Cross Country ski racers would love cycling money. Both sets of athletes deserve more. But it all boils down to entertainment -- not how hard an athlete works.
exactly, many "pro" athletes still have second jobs that pay the bills, if they are athletes in sports that do not generate money from spectators going to stadiums and buying merchandise. they chose the sport so they only have themselves to blame.@@danielmacdonald16
Good points, Chris! And if a larger viewing audience was something they aspired to get, then maybe having rider data, such as wattage and speed, - show on the tele would make it even more exciting and even easier to fully understand what an effort it really is these guys are putting out day in and day out.
It's only guys like us that have a power meter that can understand wattages and relate to how awesome the pros are. And we already watch the races all season. It wouldn't bring any more viewers.
Good ideas. Hear a few more: VR/180/360 camera feeds. I think knowing real time rider biometrics and metrics would be very interesting to viewers - power output and heart rate, speed. Cameras under the seat pointing back and one under the front of the handlebar. All riders have cameras so it’s fair plus each rider gets a premium for display of metrics and the cameras on their bike. I know this would be hard to implement.
If this group wants to get the most bang for their buck, I think they should really start by pouring the funds into the Monuments. One-day classics are the best for marketability because the storyline of that event is resolved by the end of the day. These events are often characterized by massive drama and a bit of luck can create legends. Plus, these are Monuments that are supposed to be the pinnacle of one-day racing in the circuit. Up the prize pool for the Monuments and up the production quality of the broadcast (and make it widely available to fans). These races are already legendary based on their history, so I think most fans would agree to these races being given the big cash injection.
Agreed,the Monuments make the Tours look like nothing happens (which is the case 95% of the time). Viewers want action and excitement and thats the spring classics
Good points Chris. As a fan, I remember number 14, Banks, 23 Jordon, 9 Hull and 34 Payton. In TDF #1…Vi…..Po…Rog…??? Horner? I do remember the head tilt of Evans, very distinctive among others. However, name on the back jersey would not approach $250,000,000.
Some great points Chris and it would be nice to see the pay and the exposure elevated for professional cycling. When compared to other sports the compensation vs promotional exposure does not correlate. Many areas need to rise from athletes, sponsors, promoters to viewers and if done well all could benefit. As a side note I recall sitting in a hotel room with my team waiting to head out for a race and channel flipping. One channel had golf and a hole challenge and who ever got closest to the hole won $250k. Another had Pro Bass Fishing with these guys getting huge checks for driving a sparkly fast boat and catching fish. Then there is Pro Cycling racing in the rain and snow with riders launching off roads and crawling out of a ravines to a team car and put on a spare bike if lucky enough and for nearly nothing pay wise.
Race organizers (esp. ASO) need to share profits-never gonna happen, but would revolutionize the sport. And agree-pin on numbers are ridiculous in 2024. Fixed names and numbers would be awesome. You’d sell a ton of MVDP jerseys!
Make riders wear or mount cameras and show their power and weight on the screen. Use the same number all year round (i.e. Tadej always wears #1 so it makes the UCI ranking actually matter). Track the riders w/ GPS and let us see all the groups. Let us view all the camera feeds. Let people from the USA watch all the races on one platform at a reasonable price.
How about coming up with a way to actually watch all these races. You have to be an internet sleuth just to figure out which subscription services you need to watch a dang bike race!
Chris, I think the names on jersey and the subsequent sales to fans could be great for the growth of the sport. It so much a part of the American sports experience to wear your team (or favorite player's) colors. Sign me up for a Roglic BORA jersey right now!
Yes Jersey's would be great, it gives a fan something cool to latch on to, makes it easier to cheer on your riders, and makes it easier to get new fans.
How do you think adding a season long points competition for individuals and teams would impact the sport? Could do it for GC, sprinters, and KOM. Higher points available at races “they” want to encourage riders to do
As usual you are spot on, Chris. Let’s hope someone on this funding group sees your comments. It would be exactly what cycling needs to turn out a larger audience. The Netflix concept series just helps push the drama and interest even higher. Keep commenting on this and maybe they might even listen. We, the fans, certainly are!
Thanks for your insights. How much money does pro cycling make in a season? Ultimately all pro sports approximate a profit sharing model. Is the money there do make the upgrades you suggest?
Having numbers/names large and easy to see is a great idea. Making it easier for people to understand what’s going on and having drones/cable cam sections would also be awesome… one other thing, and I know a lot of people wouldn’t like this… make the races shorter. Not everything needs to be these insane epics that require the rider 3-6 weeks to recover from before they can race competitively again. The endurance thing is very impressive, but it also requires high endurance fans.
Such great ideas. I would also add making sure we have top quality race commentators. The other side of the pond seems stronger: Matt Stephens, Carlton Kirby, Rob Hatch
Really nice Chris. I agree: don't change everything. Cameras and money would work great. If you start messing with the schedule, one race per week, on Sunday, you will have fewer races, which means fewer viewers, and, more importantly, fewer riders. And I totally agree about names on jerseys: that would help a lot. And if the UCI gets stupid about that, how about at least a permanent number for each rider for the season? Then you could end all the bs about number sleeves and pinned on numbers and the like. Better yet, do permanent sublimated numbers AND names across the top back of the jersey. And as you said, the money thing increases the head to head of the top riders without losing the other races. Then viewers can watch, say, the big four at Paris Nice, and then look to see who is coming up to challenge in the future by watching Tirreno Adriatico. Keep up the good commentary: we are listening, enjoying, and learning. PS, on the money, a monuments winner should not be making the same or less than a winning chef on Chopped or Guy's Grocery Games, much as I love cooking.
Good points Chris and I agree with you. In order to generate big sponsorships and money how do you market cycle racing to the American market? Technology would help those of us already following but I don’t see it getting new eyes. There are too many who don’t understand it’s a team sport. No one expects NFL offensive linemen will score a touchdown and yet think everyone in the peloton is there to win.
Make equipment affordable enough for middle class families to get into junior racing and you'll create fans for life. Sadly, we'll just wait for the new $18k S Works to come out and arouse the interest of micro-niche rich guys.
