Have the UCI been scammed by a two bit website?

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Have the UCI been scammed by a two bit website?

38 posts & 21 voices | Started 8 months ago by Ewan | Latest reply from iainmcpherson

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UCI
WTF?

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Ewan - Member

RockyRoad Networks are the new title sponsor for the UCI World Cup (DH + XC + 4X).... seems very odd...

- The press release claims 220,000 hits per day, but no one has ever heard of it – it didn't even feature on googles front page when you searched for it until yesterday. The second link for the website on google is a discussion of how this must be a scam!

- The various traffic monitoring sites don't exactly offer a ringing endorsement – hardly 10,000 views... http://www.checksitetraffic.com/traffic_spy/www.rockyroadsnetwork.com not even tracked by Compete.com

- http://www.linkedin.com/in/brunomazereel is the linked in profile for the guy who owns RockyRoad – former bartender

- https://flippa.com/103459-site-with-income-and-quality-email-lists-with-proof his other website - 60,000 dutch email addresses on a single page aka spam...

- http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Hi-Im-looking-companies-that-775807.S.57147172?qid=1493b223-5aa9-4bab-99ea-c0ccfeaa18eb&goback=.gmp_775807 suddenly got a million visitors a day here – this would be unheard of for a cycling website

- Logo font is 'free for personal use' http://www.dafont.com/base-02.font

- Icing on the cake..... a thread for a $50 reward for designing the Rockyroad site http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1976286

Not sure what the above adds up to, but the previous sponsors of the World Cup have been people like Nissan and Tissot. Either some epic corruption is being done at the UCI, or they've been scammed by Bruno to get some extra links up / ad revenue.

STW - How come no story?

PS. There was a PDF of a google analytics report on RockyRoads website which looked very dodgy (there's a 'g' in United Kingdom isn't there?) but that's been updated in the last 15 minutes or so...

Posted 8 months ago #
Ewan - Member

http://www.rockyroadsnetwork.com/company/advertisers.php

Anyone work for those ‘advertisers’? Apparently Mercedes, Volvo, BMW, Mars, Citibank, Visa, Sony, Nokia, Nissan, are all advertisers…

Perhaps someone should tell them.

Posted 8 months ago #
RealMan - Member

rockyroads.net is a very different site.. All looks pretty legit, facebook page is pretty active.

Posted 8 months ago #
Ewan - Member

Same site (all the links in the network site are saying their the parent site for the rockyroads family of websites) - if you click on advertisers on the rockyroads site you get to the rockyroadsnetwork site.

The facebook page looks pretty active because it was full of 7000 people saying 'WTF' but then they turned off comments / their wall and since you need to 'like' them to comment it now looks like the people saying WTF are now their fans.

Posted 8 months ago #
Ewan - Member

Screenshot of their now updated analytics page.... http://i.imgur.com/Mgnms.png

Posted 8 months ago #
allthepies - Member

Quiet day in the office then

Posted 8 months ago #
Ewan - Member

Not my screenshot lol - the joys of looooong conference calls!

Posted 8 months ago #
packer - Member

All very dodgy. I think we'll hear more info coming to light on this in the next few days...

Posted 8 months ago #
PJM1974 - Member

It's not quite the same as Essex Petroleum is it?

Posted 8 months ago #
atlaz - Member

So the champs are being sponsored by an MTB News website. Given the generic ads they're running (and the shitty spelling and grammar on their site), I'd be shocked if they're as big as they're pretending.

Posted 8 months ago #
WackoAK - Member

Cheeky response from freecaster

Posted 8 months ago #
gravity-slave - Member

Not just the Champs - the UCI press release says these guys are the title sponsor for the entire World Cup series (Dh, XC, 4X)- for 3 years!

http://www.uci.ch/Modules/ENews/ENewsDetails.asp?id=NzU2Ng&MenuId=MTYxNw&LangId=1&BackLink=%2FTemplates%2FUCI%2FUCI5%2Flayout.asp%3FMenuID%3DMTYxNw%26LangId%3D1

How on earth has a recently started news site, who offered but didn't pay $50 for site design consultancy, suddenly have the cash to become the title sponsor for the largest media showcase of our sport?

