NEWS 02.02.25
SUBS-PAR: You may have noticed the mountain bike internet in flames this week after UK racing fans found out their subscriptions to watch MTB World Series (MTBWS) racing (ie all World Cups) will skyrocket to as much as £31 per month (up from £7) as Eurosport merges into TNT Sports in late February. (WBD’s press release does say there will be a weekly cycling show on its free-to-air channel, Quest, although it only mentions road cycling events.)
TNT Sports replaced BT Sports in the UK when it was merged into Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) in 2023, with Eurosport cheerily saying at the time that TNT ‘heralds the most significant change in the sports broadcast landscape in the last decade’. Oops: two years later and TNT has taken all Eurosport’s sports and pushed it out of the UK.
On a slight tangent, in WBD’s positive take on the news announcement, many of the broadcaster’s sports offerings are proudly listed (Australian Open tennis, World Superbikes, etc), but only mountain biking gets its headline sponsor, Whoop, name-dropped (in screaming all-caps too).
Anyway, WBD has addressed UK fans’ concerns with, well, silence. No news is good news?
MINISTRY OF GOOD NEWS: To be fair, WBD claims viewing numbers are significantly up since it began distributing paid-for MTB World Cup coverage in 2023, with 2024 delivering ‘record-breaking TV viewership’. It’s not clear what the benchmark was – WBD (and Red Bull before them) generally keep their viewing numbers secret or vague, so we’ll have to take their word for it.
Having said that, WBD claims in its recent 2024 season review that last year ‘Over 20 TV and streaming channels aired more than 2,100 hours of [World Cup MTB] coverage, which were watched for a combined 29 million hours by fans worldwide.’ (For reference, 29 million hours is about 3,300 years.)
We assume the 2,100 hours is a total, not that each channel aired 2,100 hours of coverage, so an average of 105 hours of coverage on each channel, or 47 minutes per race (there were 134 races) if our maths is correct (probably isn’t). How many people were tuned in, though? Guesstimates on a postcard, please.
EPIC TWO-DAY EDR? The 2025 Enduro Rulebook, quietly published on the MTBWS site, mostly mirrors the 2024 rule book, but there are some interesting updates that sounds positive for the sport.
On page 28 there’s a line suggesting we might could see some two-day races in 2025: ‘Maximum total of 8 Special Stages in a one day race & 9 in a two day race’. Ever since the Enduro World Series (EWS) became the Enduro (EDR) World Cup in 2023, races have always been held on a single day (with practice in the days before). Some racers have asked for more adventurous events and two-day races could be just the ticket.
Also, Group A riders (top 30 men and top 15 women in the series points standings, plus anyone with a career number because they’ve previously won a World Cup) will be reseeded before the final stage of a race (with the fastest rider last). Group B riders (everyone else) placing inside a race’s top-30 men or top-15 women results-so-far will be reseeded and slotted into Group A after the technical assistance zone (TAZ). That means smoother racing and more TV coverage for anyone who’s outside Group A.
Other smaller updates include a provision that WBD may request that riders carry a GPS (live tracking would be fun) and that on-board camera footage or live streaming by riders or teams (cough) needs prior approval. The rule book also says that enduro courses should be designed ‘with an “all mountain” riding skill set in mind and a bike utilising suspension travel in the range of 140-160mm travel as an “optimum”.’
TEAMS UPDATE.final.v2.6: several big team signings have been announced this week – and any as-yet unannounced signings have been leaked by the UCI on its rankings pages. A quick rundown of the DH and EDR news since last week’s update: Camille Balanche is listed as riding for Yeti-Fox Factory Team; Greg Williamson and Veronika Widmann, plus three new young guns, are officially on Mondraker Factory Racing; Elise Empey, Luke Wayman and George Madley join Continental Atherton; American super-talent Aletha Ostgaard moves to the Canyon Collective; double U21 EDR winner Winni Goldsbury signs to Specialized NZ.
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