Eurosport, Home of Cycling

Secteur

Once again, the "home of cycling" is showing tennis in stead of the the final stage of the Giro - tennis is overrunning and Giro was scheduled to start from 13:40.

This happens so often.

The other day they had literally 10 or more channels devoted to each different tennis match - why can't they do that when matches overrun to keep everyone happy?

Is it just me, because I never ever seem to see anyone else mention it on here? Where are you all watching it??

I'm on Europsort Player via Samsung TV.

PS I know there is coverage now on the 3rd Eurosport channel, but it's without any commentary - the commentary coverage is the one cancelled / delayed for the tennis match overrun.

Secteur

PPS it wouldn't even be quite so bad if they put up a banner on the tennis apologising for the delay and advising what they plan is (e.g. Giro coverage to start in 1 hour or whatever) but they just don't give any info.

Hugely frustrated as have packed and rushed so much this morning to get tuned in at 13:40!

Sorry, rant over now.

andyrr

Been watching via my ipad - http://raisport1.web.tv

bobbydazzla

During the first ad-break of the stage 20 highlights show last night they had an advert for stage 21 that announced which rider had just moved into the pink jersey.

They ruined the highlights with that ridiculous bit of programming.

Secteur

For one of the spring races this year (Strade Bianchi, I think) they showed the race without any commentary whatsoever - just ambient noise.

Out of frustration I emailed and tweeted them and didn't get any sort of response, and at no point did Eurosport put up any sort of "Sorry for the technical difficulties" banner.

I must admit that coverage this year has been better than the last couple of years when it was dire (constant freezing, loss of commentary and scheduled races just not being shown with no explanation), but Eurosports approach to customer satisfaction / quality is extremely poor in this day-and-age.

The problem is, they enjoy a monopoly in a (relative) minority sport so why invest when us mugs have no alternative?

Secteur

oh and the fact that coverage very often abruptly ends seconds after the winner crosses the line with no podium presentations etc is also really poor. Imagine that happening in F1 or football!

joelsim

What it boils down to is ES needs a cycling channel (esp with the advent of BIKE). Just cycling, no bouncing balls and grunting, no fat people throwing mini spears in front of the great unwashed, no boring people wearing waistcoats.

I'll allow them the odd WATTS to fill in the gaps.

deejay

Your rant is nothing new as back in the day when there was only oneEurosport channel we had so much more to complain about.
The Tick-Tock Grunt ball game and the motorised bikes did over run Live Cycle Racing which had a low priority and David Duffield did so much on our behalf to improve our allocations with the classics (RVV & PR) then being put on Live for a couple of hours.
There was no Giro on Eurosport except in the ES News roundup.
The 1973 Liege-Bastogne-Liege Highlights (only) was scheduled that evening and instead they put an International Ice Hockey Match on Live. I phoned my wife on my way back from Liege to be told about this and in the two hockey intervals is where ES slipped the L-B-L highlights in so I told her to record the fooking lot.
Later the German "Analog" ES did show the Giro (and other races) as this became the International ES while we continued with English Speaking Analog ES.
I'm on Cable with British ES (& Bike) because my satelite has got blown off location, viewing these days is so much better.

iainf72

This thread reminds me of

https://youtu.be/q8LaT5Iiwo4?t=94

The_Boy

iainf72 wrote:

This thread reminds me of

https://youtu.be/q8LaT5Iiwo4?t=94

@deejay's post reminded me more of:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo

rick_chasey

T'was always thus.

jimmythecuckoo

I am no analyst on this matter but its my feeling that we get less lost time from tennis etc.

DeVlaeminck

I must admit I find Eurosport screens more cycling than I can actually watch - I can't remember the last time I tuned in to find a classic had been reduced to the last 6k because the crown green bowling had over ran. What I would like a bit more of is analysis - we get it a bit with the Tour and the Giro but it'd be nice to have some pre and post race chat especially for the big races.

joelsim

DeVlaeminck wrote:

I must admit I find Eurosport screens more cycling than I can actually watch - I can't remember the last time I tuned in to find a classic had been reduced to the last 6k because the crown green bowling had over ran. What I would like a bit more of is analysis - we get it a bit with the Tour and the Giro but it'd be nice to have some pre and post race chat especially for the big races.

It'd be really nice to have some docs like BIKE do, Incycle or movies or suchlike.

RichN95.

Out of interest, what do the posters on this thread suppose Eurosport's viewing figures are (UK only)? Let's say for Tour of Flanders or Paris-Roubaix.

(I actually know the answer - 2015 numbers - for those two races. I was just wondering what people perceive the audience to be)

DL1987

Given the likes of Eastenders and Corrie get in the region of 8,000,000 viewers, I'd say Flanders and Roubaix got around 800,000 each?

joelsim

RichN95 wrote:

Out of interest, what do the posters on this thread suppose Eurosport's viewing figures are (UK only)? Let's say for Tour of Flanders or Paris-Roubaix.

(I actually know the answer - 2015 numbers - for those two races. I was just wondering what people perceive the audience to be)

Small. 50k ish.

Dorset_Boy

Rich - do you have the viewing figures for the tennis and snooker to compare?

RichN95.

Dorset Boy wrote:

Rich - do you have the viewing figures for the tennis and snooker to compare?

No. I just read an article about their cycling figures.

Anyway, for each of the cobbled monuments they got about 120,000 in 2015. The highest watched race of the year was the Paris stage of the Tour which was 220,000

ITV4 gets a lot more for the Tour. Close to a million for highlights of big Tour stages.