Maybe cycling doesn’t need more eyes. Possibly just the current eyes spending more on cycling would be enough to start with. Then some more eyes wouldn’t hurt either. 👀👊
Also cycling needs better directing terribly! How many times have we missed an important attack when the cameras were showing the breakaway or the riders dropped from the peloton. It's embarassing the we missed the decisive MvdP attack in last year's Milano-Sanremo. An easy fix with practically zero costs would be to bring back split screens! One camera showing the breakaway and another one the front of the peloton. Or one camera on the back and one on the front of the peloton. Easy fix, but would improve the experience incredibly.
In the 50 and 60s the UCI let some very popular riders sign their name on their shorts ! Anquetil, Bobet, etc. Names on the trikot are a very good way to make cycling better !!
I'm surprised some big venture capital firm doesn't throw some money into cycling here in the US. The calendar is long when you consider crit racing, road, mountain bike, cyclocross. That means a lot of exposure.
I remember when golf coverage sucked and the prize money was paltry compared to other sports. Then Tiger came along and the coverage got better and the purses got way bigger. A generation later athletes that would have gone to football or baseball in the past were going to golf instead. The roadmap is out there. Cycling just needs to take its head out of the sand, pay the riders, get the fans, motos, and cars off the course, and do all the things you suggest to improve the coverage. Plus, put a camera on every bike with the feed streamed to the broadcast booth so the producer can use the footage in real time. Amateur crit videos are more entertaining than network TV because they've got cameras on the bikes.
I like that you show both sides. Higher prize money for certain races could be nice but will probably kill off other races like TA in your example. Maybe they rotate each year which races are “marquee.” I’d be fine with some of these type of changes if they don’t mess with the GTs and instead allow them to continue being epic and don’t mess with the history and tradition of the sport. It’s possible to gain new fans while also retaining the serious fans, but it will require careful planning.
Unless they had an emergency bike change the riders have a transponder. Link that to the finish coverage so that they can be identified in a sprint, maybe with either a halo or an annotation cloud.
One major problem with Pro cycling is that if your not an avid cyclist, your not going to understand how it all works and what it takes to win. Even casual riders don’t get it..When I explain the draft and group dynamics to my non riding friends, I always use NASCAR as an example and it still doesn’t catch their interest. Many who love watching “sports” have never played but understand what it takes..
Thanks for the video. I was just wondering: wouldn't it be a good idea to rearrange the caledar in order to get more riders competing at the biggest races? If you think about it, three grand tours and seven major tours is not all that much, some 13 weeks of racing. Riders typically do around 10 weeks a season. Of course, there are the one day races, arund 2 weeks worth of racing of the biggest ones, but that still means that if the best riders were to show up only at the biggest races, the quality of the field would be incredible - some 250-300 riders would be enough to cover all of these. Now, of course, this proposal is extremely eurocentric. But then, some of the non-European races are clear examples of sportswashing. Moreover, Americans seem to be unable to maintain a race for at least a couple of decades, so no serious races can ever take place in the US in a sport where tradition is so important. So what do you think, couldn't the answer just be for the biggest 25 races to really be much bigger than the rest?
Wanna make it better for the fans? Embrace drone footage instead too many motos in the caravan. Also, live audio from the team cars, real time power data from the riders, and some sort of ability for the viewers to track their rider of choice at any moment.
It doesn’t matter how good the coverage is, if there is no way to watch it. There was a really good network available to cycling fans worldwide to watch cycle racing all year. Cancelling GCN+ was a really smart move!
Chris can you comment about the outrage prices to get professional cycling viewing in the USA? I’m supposed to subscribe to Max and BR, sports, flobikes, and NBC to get a portion of the cycling coverage onEurosport? Viewership is certainly going to be down with this kind of price increase in the USA
It would be great to have their names. I find the pre and post interviews formulaic. By far the most interesting last season was Mohoric for the emotional content. It told a story of cyclists lives. Im thinking of the Olympics and how there are videos about the athletes lives. How they got to the pro level. ...And maybe not just the big guns but others beyond all odds srories.... i also always like it when the announcers give a little overview of where they are. ... historical and what not. Or I was up at the highest pass as a spectator for the Catalunya. And the scenery gave incredible mountainous context for where they were but it just showed the most boring road.
Great points for people who are already fans! But how do I convince my friends to watch something they are not interested in? Why aren’t they interested is the questions I ask. Because they can’t afford to be interested when bikes cost more than the cars they drive to work everyday!
I know this would be radical but any thoughts on the idea of combining Paris Nice and Tirreno Adriatico into a single ~10 day stage race? Where half the race is in France and the other in Italy? Ignoring the difficulty of getting those organizers to agree to something like this for a moment, I think that would fix many issues with the March calendar. We wouldn't be having to watch 2 separate races going on at the same time and the best classic riders, sprinters, TT riders and GC guys won't be split between the two either. It would be like a mini Grand Tour and arguably even more prestigious than either race is now. And imagine even more money invested into this by this fund for prizes, cameras etc I believe we do need to see the big riders of our sport competing against each other more often to make cycling even more exciting and bring in new fans and something like this could help with that
The problem with watching cycling is similar to watching NBA basketball. Sure there are interesting plays throughout the game (and bike race), but all the action happens in the final 2 minutes. Likewise, in a bike race, the fun happens either on the big climbs or in the final kilometer of the race. It is a challenge to make it TV friendly…….and particularly US TV friendly. Not sure how to crack the US TV market with cycling.
I think there needs to be more "team" format events, rather than the heroic individual events the greats will still bubble to the surface, they always do, I'm thinking of some type of handicap race where all riders are awarded +/- points based on their individual effort and the overall team score is what determines the winner. Short format sprint races, where there is one person from each team per race, and again it is the overall measured by team not individual, hill climbs there are a ton of possibilities. And of course we can continue to have the heroic individual style races. I don't like the ITT simply because it is a specialist format on a specialist bike, why TT, why not a mountain bike single track TT, why not a gravel bike TT section, fixed gear why is TT chosen and all other formats excluded?
