The Tour of Lombardy can be seen again on Sporza from this year

Sporza will be broadcasting the Lombardi Tour live again this year (October 12). The last huge classics of the season were broadcast in Belgium in previous years by the commercial channel VTM.

Thus, “Il Lombardia” returns to the Sporza radio broadcast list after an absence of seven years. In 2017, the public broadcaster lost the broadcast rights to Italy's biggest races with Tirreno-Adriatico, Milan-San Remo, the Giro d'Italia and the Tour of Lombardy. Sporza has been allowed to broadcast Strade Bianche live in recent years.

“It's a financial issue,” Sporza manager Luc van Langenhove said at the time. “The American network Discovery has entered the European market through the acquisition of Eurosport and wants to position itself as a cycling channel. Discovery has therefore set aside larger budgets to acquire the cycling rights, in this case the Italian race. These rights have been sold pan-European. This means “It applies to the whole of Europe, not to specific countries.”

The VTM benefited and Belgian cycling fans were able to turn to the commercial channel for live images of Milan-San Remo and the Tour of Lombardy for several years. This has now partly changed, as the Tour of Lombardy can once again be seen on Sporza from this year. This is a big blow, after losing the broadcast rights to the E3 Saxo Classic.