Picture: Double Red

MCE British Superbike series director Stuart Higgs is adopting a ‘wait and see’ policy following the announcement yesterday that Eurosport ‘is unlikely’ to be shown on Sky TV after February 1

Discovery Communications - which owns Eurosport, Discovery Channel and Quest among others - is having a contractural fall-out with Sky and some posturing led to a statement appearing on Sky’s website, which read: “From 1 February, Discovery Communications’ portfolio of channels are unlikely to be available in Sky TV packages.”

Quote:In the UK and Ireland, this includes Animal Planet, Discovery HD, Discovery History, Discovery Home & Health, Discovery Science, Discovery Shed, Discovery Turbo, DMAX, Eurosport1, Eurosport2, Investigation Discovery, Quest and TLC.

It is not the end of the world, however, as Eurosport - which also shows WorldSBK in Britain - has its own online player and is also available on the Virgin Media platform. Some of Discovery’s other channels, like Quest, are available on Freeview which would boost BSB’s audience figures by orders of magnitude.

“We need some time to understand the implications fully and the alternative host options and platforms that Eurosport may be presented on,” Higgs told BSN this morning.

“The statement is barely 24 hours old so we will adopt a wait and see approach and take it from there. There always has been more than the Sky platform to access Eurosport programming and we will see how it pans out over the coming days.”