How do you get the big guns going to both the Giro and Tour in the same year? That is what needs to happen, we need multiple grand tours with the big guns and not just some smaller races. Tennis and Golf have their majors in which all the big players will not miss, you need that to happen in cycling with the grand tours.
I think that is part of the reason they moved the Vuelta from the spring to the fall. I believe it used to run concurrently with the Giro or over lap a week.?
Okay, good start, but one more suggestion to make pro cycling much better: add a messenger stage to the grand tours. Better yet, make the final stage of the Tour de France an alleycat stage -- call it the Bonne Chance Elysees. Just spitballing here, y'know, just floating a few trial balloons. I'll collect my thumbs-downs now.
There’s this thing Eastport are doing where they are crowd, sourcing the prize money and reach crazy high numbers 24 $30 million. I’ve bet you they start crowd, sourcing price, money, and offer up bidden jerseys or something like that part of the sales goes to price money, you’ll get way up there
Is this actually going to be able to happen for 2024? That would be awesome. One thing I’d add is an easy, affordable way to stream! Names are a great idea.
I have never understood why pro cyclists/teams must rely 100% on team sponsorship. Zero revenue sharing. My rely on billionaire/ego vanity projects for survival. You insight is bang on as usual.
Interesting points - names on the jersey should be a no brainer. More price money, aboslutely. Better coverage, off course just look a the quality difference between La Vuelta and TDF - it's like watching Avatar and a John Wayne movie. Is it Saudi Arabia buying it's way into pro-cycling like with football, E-sports you name it?
There is something wrong with the business model of cycling. There is demand for it. 1,000,000 people line Alpe d’Heuz when the tour goes there. It isn’t particularly easy to get there either. It isn’t like going to a sports stadium. Perhaps if spectators were charged to go there the attendance would be lower. It seems you could monetize that somehow. Can’t imagine the riots in France if they closed the roads and charged an entry fee (burning cars and anarchy). I think it gets down to creating a media spectacle that generates greater advertising revenue.
I would have changed the whole thing and make it a TEAM SPORT. So, not 1 rider is a champ, but rather the team. So whoever wins, their team is a winner. The 1st rider is just an MVP. Also, I would skip the combined time of the whole 3 weeks, and make it so that teams get points for their places, like they do in F1 or basically any other racing sport other than cycling. And than the champ is THE TEAM, like in team sports. Consequently, teams would get the following like in all the other team sports and that would bring more money to the sport as well and make it more competitive and not just so that the lighter riders with top W/KG are the only possible winners. That way, even the sprinter gets something and all the others as well. It would be much MUCH more exciting.
The more countries that have the rights to view it the better. Certainly it’s better to give the rights away to the countries that don’t show it so that the people can get used to seeing it first and then maybe charge later if it becomes successful there. 🤔👍
Riders should be identifiable. So many times in life, I meet someone I’ve ridden with fifty times and I had no idea what he looked like. I identify people by their bikes. I can’t tell what people look like with all their gear on.
It’s a free spectator sport……there may be a million people at the side of the road per day and the sport gets nothing. That’s the reality. There is no way to make money out of cycling as the audience is far smaller than main stream sports who pay maybe £30 a month to watch soccer with 100’s of millions paying it. To do the same with the cycling audience you would be paying £100 a month easily. The cycling teams are mostly financed by rich CEO’s who love cycling and bike manufacturers who supply bikes
Sounds Nice, but when ever money enters it also wants to create even more revenue for the shareholders. Hence, i fear more adds, commercial break, product placements, and super cost increase of online streaming subscriptions...
Some great ideas Only promoter that might resist would be ASO. But with joint venturing with the $$ it could enhance their races. Easy to understand why ASO resists as I believe it’s still closely held and doesn’t want to be gobbled up. Just keep rights ownership but create JV and you’re right could create massive revenue Of course jersey sale proceeds is how clothing sponsorships get paid but the names would enhance that. Just look at baseball ( except dodgers and Yankees) they have multiple uniforms so people buy more more more Good ideas
The camera quality is way better than the tranmission of the images... to improve that significantly they need to purchase some broadband from the countries involved and those frequencies need more amp power which would fry those motar guys brains...plus in the mountains those frequencies don't work so they need to invest in new towers all over the place.... not gonna happen any time soon
@@OnyxTortoise drones are so safe, if Lucinda Brand didn't duck during thr dutch cx champs she would have had a sweet facelift paid by insurances now :)
You are right there is other reasons for the quality but when I watch certain races like the ones in Spain (Basque country and even the Vuelta) it’s still not as good as the TdF images. So there has to be some room for improvement. 🤔👍🤞
Even if the interest were there, then the cost would be far too high. You have to remember that ASO and RCS don't pay for the extra police and that they get paid for the Grand Depart, regular departs and by the cities and towns they finish each stage in. It's the exact opposite in the US! Even going through a town in the US will cost you something as the roads will have to be closed down which takes police and so on.
Tour Dupont, Tour de Georgia, Tour of Missouri, Tour of California, Tour of Utah, USA Pro Cycling Challenge (Colorado), etc......all failed. So, no. No is the correct answer to your question.
That would be cool if it happened. More likely thing is we get a few days or a week and then the peloton flies back to continue the Vuelta, Giro, or maybe even the TdF. 🤔👊
Money talks as they say, you can bet your life you'd see the best at the same races given enough prize money. Re the names on the jersey, I remember Pantani in his heyday did that for his Mercatone Uno team mates.
Chris, this all comes down to what the ASO and to a lesser extent RCS will allow the teams to do. Let's say Visma crosses the ASO and they then get barred from all ASO races... Do you still think they'll be called Visma at the end of that year? Of course not and if they're not at the Tour, good luck holding on to Vingegaard. €250 mill is just not enough to compensate for the loss of pissing off the big boys in pro cycling.
