Discovery Sports' Scott Young Shares Plans for Cycling World Domination By Heather McLean, Editor
Wednesday, March 30, 2022 - 11:54 am
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Discovery Sports senior vice president of content and production Scott Young recently spoke to SVG Europe about the broadcaster's increasing plans in the world of cycling, which is one of its major sports verticals.
This year, Discovery Sports has added Tour de France Femmes and Paris-Roubaix Femmes rights in Asia-Pacific territories exclusively until at least 2025, France and Australia on a non-exclusive basis to 2025, Middle East and North Africa until 2023 and Latin American markets for the 2022 editions.
It is set to produce a hefty 600 individual broadcasts including over 1,200 live hours of cycling for coverage in 65 markets via Eurosport and discovery+, as well as 208 territories via GCN+, the cycling streaming channel.
Young discusses the plans for this year's cycling extravaganzas and the new innovations that Discovery is set to bring to screens.
What's your intention for this cycling world domination path you're on? Where is it going and why are you so interested in cycling?
Cycling world domination? I love it. We don't necessarily look at it that way in the sense that we are trying to dominate; we are mad sports fans and cycling has been such an important pillar of our sports line up. We have seven pillars of sport that deliver most of the content and cycling has a significant pillar for over three decades. Tour de France joined our screens in 1991, and cycling is just one of those sports that a Eurosport audience has always connected with.
From that, obviously GCN became part of the family and the GCN platform is another extension of what Eurosport has been doing for many years for the true cycling fan that wants to continue the story when the race is over, and even the linear broadcast is over. So I think those two pieces together, along with Discovery+, which launched in the last 18 months and is becoming another strong streaming platform that bridges our entertainment product with our sporting product, now connect with cycling in a different way, and that grows our appetite for more cycling content.
I think your point about what looks like cycling world domination is a genuine appetite for all things road, track, on road, off road; it's that two wheels' environment that we know we have a really connected audience in.
Our challenge, like all sports, at the end of each year as you lead into the new year, is how do you elevate the story? How do you bring the riders to life? How do we get a new audience that hasn't properly ingratiated themselves with events like the Giro or Le Tour or the Vuelta? How do they become fascinated about cycling?
That's our focus year on year. And I feel very comfortable that this year we're on really good track to continue that trend of strong storytelling, innovative coverage and immersive coverage across those platforms.
Do you have any plans for getting more rights on board this year?
Yes, we're always looking for available rights that fit into the schedule and we've got to make sure we don't become so greedy that we end up with a situation where we can't actually schedule everything at once. But we have 300 events, which is over 600 days of cycling, which is roughly 1,200 hours of cycling on our platforms this year, so we're pretty comfortable.
We've got what we think we need to make sure that if you're a cycling fan, we are genuinely your destination. We are the home of cycling, but we've always got our head up looking around to see new events as opportunities arise, and the rights team are quick to pounce on anything that looks like it fits in.
It's a constant and very organic process around particularly big pillars like cycling, like tennis; what's around, what can we pick up and how does it fit within our schedule? But we are mindful that instead of just buying everything, we do need to make sure it actually fits with what we've got, otherwise we end up with effectively a gluttony of the same sport, and I don't think that does anybody any favours.
On women's cycling, and on women's sport overall, how important is that to the Discovery brand?
Women's sport is significantly important. Discovery Sport Together is a programme that we focus on regularly from a leadership perspective right down through to the production teams.
Women's sport and gender equality is something that is not easily delivered and managed, but it's an absolute focus. And I'll always say, we've got a long way to go. We're not sitting back saying we've actually managed to achieve this, but in working with our own production teams, our individual markets and sporting federations, we're certainly making headway.
This year we saw equal [gender coverage] balance of 49% each side in the Australian Open broadcast, which we're really pleased with. And it's not just matches, but it's focused around the replays, total number of hours and making sure that that's actually a conscious part of the scheduling plan rather than just haphazardly noticing what happened at the end. And I think that's a big difference.
Both Tokyo and Beijing were very close, equal balance. And the Olympics has again always been a focus on [gender equality coverage] as well. We're now looking to cycling for that same balance and we're working with many different territories on what are they doing around women's cycling and how can we continue to elevate that.
Where it might not be exactly the same, we're making sure that we are providing loads of input and support to promoters around how we can elevate it. We've been quite vocal to many
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Discovery Sports' Scott Young Shares Plans for Cycling World Domination By Heather McLean, Editor 
