of the licensing they can only provide the few races
not covered by MAx and Peacock in the US, but here's the kicker - they
don't tell you which races those are. IF you go to their website, they
sho the list of races, but no distinction of which ones are Canada only.
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