They can’t keep one team out of the TdF that easily if that team has Visma’s budget. Lawyers exist just for that reason and all you need is to be able to afford a very good lawyer which Visma can. No way Visma wins like they have and the ASO doesn’t invite them. 🤔👍
@@ChrisHornerCycling Hmmm... As I read article 15, the ASO organisation can more or less justify excluding any team they like -- all they have to do is argue their 'image' has been damaged. What you've then got is a, in this case, Visma team that'll be held up in the court(s) for at least a year and more likely several while not competing in ASO events. The ASO can easily afford that -- can Visma the company and thusly the team? I doubt it. I'm very sympathetic to some of your ideas, but the business structure of pro cycling is essentially that few but big players hold the power and to unsettle that balance takes more than €250 millions. Personally, I'd like to see a sort of Champions League structure where there's some kind of financial feedback loop for the teams like we see in UCL. That would increase sponsor revenue across the board and grow the sport.
I’m going to comment without doing my due diligence here, but wasn’t there some kind of fiasco in professional golf where a new tour organization tried to poach from the PGA? Liv Pro tour? I haven’t kept up on the news with that, but I remember hearing it didn’t go great… I also haven’t read the articles about this €250M Saudi Arabia money going into pro cycling so I’m the poster child for uninformed opinion with this, but I’m getting strong Liv Pro Tour vibes here. Pro Cycling desperately needs more money; it’s laughable how little the entire sport gets by on compared to the money you see in pro football (both types), F1 racing, baseball, basketball and… hockey? Pro Cycling money… that’s like one step above Pro Cricket money? I don’t know, but it’s bad. Lol. I’d be happy to see pro cycling on stronger financial ground, but if it’s going to completely disrupt the sport… it could be detrimental. How does this theoretical injection of funds change the fundamentals? Does it change the Television broadcasting rights? Does it somehow encourage fans to start spending on merch from their favorite teams? (I doubt it in both cases) You can’t sell tickets for standing on the side of the road. There are no stadiums. There are no box seats. I don’t see this money changing any of those problems with pro cycling finances. Just my from-the-hip 2 cents and if I’m ignorant of some relevant facts about this news, I do apologize.
When I was younger, I realized that only a fool would enter foot races or bicycle races and expect to profit from that. I think that professional bicycle racers have contracts with their teams that pay them for their labor. I expect there are some expectations by the team owners about the bicyclists' performance.
@leduch il y a 1 jour (modifié) make grand tours longer ! as they used to be ! mean longer holiday , make a tour where the last rider rolling win ! nite stages , ride longer die last tour ! snicker forbiden !..... women don t have grand tour ! so , the mixed tour. njoylife
Do it like legion did with the lions den. Make it involved for fans and teams. With mid race prize money, names on jersey, printed fix numbers on jerseys. Gets fans involved. It's all about showmanship, when it comes to marketing.
the best riders already go to the monuments. it seems like they are saying we need to drastically simplify the whole season. more money from sports washing is a bad answer. sure, lets increase the payday, but not from countries that have horrid human rights records.
Good suggestions but there's one big hitch for American viewers. There no longer exists complete race coverage like we had with GCN+. Warner Bros - Discovery completely destroyed pro cycling in this country. If the pro cycling industry adopts your suggestions, it's a moot point for us since none of us will enjoy the results. Here's a suggestion. Pro cycling should create its own broadcast/streaming network and sell access to individuals and/or providers. Big providers, like Peacock, could buy exclusive rights to stream the big races and all the rest streamed by the pro cycling network. The revenue generated would be going directly to teams and organizers and create a strong financial base for the sport. So long as the subscription fees weren't ridiculous, viewers would have access to all races around the world and not be at the mercy of moronic media executives.
Did you say 3,5 billion? I know the viewership is high. But that's half the population of the world 😂 i looked it up, it is. That's wild. I remember "IAM cycling" tried a stunt with names on the back. IAM "name" on the back 😅 uci didn't have none of it
Profession bike racing has got to be one the hardest ways to make money.
yup, it’s pretty wild. only the team captains that are the stars of the world tour teams make decent.
There are many other sports that do not have any sport athletes. Cycling in comparison is ok
Professional chess players have entered the chat
Cross Country ski racers would love cycling money. Both sets of athletes deserve more. But it all boils down to entertainment -- not how hard an athlete works.
exactly, many "pro" athletes still have second jobs that pay the bills, if they are athletes in sports that do not generate money from spectators going to stadiums and buying merchandise. they chose the sport so they only have themselves to blame.@@danielmacdonald16
Good points, Chris!
And if a larger viewing audience was something they aspired to get, then maybe having rider data, such as wattage and speed, - show on the tele would make it even more exciting and even easier to fully understand what an effort it really is these guys are putting out day in and day out.
they don’t want their opponents to know what they are doing power wise etc at certain times. that will never be shown publicly
It's only guys like us that have a power meter that can understand wattages and relate to how awesome the pros are. And we already watch the races all season. It wouldn't bring any more viewers.
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Good ideas. Hear a few more: VR/180/360 camera feeds. I think knowing real time rider biometrics and metrics would be very interesting to viewers - power output and heart rate, speed. Cameras under the seat pointing back and one under the front of the handlebar. All riders have cameras so it’s fair plus each rider gets a premium for display of metrics and the cameras on their bike. I know this would be hard to implement.
Great idea but probably expose those datas from pros not gonna happen.
Yes, names on the jerseys would be nice.
It’s small easy first step. 👊
If this group wants to get the most bang for their buck, I think they should really start by pouring the funds into the Monuments. One-day classics are the best for marketability because the storyline of that event is resolved by the end of the day. These events are often characterized by massive drama and a bit of luck can create legends. Plus, these are Monuments that are supposed to be the pinnacle of one-day racing in the circuit. Up the prize pool for the Monuments and up the production quality of the broadcast (and make it widely available to fans). These races are already legendary based on their history, so I think most fans would agree to these races being given the big cash injection.
Agreed,the Monuments make the Tours look like nothing happens (which is the case 95% of the time).
Viewers want action and excitement and thats the spring classics
Good points Chris. As a fan, I remember number 14, Banks, 23 Jordon, 9 Hull and 34 Payton. In TDF #1…Vi…..Po…Rog…??? Horner? I do remember the head tilt of Evans, very distinctive among others. However, name on the back jersey would not approach $250,000,000.
