With the boom in cycling's popularity there has perhaps been an even greater growth in the number of cycling magazines on sale. But they are expensive and if you buy them on a regular basis you will save a considerable amount by taking out a subscription.
However you can almost always find substantial discounts on cycling magazine subscriptions by hunting round the Internet rather than simply filling in the card that drops out of your newsstand copy or filling in the page printed in the magazine. Sometimes you can find offers where you can pay as little as half of the officially advertised subscription price.
We will try and keep this page updated with all the best cycling magazine subscription offers but feel free to let us know if you find anything better out there...publishers do keep changing their offers so it's worth shopping around.
Cycling Weekly discount subscription
Cycling Weekly is known by some in the cycling world as 'the comic' as it turns up on a Thursday (like the Beano and Whizzer and Chips used to in my youth). It has a good range of news from around the cycling world, including good training, nutrition and hydration tips, product reviews and rider interviews. Dr Hutch's humour column is usually good value but the Helms cartoons on the inside back are a low point in an otherwise solid product.
However the pricing of the Cycling Weekly subscriptions is a complete and utter mystery. Normally the more you buy of something, the less it costs. Not with Cycling Weekly. A yearly subscription costs more than two half yearly subscriptions. A two year subscription costs even more than that. Huh? And what's with the digital version only working on an iPad/iPhone. Don't something like 65% of all tablets sold now have an Android operating system?
Anyway, the best deal out there at the moment is:
Magazines Direct - £48.99 for six months (including free digital subscription which only works on iPad/iPhone)
Cyclist discount subscription
Cyclist magazine is fully of moody black and white photographs, high quality paper and a general Rapha-stylised air, without quite the same level of panache. Of all the new entrants to the cycling market, we do rate Cyclist by far the highest (albeit against a pretty low level of competition). When anyone asks us what to give their cycling mad husband/wife/boss/sister/brother/lover/cat for Christmas or a birthday present we do actually recommend Cyclist.
The official Cyclist subscription website offers three issues for £5 as long as you then pay for the next six issues at £26.99 and sign up for a direct debit which you will almost certainly forget to cancel. So, £31.99 for nine issues, which normally would cost £45 at the newsagent based on a £5 cover price. or you could buy 13 issues for £59.99, which basically means you're getting one free magazine when you buy 12. Not much of a bargain, eh?
Looking for special offers online, we found a highly touted offer of £5 for three issues and £29.99 for the next six, £3 more expensive than the official website. We found a £49.99 for 12 issues offer but as soon as we clicked on it the price went up £10. Crooks. In the end, after plenty of hunting we did find a £49.99 offer for 13 issues but even better was £22.99 for six issues which are available here. That's the official Dennis Publishing site, so it appears they are happy to sell their magazine at multiple price points.
Pro Cycling discount subscription
Pro Cycling is, as the name suggests, all about the world of professional cycling. It does in-depth interviews with pro riders, looks at the prospects for coming races and has top quality photography. The monthly magazine costs £4.99 on the newsstands but you can get some decent discounts online. The cheapest we've found so far is £45.49 for 12 months or £64.87 for two years, which works out at £2.70 per issues, which is pretty good value for a high quality magazine.
Rouleur discount subscription
Rouleur bills itself as "the most beautiful cycling magazine in the world" and for those who seriously live and breathe cycling this is the ultimate subscription to have come through the door eight times a year. Rouleur sells for £10 a copy in top quality bike shops (although the first ever Rouleur sells for over £1,000 on Ebay!) and you're not going to get a massive discount by buying it online. Because they control their own subscriptions, rather than outsource it to other people, the cost is £78 for eight issues, a £2 saving in a year (but then again it must cost a bit to post because it is a chunky magazine).
0 Comments