Stream On: Cycling TV Coverage Explained
IT WASN’T EASY BEING A CYCLING FAN IN AUSTRALIA back in the 1980s. Pre-Cycling Central. Pre-Eurosport. Pre-internet.When it came to finding top-level racing on local TV screens, the pickings were slimmer than a GC rider in the final of week of a Grand Tour. The only real exceptions were the Olympic and Commonwealth Games every four years, and retrospective USA-packaged highlights packages from the Tour de France, and sometimes Paris-Roubaix, shown across multiple Saturday afternoons on the Wide World of Sports.
Things improved markedly in the early 1990s when Amaury Sports Organisation (ASO) approached SBS with, as Michael Tomalaris still vividly recalls, an offer too good to refuse. “They said, ‘Look, we have this event called the Tour de France. You’re probably not familiar with it in Australia, but we can offer you something for virtually nothing.’ They were giving us daily highlights, twenty-one episodes, and we thought, ‘Well, that’s fantastic,’ because back then SBS had a very small budget. We still do.”
Needless to say, SBS accepted and the trajectory of cycling broadcasting in Australia changed forever. From the mid-1990s, if there was a bike race on local TV screens, it was almost certainly on SBS. The situation improved even more in the later stages of the 20th Century as Eurosport found its way to Australia. While