If you got fans wearing clothing like I see a NFL fan wearing I bet it could very quickly. 🤔👊
100% Agree! Names just like moto. How about also having yearly numbers like moto. Not just road racing but also with XC, Enduro and Downhill.
Great points. Always love your input on cycling. Thank you for your time.
Some great points Chris and it would be nice to see the pay and the exposure elevated for professional cycling. When compared to other sports the compensation vs promotional exposure does not correlate. Many areas need to rise from athletes, sponsors, promoters to viewers and if done well all could benefit. As a side note I recall sitting in a hotel room with my team waiting to head out for a race and channel flipping. One channel had golf and a hole challenge and who ever got closest to the hole won $250k. Another had Pro Bass Fishing with these guys getting huge checks for driving a sparkly fast boat and catching fish. Then there is Pro Cycling racing in the rain and snow with riders launching off roads and crawling out of a ravines to a team car and put on a spare bike if lucky enough and for nearly nothing pay wise.
Race organizers (esp. ASO) need to share profits-never gonna happen, but would revolutionize the sport.
And agree-pin on numbers are ridiculous in 2024. Fixed names and numbers would be awesome. You’d sell a ton of MVDP jerseys!
Make riders wear or mount cameras and show their power and weight on the screen. Use the same number all year round (i.e. Tadej always wears #1 so it makes the UCI ranking actually matter). Track the riders w/ GPS and let us see all the groups. Let us view all the camera feeds. Let people from the USA watch all the races on one platform at a reasonable price.
Better cameras, more money and names on jerseys. You nailed it Chris!
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How about coming up with a way to actually watch all these races. You have to be an internet sleuth just to figure out which subscription services you need to watch a dang bike race!
I hate this. Seems like every race requires a different subscription!
Spot on. I’m still not sure how/where I watch all of it. It’s ridiculous 👊
Chris, I think the names on jersey and the subsequent sales to fans could be great for the growth of the sport. It so much a part of the American sports experience to wear your team (or favorite player's) colors. Sign me up for a Roglic BORA jersey right now!
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Yes Jersey's would be great, it gives a fan something cool to latch on to, makes it easier to cheer on your riders, and makes it easier to get new fans.
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How do you think adding a season long points competition for individuals and teams would impact the sport?
Could do it for GC, sprinters, and KOM. Higher points available at races “they” want to encourage riders to do
As usual you are spot on, Chris. Let’s hope someone on this funding group sees your comments. It would be exactly what cycling needs to turn out a larger audience. The Netflix concept series just helps push the drama and interest even higher. Keep commenting on this and maybe they might even listen. We, the fans, certainly are!
Thanks for including Matthew Busche at the 1:16 mark. Solid US racer
Thanks for your insights. How much money does pro cycling make in a season? Ultimately all pro sports approximate a profit sharing model. Is the money there do make the upgrades you suggest?
Nailed it. This extra money is a fantasy. Not gonna happen because the economics just don’t make sense.
Cool stuff, you got it Chris. Thanks man for what you do.
Thanks 👊👊
Fantastic insight, Chris...had no idea how little most pros make. Money changes everything!
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You're on a nice roll with these videos. 👍
Not to mention, in 2023, we still had fans impeding riders in the Tour de France. Put money toward fixing that.
That would be nice 👊
Having numbers/names large and easy to see is a great idea. Making it easier for people to understand what’s going on and having drones/cable cam sections would also be awesome… one other thing, and I know a lot of people wouldn’t like this… make the races shorter. Not everything needs to be these insane epics that require the rider 3-6 weeks to recover from before they can race competitively again. The endurance thing is very impressive, but it also requires high endurance fans.
Such great ideas. I would also add making sure we have top quality race commentators. The other side of the pond seems stronger: Matt Stephens, Carlton Kirby, Rob Hatch
Fantastic channel . Thanks Chris
Really nice Chris. I agree: don't change everything. Cameras and money would work great. If you start messing with the schedule, one race per week, on Sunday, you will have fewer races, which means fewer viewers, and, more importantly, fewer riders. And I totally agree about names on jerseys: that would help a lot. And if the UCI gets stupid about that, how about at least a permanent number for each rider for the season? Then you could end all the bs about number sleeves and pinned on numbers and the like. Better yet, do permanent sublimated numbers AND names across the top back of the jersey. And as you said, the money thing increases the head to head of the top riders without losing the other races. Then viewers can watch, say, the big four at Paris Nice, and then look to see who is coming up to challenge in the future by watching Tirreno Adriatico. Keep up the good commentary: we are listening, enjoying, and learning. PS, on the money, a monuments winner should not be making the same or less than a winning chef on Chopped or Guy's Grocery Games, much as I love cooking.
Good points Chris and I agree with you. In order to generate big sponsorships and money how do you market cycle racing to the American market? Technology would help those of us already following but I don’t see it getting new eyes. There are too many who don’t understand it’s a team sport. No one expects NFL offensive linemen will score a touchdown and yet think everyone in the peloton is there to win.
Make equipment affordable enough for middle class families to get into junior racing and you'll create fans for life. Sadly, we'll just wait for the new $18k S Works to come out and arouse the interest of micro-niche rich guys.
Maybe cycling doesn’t need more eyes. Possibly just the current eyes spending more on cycling would be enough to start with. Then some more eyes wouldn’t hurt either. 👀👊
Also cycling needs better directing terribly!
How many times have we missed an important attack when the cameras were showing the breakaway or the riders dropped from the peloton. It's embarassing the we missed the decisive MvdP attack in last year's Milano-Sanremo.
An easy fix with practically zero costs would be to bring back split screens! One camera showing the breakaway and another one the front of the peloton. Or one camera on the back and one on the front of the peloton. Easy fix, but would improve the experience incredibly.
In the 50 and 60s the UCI let some very popular riders sign their name on their shorts ! Anquetil, Bobet, etc. Names on the trikot are a very good way to make cycling better !!
I'm surprised some big venture capital firm doesn't throw some money into cycling here in the US. The calendar is long when you consider crit racing, road, mountain bike, cyclocross. That means a lot of exposure.
