Some USA Triathlon members have been surprised by a sudden bill for Outside's premium subscription service, Outside+, following the wind down of USA Triathlon's partnership with the company.

Some background: Outside provided free subscriptions to the print edition of Triathlete magazine for USA Triathlon members as part of the partnership. USAT members were then offered a free one-year upgrade to Outside+ following the cessation of publishing the print version of Triathlete magazine in July of 2022. Outside+ offers hundreds of hours of live and on-demand programming, including but not limited to broadcasts of several IRONMAN 70.3 events over the last year.

However, the partnership between USAT and Outside has since expired. And with it, so has free access to Outside+. According to Outside, emails were sent to USAT members who had taken advantage of the offer to inform them that they would need to manage their subscription. Their website's FAQ section stated that “If you signed up for membership at $0 with your USAT membership, you will be charged $59.99. If you originally signed up for Outside+ to receive $49 off with your USAT membership, you will be charged $99.”

Unless you specifically opted out of this charge, renewals began being charged yesterday.

According to some USA Triathlon members, however, notice regarding the auto-renewal was never received, or was filtered by their email into Spam. The only alert that they had noticed was their banking or credit card company alerting them to the charges being processed.

Outside has since set-up a subtab of their online chatbot to answer questions about USAT and Outside+, with some USAT members receiving full or prorated refunds, depending on who they receive as their customer service agent.