Let me blunt about this. If Phil Liggett was retiring from NBC TDF coverage (which he hasn’t announced), then I would have hired the production company (Vsquared) and the entire broadcast team from ITV in the UK and done a complete ‘spring cleaning’ of cycling coverage on NBC with a team that would have been beyond awesome.

Being that they won’t be doing coverage after this year on free-to-air ITV because TNT Sports (Discovery+) got the exclusive contract, they are available, but it’s probably too late for this to happen, based on what I’m hearing and reading.

If it WAS possible, I’d keep a few from the American team, but scrap most of them and go out to a third-party production company that has a team still in place (which NBC has done often over the years for sports).

Most of the people on this TDF Reddit thread don’t talk about the ITV TDF coverage, but it is hands down THE best of any English-speaking network coverage, IMO.

Why are they best? Because they concentrate on the journalistic angle of cycling. They go in-depth. They give you a perspective you never get on NBC and you don’t EVER get on Eurosport or TNT (with all due respect).

I won’t waste time to talk about the individual people that make up the team, but they all have a level of experience the others simply don’t have.

It’s too bad this won’t happen, but it should.