Preach, Chris!!
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I always like your take👏
I remember when golf coverage sucked and the prize money was paltry compared to other sports. Then Tiger came along and the coverage got better and the purses got way bigger. A generation later athletes that would have gone to football or baseball in the past were going to golf instead. The roadmap is out there. Cycling just needs to take its head out of the sand, pay the riders, get the fans, motos, and cars off the course, and do all the things you suggest to improve the coverage. Plus, put a camera on every bike with the feed streamed to the broadcast booth so the producer can use the footage in real time. Amateur crit videos are more entertaining than network TV because they've got cameras on the bikes.
I like that you show both sides. Higher prize money for certain races could be nice but will probably kill off other races like TA in your example. Maybe they rotate each year which races are “marquee.”
I’d be fine with some of these type of changes if they don’t mess with the GTs and instead allow them to continue being epic and don’t mess with the history and tradition of the sport. It’s possible to gain new fans while also retaining the serious fans, but it will require careful planning.
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Fabulous video
We can always dream
Unless they had an emergency bike change the riders have a transponder. Link that to the finish coverage so that they can be identified in a sprint, maybe with either a halo or an annotation cloud.
One major problem with Pro cycling is that if your not an avid cyclist, your not going to understand how it all works and what it takes to win. Even casual riders don’t get it..When I explain the draft and group dynamics to my non riding friends, I always use NASCAR as an example and it still doesn’t catch their interest. Many who love watching “sports” have never played but understand what it takes..
I agree. Its not a sport that's as easily understood as scoring a touchdown or putting a ball in a hoop.
Well said!
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Thanks for the video. I was just wondering: wouldn't it be a good idea to rearrange the caledar in order to get more riders competing at the biggest races? If you think about it, three grand tours and seven major tours is not all that much, some 13 weeks of racing. Riders typically do around 10 weeks a season. Of course, there are the one day races, arund 2 weeks worth of racing of the biggest ones, but that still means that if the best riders were to show up only at the biggest races, the quality of the field would be incredible - some 250-300 riders would be enough to cover all of these.
Now, of course, this proposal is extremely eurocentric. But then, some of the non-European races are clear examples of sportswashing. Moreover, Americans seem to be unable to maintain a race for at least a couple of decades, so no serious races can ever take place in the US in a sport where tradition is so important.
So what do you think, couldn't the answer just be for the biggest 25 races to really be much bigger than the rest?
Wanna make it better for the fans? Embrace drone footage instead too many motos in the caravan. Also, live audio from the team cars, real time power data from the riders, and some sort of ability for the viewers to track their rider of choice at any moment.
It doesn’t matter how good the coverage is, if there is no way to watch it. There was a really good network available to cycling fans worldwide to watch cycle racing all year. Cancelling GCN+ was a really smart move!
Chris can you comment about the outrage prices to get professional cycling viewing in the USA? I’m supposed to subscribe to Max and BR, sports, flobikes, and NBC to get a portion of the cycling coverage onEurosport? Viewership is certainly going to be down with this kind of price increase in the USA
It would be great to have their names. I find the pre and post interviews formulaic. By far the most interesting last season was Mohoric for the emotional content. It told a story of cyclists lives. Im thinking of the Olympics and how there are videos about the athletes lives. How they got to the pro level. ...And maybe not just the big guns but others beyond all odds srories.... i also always like it when the announcers give a little overview of where they are. ... historical and what not. Or I was up at the highest pass as a spectator for the Catalunya. And the scenery gave incredible mountainous context for where they were but it just showed the most boring road.
Mohoric’s interview was super 👊👊
Yes! Boooooya! ❤️🙏
Booya ! ❤️👊🦋
Great points for people who are already fans! But how do I convince my friends to watch something they are not interested in? Why aren’t they interested is the questions I ask. Because they can’t afford to be interested when bikes cost more than the cars they drive to work everyday!
And bring back "Super Prestige Pernod" !
Hey Chris. You were featured on the Nero Show. They say you could be the next Durian Rider…. 😉
Those guys are obsessed with aero socks, sure they diss on old school Horner.
Durian rider? Gross.
😜
Large payouts for sprint and KOM jerseys would make it the race more dynamic as well
I know this would be radical but any thoughts on the idea of combining Paris Nice and Tirreno Adriatico into a single ~10 day stage race? Where half the race is in France and the other in Italy?
Ignoring the difficulty of getting those organizers to agree to something like this for a moment, I think that would fix many issues with the March calendar. We wouldn't be having to watch 2 separate races going on at the same time and the best classic riders, sprinters, TT riders and GC guys won't be split between the two either. It would be like a mini Grand Tour and arguably even more prestigious than either race is now. And imagine even more money invested into this by this fund for prizes, cameras etc
I believe we do need to see the big riders of our sport competing against each other more often to make cycling even more exciting and bring in new fans and something like this could help with that
Damn. Maybe that could work. Possibly even every few years they combine them and give it some cool name. 🤔👊
Chris looks like he had a safety meeting before filming 😎 IYKYK
I would love nothing more than to see cycling take off here in the US. If I had the magic sauce to make it happen, I'd share.
The problem with watching cycling is similar to watching NBA basketball. Sure there are interesting plays throughout the game (and bike race), but all the action happens in the final 2 minutes. Likewise, in a bike race, the fun happens either on the big climbs or in the final kilometer of the race. It is a challenge to make it TV friendly…….and particularly US TV friendly. Not sure how to crack the US TV market with cycling.
Higher volume of stronger US riders.
Yep. It would be hard. Mostly because the US sports fans I think can’t understand why the cyclist are so thin. 😂👊
I think there needs to be more "team" format events, rather than the heroic individual events the greats will still bubble to the surface, they always do, I'm thinking of some type of handicap race where all riders are awarded +/- points based on their individual effort and the overall team score is what determines the winner. Short format sprint races, where there is one person from each team per race, and again it is the overall measured by team not individual, hill climbs there are a ton of possibilities. And of course we can continue to have the heroic individual style races. I don't like the ITT simply because it is a specialist format on a specialist bike, why TT, why not a mountain bike single track TT, why not a gravel bike TT section, fixed gear why is TT chosen and all other formats excluded?
