After cancelling my Discovery+ subscription, I looked round for economic ways of watching as much cycling as possible and finally decided to use a VPN to access coverage from other countries. I knew that I wouldn’t get an English commentary, but I can live without that as the onscreen captions give enough information to know what is happening.
I watched the final cyclocross races from Oostmalle last Sunday on Sporza (Belgium – Flemish commentary), and this weekend I saw the Het Nieuwsblad races on Saturday (Sporza again) and Kuurne – Brussels – Kuurne on RTBF (Belgium – French commentary, though the onscreen captions were in Dutch, e.g. Kop van de wedstrijd) on Sunday.
Everything has worked well.
I set up accounts at Sporza and RTBF (both free) using my Google account details so I didn’t have to disclose a British email address. It’s also necessary to input a postcode, and obviously a Belgian one is expected. An internet search gave me all the options and I chose one more or less at random. It was accepted on both sites.
As for the cost of the VPN, I chose NordVPN and took a two year subscription which is payable up front. There was an offer which made the cost the equivalent of £3.11 per month. However, I went through the Quidco cashback site which had a very generous percentage reduction. The cashback has already been approved, and reduces the cost to £1.88 per month.
I’m happy with that.