Viewing figures are on the up though.

Dorset_Boy

Figures are higher than I'd expect, but you need some context against the other sports shown on ES.

I am always amazed at how viewing figures tail right off as soon as you move away from BBC1 and ITV.
The likes of Strictly and the talentless shows owned by Mr Obnoxius would only get a couple of hundred thousand viewers if they were on BBC4 or ITV2.

The_Boy

RichN95 wrote:

Dorset Boy wrote:

Rich - do you have the viewing figures for the tennis and snooker to compare?

No. I just read an article about their cycling figures.

Anyway, for each of the cobbled monuments they got about 120,000 in 2015. The highest watched race of the year was the Paris stage of the Tour which was 220,000

ITV4 gets a lot more for the Tour. Close to a million for highlights of big Tour stages.

Viewing figures are on the up though.

Iirc* a good day for top flight Rugby League on Sky is around the 300k mark, so those are actually pretty strong numbers for a minority sport on a minority channel.

*from memory of an argument on a rugby board years back which was started by the resident treiziste. Fucked if I'm actually googling to check the veracity of my memory though.

kingstongraham

Secteur wrote:

oh and the fact that coverage very often abruptly ends seconds after the winner crosses the line with no podium presentations etc is also really poor. Imagine that happening in F1 or football!

This is the best thing about Eurosport. Generally they show the sport, then when the sport is finished, they show another sport.

It goes downhill when they decide they need to do previews, analysis and podiums and stuff.

iainf72

Dorset Boy wrote:

Rich - do you have the viewing figures for the tennis and snooker to compare?

Read a number of years ago that snooker pulled in their biggest numbers.

yourpaceormine

It wasn't that long ago when watching grand tour highlight shows there would be a results ticker running across the bottom of the screen. You were lucky if you made 5 minutes into the highlights before the ticker ran the stage results. Thankfully ES listened to the complaints about this.

Pretty decent viewing figures there. ES highlight shows are a bit dull, just the last 30km or so, shown 'as is', C4/ITV show has always been a much more polished highlight show. But I guess a bigger budget.

Whilst, yes i concur that some other sports over run their slot, i don't so much mind if the snookerists are finishing a frame, or the grunters are finishing a set. If that was my sport, I'd be pretty peeved if the coverage abruptly ended mid flow. I do think it is very different when (for example) motorsports are being shown; the car/bike/hgv race has ended, presentation made but still we are shown key highlights of the action, again and again, delaying coverage of the cycling even further. Save that for the highlights show, when it isn't stopping the broadcasting of live events. Agree with abrupt endings though - fair enough if live coverage of another sport is replacing it, but another 15minutes of WATTS?

RichN95.

Here are the maximum viewing figures for various sports events on Eurosport in 2015

Cycling
214k Tour de France
141k Vuelta
91k Giro

Tennis
464k French Open
321k Australian Open
78k US Open

Snooker
186k World Champs
108k Welsh Open

Football
134k African Cup of Nations
93k Women's World Cup

200k World Superbikes
70k Athletics World Champs

Now over at ITV4, their peak Tour de France audience was the live coverage of the Paris stage - 1.19 million - beaten all year by only three Rugby World Cup games and a Europa League tie. Their best for a highlights show was 880k - the stage Froome won. The Vuelta highlights peaked at 386k.

Source: www.barb.co.uk

deejay

The_Boy wrote:

@deejay's post reminded me more of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo

Yup I can accept this and the more I see Nit Picking Posts that I realise how old I'm getting but in turn this youtube clip will affect each and every one of you as you can't be "The Boy" for much longer.
For instance while checking the Giro Young Rider qualification being !st January 1991 which to me was only yesterday and these people are fully grown 25 year olds. So if you blink, then you too can be as old and that goes so fast.
They whinge about a Yellow Jersey who can't change gears and expect the other racers (who can change their gears) to stop and wait, or a rider runs out of road and into the snow etc.
Do these people ever race or even ride a cycle.

Oh, we know why we should leave the U.S.E. (EU) and govern ourselves democratically.

jimmythecuckoo

http://milltag.cc/shop/jerseys/eurosport?pa_gender=mens

salsiccia1

^ I like that very much, even though I usually hate supporters kit

pinno

Grrr Eurosport. I still have live streaming problems. I learnt through another live streaming web site that clearing your browser history can help and it does. I also learnt that 'Silverlight' no longer supports the Opera browser so it leads to bad live streaming. I now use Google Chrome to login to my ES account and watch live TV.
None of this came from the help section on ES. I don't know how many times I have sent help queries and I have never got a reply.

6wheels

Pinno wrote:

Grrr Eurosport. I still have live streaming problems. I learnt through another live streaming web site that clearing your browser history can help and it does. I also learnt that 'Silverlight' no longer supports the Opera browser so it leads to bad live streaming. I now use Google Chrome to login to my ES account and watch live TV.
None of this came from the help section on ES. I don't know how many times I have sent help queries and I have never got a reply.

I'm having the same problem, with ESplayer freezing at times. If you do a Google ' video freezing on Windows' you'll find it's not confined to ES, adjusting hardware acceleration does help. Unfortunately for me, having integrated graphics I can't adjust that setting, so, been doing a lot of refreshing lately.

pinno

^ The only downside, when I 'refresh' I have to log back in. It has frozen in the last 2km's or so of a race more than once and you ain't going to get back in quick enough to see the finish.