Gopros connected to broadcast team on all riders would be badass!
Often wondered why there were not camera stations for the sprint or a moto far enough ahead with a camera...
How do you get the big guns going to both the Giro and Tour in the same year? That is what needs to happen, we need multiple grand tours with the big guns and not just some smaller races. Tennis and Golf have their majors in which all the big players will not miss, you need that to happen in cycling with the grand tours.
I think that is part of the reason they moved the Vuelta from the spring to the fall. I believe it used to run concurrently with the Giro or over lap a week.?
Okay, good start, but one more suggestion to make pro cycling much better: add a messenger stage to the grand tours. Better yet, make the final stage of the Tour de France an alleycat stage -- call it the Bonne Chance Elysees. Just spitballing here, y'know, just floating a few trial balloons. I'll collect my thumbs-downs now.
There’s this thing Eastport are doing where they are crowd, sourcing the prize money and reach crazy high numbers 24 $30 million. I’ve bet you they start crowd, sourcing price, money, and offer up bidden jerseys or something like that part of the sales goes to price money, you’ll get way up there
Is this actually going to be able to happen for 2024? That would be awesome.
One thing I’d add is an easy, affordable way to stream! Names are a great idea.
if they start selling jerseys, heck even t shirts, with the names at the back like soccer or nfl that'd be so much money for the sport
I have never understood why pro cyclists/teams must rely 100% on team sponsorship. Zero revenue sharing. My rely on billionaire/ego vanity projects for survival. You insight is bang on as usual.
And they should get a very good commentator, who knows the sport und can tell some good stories! Hmm, suggestions🤔?
And, open up viewership of all the major races to the US. Even with a subscription service they limited what we could see. Never understood that.
Interesting points - names on the jersey should be a no brainer. More price money, aboslutely. Better coverage, off course just look a the quality difference between La Vuelta and TDF - it's like watching Avatar and a John Wayne movie. Is it Saudi Arabia buying it's way into pro-cycling like with football, E-sports you name it?
There is something wrong with the business model of cycling. There is demand for it. 1,000,000 people line Alpe d’Heuz when the tour goes there. It isn’t particularly easy to get there either. It isn’t like going to a sports stadium. Perhaps if spectators were charged to go there the attendance would be lower. It seems you could monetize that somehow. Can’t imagine the riots in France if they closed the roads and charged an entry fee (burning cars and anarchy). I think it gets down to creating a media spectacle that generates greater advertising revenue.
We need a "Champions" league...bring back the riders of the past...like the champ Horner!
Agreed 😂👊
Names on warmups and raingear too, please 🤓
I would have changed the whole thing and make it a TEAM SPORT. So, not 1 rider is a champ, but rather the team. So whoever wins, their team is a winner. The 1st rider is just an MVP. Also, I would skip the combined time of the whole 3 weeks, and make it so that teams get points for their places, like they do in F1 or basically any other racing sport other than cycling. And than the champ is THE TEAM, like in team sports. Consequently, teams would get the following like in all the other team sports and that would bring more money to the sport as well and make it more competitive and not just so that the lighter riders with top W/KG are the only possible winners. That way, even the sprinter gets something and all the others as well. It would be much MUCH more exciting.
more cameras = higher subscriptions fees to watch.. someone will have exclusive rights and it wont be shown in some countries..
The more countries that have the rights to view it the better. Certainly it’s better to give the rights away to the countries that don’t show it so that the people can get used to seeing it first and then maybe charge later if it becomes successful there. 🤔👍
Riders should be identifiable. So many times in life, I meet someone I’ve ridden with fifty times and I had no idea what he looked like. I identify people by their bikes. I can’t tell what people look like with all their gear on.
It’s a free spectator sport……there may be a million people at the side of the road per day and the sport gets nothing.
That’s the reality.
There is no way to make money out of cycling as the audience is far smaller than main stream sports who pay maybe £30 a month to watch soccer with 100’s of millions paying it.
To do the same with the cycling audience you would be paying £100 a month easily.
The cycling teams are mostly financed by rich CEO’s who love cycling and bike manufacturers who supply bikes
Sounds Nice, but when ever money enters it also wants to create even more revenue for the shareholders. Hence, i fear more adds, commercial break, product placements, and super cost increase of online streaming subscriptions...
Some great ideas
Only promoter that might resist would be ASO. But with joint venturing with the $$ it could enhance their races. Easy to understand why ASO resists as I believe it’s still closely held and doesn’t want to be gobbled up. Just keep rights ownership but create JV and you’re right could create massive revenue
Of course jersey sale proceeds is how clothing sponsorships get paid but the names would enhance that. Just look at baseball ( except dodgers and Yankees) they have multiple uniforms so people buy more more more
Good ideas
We all love cycling and its such a hard sport, some of them are making a huge sacrifice for peanuts
The camera quality is way better than the tranmission of the images... to improve that significantly they need to purchase some broadband from the countries involved and those frequencies need more amp power which would fry those motar guys brains...plus in the mountains those frequencies don't work so they need to invest in new towers all over the place.... not gonna happen any time soon
They need to integrate bonded cellular technology, and they need to use drones.
@@OnyxTortoise drones are so safe, if Lucinda Brand didn't duck during thr dutch cx champs she would have had a sweet facelift paid by insurances now :)
You are right there is other reasons for the quality but when I watch certain races like the ones in Spain (Basque country and even the Vuelta) it’s still not as good as the TdF images. So there has to be some room for improvement. 🤔👍🤞
You think the USA could ever have a grand tour? Or maybe is the tour of california ever coming back?
Bring back the Coors Classic.
Even if the interest were there, then the cost would be far too high. You have to remember that ASO and RCS don't pay for the extra police and that they get paid for the Grand Depart, regular departs and by the cities and towns they finish each stage in. It's the exact opposite in the US! Even going through a town in the US will cost you something as the roads will have to be closed down which takes police and so on.
Tour Dupont, Tour de Georgia, Tour of Missouri, Tour of California, Tour of Utah, USA Pro Cycling Challenge (Colorado), etc......all failed. So, no. No is the correct answer to your question.
That would be cool if it happened. More likely thing is we get a few days or a week and then the peloton flies back to continue the Vuelta, Giro, or maybe even the TdF. 🤔👊
Money talks as they say, you can bet your life you'd see the best at the same races given enough prize money. Re the names on the jersey, I remember Pantani in his heyday did that for his Mercatone Uno team mates.
would it be a true statement that love for cycling kept you in the sport rather than money? all good points
Where will the money come from?
Chris is hinting at a new business venture: 'Red Eye' That will teach Red Bull a lesson!
Chris, this all comes down to what the ASO and to a lesser extent RCS will allow the teams to do. Let's say Visma crosses the ASO and they then get barred from all ASO races... Do you still think they'll be called Visma at the end of that year? Of course not and if they're not at the Tour, good luck holding on to Vingegaard. €250 mill is just not enough to compensate for the loss of pissing off the big boys in pro cycling.
They can’t keep one team out of the TdF that easily if that team has Visma’s budget. Lawyers exist just for that reason and all you need is to be able to afford a very good lawyer which Visma can. No way Visma wins like they have and the ASO doesn’t invite them. 🤔👍
@@ChrisHornerCycling Hmmm... As I read article 15, the ASO organisation can more or less justify excluding any team they like -- all they have to do is argue their 'image' has been damaged. What you've then got is a, in this case, Visma team that'll be held up in the court(s) for at least a year and more likely several while not competing in ASO events. The ASO can easily afford that -- can Visma the company and thusly the team? I doubt it.
I'm very sympathetic to some of your ideas, but the business structure of pro cycling is essentially that few but big players hold the power and to unsettle that balance takes more than €250 millions. Personally, I'd like to see a sort of Champions League structure where there's some kind of financial feedback loop for the teams like we see in UCL. That would increase sponsor revenue across the board and grow the sport.
Where’s this extra money coming from? If the World Tour can’t generate more revenue, then this money won’t materialize.
I’m going to comment without doing my due diligence here, but wasn’t there some kind of fiasco in professional golf where a new tour organization tried to poach from the PGA? Liv Pro tour? I haven’t kept up on the news with that, but I remember hearing it didn’t go great… I also haven’t read the articles about this €250M Saudi Arabia money going into pro cycling so I’m the poster child for uninformed opinion with this, but I’m getting strong Liv Pro Tour vibes here.
Pro Cycling desperately needs more money; it’s laughable how little the entire sport gets by on compared to the money you see in pro football (both types), F1 racing, baseball, basketball and… hockey? Pro Cycling money… that’s like one step above Pro Cricket money? I don’t know, but it’s bad. Lol. I’d be happy to see pro cycling on stronger financial ground, but if it’s going to completely disrupt the sport… it could be detrimental. How does this theoretical injection of funds change the fundamentals? Does it change the Television broadcasting rights? Does it somehow encourage fans to start spending on merch from their favorite teams? (I doubt it in both cases) You can’t sell tickets for standing on the side of the road. There are no stadiums. There are no box seats. I don’t see this money changing any of those problems with pro cycling finances.
Just my from-the-hip 2 cents and if I’m ignorant of some relevant facts about this news, I do apologize.
When I was younger, I realized that only a fool would enter foot races or bicycle races and expect to profit from that.
I think that professional bicycle racers have contracts with their teams that pay them for their labor. I expect there are some expectations by the team owners about the bicyclists' performance.
Better coverage of the women too!! It’s sad how bad it is. And they are amazing athletes too!!!!
Rally your wife and girlfriends to get out to support the racers and buy the gear. Same as WNBA; women don't support that, either.
Chris Horner for UCI President if he is a sucker for punishment
Great view point Chris 👏🏻👏🏻😍😍 but I wouldn’t in favour of this “one cycle” crowd……. Buying into cycling too much for me!!
It would change things that’s for sure. We can only hope for the better. But certainly don’t let Movistar decide how to change it. 😱🤔 🏆👊👊👊👊👊👊👊👊👊👊👊👊🦋
I miss "Velo" on the bike cameras.
They do get some good video sometime 👍
😊@@ChrisHornerCycling
Invest in the both the men's and women's cycling
But the badness is the charm! I am greedy for any information as well as the next guy, but I almost don't want to know the pro's are mortal......
Pink Eye?
Filming of cycling requires a major upgrade.
Yep 👊
@leduch
il y a 1 jour (modifié)
make grand tours longer ! as they used to be ! mean longer holiday , make a tour where the last rider rolling win ! nite stages , ride longer die last tour ! snicker forbiden !..... women don t have grand tour ! so , the mixed tour. njoylife
Do it like legion did with the lions den. Make it involved for fans and teams. With mid race prize money, names on jersey, printed fix numbers on jerseys. Gets fans involved. It's all about showmanship, when it comes to marketing.
the best riders already go to the monuments. it seems like they are saying we need to drastically simplify the whole season. more money from sports washing is a bad answer. sure, lets increase the payday, but not from countries that have horrid human rights records.
Leave it to corporate to f… it up
As for camera haven’t these guys heard of drone?
Good suggestions but there's one big hitch for American viewers. There no longer exists complete race coverage like we had with GCN+. Warner Bros - Discovery completely destroyed pro cycling in this country. If the pro cycling industry adopts your suggestions, it's a moot point for us since none of us will enjoy the results.
Here's a suggestion. Pro cycling should create its own broadcast/streaming network and sell access to individuals and/or providers. Big providers, like Peacock, could buy exclusive rights to stream the big races and all the rest streamed by the pro cycling network. The revenue generated would be going directly to teams and organizers and create a strong financial base for the sport. So long as the subscription fees weren't ridiculous, viewers would have access to all races around the world and not be at the mercy of moronic media executives.
Did you say 3,5 billion? I know the viewership is high. But that's half the population of the world 😂 i looked it up, it is. That's wild.
I remember "IAM cycling" tried a stunt with names on the back. IAM "name" on the back 😅 uci didn't have none of it