I'm shocked, can't understand the decision by the UCI that this is an appropriate image to assocaite with their premier series and can't see how the finances add up either way.

However, with rumours about no coverage from Freecaster next year, the 'reach' of the advertising has just dived, so even less value in sponsoring the event.

Posted 8 months ago #
Ewan - Member

How many page impressions do STW get a day?

Posted 8 months ago #
clubber - Member

UCI in making less that transparent decision shocker...

Posted 8 months ago #
Stoatsbrother - Member

http://www.rockyroadsnetwork.com/category/mountain-bike-en/freeride-mountain-bike-en/

Their coverage - infrequent updates - and use of the same photo for 2 different events is not exactly inspiring...

Due diligence done?

Posted 8 months ago #
njee20 - Member

Don't get it myself - I'd never heard of them, having a mooch through it now it's all very obviously written by people who don't have English as a first language, you'd think you'd have a native speaker check the articles on such a 'well renowned' site, just comes across as very amateur.

Something's wrong.

Posted 8 months ago #
Ewan - Member

The guy's personal website: http://www.brunomazereel.com/

Known as a hard negociator and sharky businessman, I decided to dedicate my feminine side to the design of my site: sweet, soft, and sensitive. Almost sexy.
But the content is as tough as you would expect from me. Be aware.

WTF and great spelling.

Posted 8 months ago #
Ewan - Member

Surely we all remember Ford William right?

http://www.rockyroadsnetwork.com/2010/05/08/steve-peat-iin-ford-william-2/

Posted 8 months ago #
mustard - Member

However, with rumours about no coverage from Freecaster next year, the 'reach' of the advertising has just dived, so even less value in sponsoring the event.
or any other video by teh sounds of it Rocky Road want total control - check the Dirt forum. It sounded like Billy was about to be evicted from the world Champs when I was reading it yesterday.

I can see the trade teams rebelling as the only reason they are there is to advertise their product/brand to the bike buying public. They, well teh DH teams at least, do have form for standing up to the UCI, unless I'm totally mis-remembering that.

If it sticks will we see a Ticket To Ride-esque series forming outside UCI control???

Posted 8 months ago #
GavinB - Member

Not sure about page impressions, but in terms of site rankings, STW sits around 25,000th, whereas these guys are around no 1,700,000th, so not exactly what anyone would consider a top ranking site.

I love the quality of their 'journalism' (from their site description):

RockyRoads is considered as the leading off road biking community in Europe (in Dutch, French, English and German) informing you through articles of everything that happens off road on two biking wheels

If you look at the site traffic for CRC (for example), they are around 5,800th ranking, and generate 29,000 unique visitors per day and around 200,000 page views, so these guys claiming that they generate more than this, despite being ranked 1,700,000th is a stretch.

Truly bizarre.

Posted 8 months ago #
druidh - Member

Ah well, thanks to threads like this, their page impressions will be looking a bit better.....

Posted 8 months ago #
gravity-slave - Member

or any other video by teh sounds of it 'they' want total control

That's what some of the chatter is about, but it's not been stated in any of the press release that they are anything other than series sponsor, no mention of media control. Complete blackout would be a masterstroke of incompetance though - cutting off the public from the name they are trying to promote!

Posted 8 months ago #
mustard - Member

There was something about Freecaster being asked for some ridiculous figure for the rights, but I can't remember where I read it and can't be bothered to trawl through again.

And Druidh is right, all the uproar will just be making their site and FB stats look better, but they can't hide their history - the dude's a bartender on his linkedin profile! (unless he's changed that too). Looks like their Google stats are improving, they are now teh first two hits when you google their name, I don't think that was teh case yesterday.

Time for some of the bike journos to step up and do some serious investigative journalism, or maybe some of the cycling folk at the Guardian would like to have a dig?

Posted 8 months ago #
atlaz - Member

What makes you think the UCI care or have a rational approach to business? So Bruno bought the domain just over a year ago, hosts with a bargain basement server provider and has a side sufficiently unvisited that archive.org hadn't crawled it until I went there a few mins ago. Also, nowhere in his interests does cycling feature so you've got to wonder why he went for MTB.

The advertiser list puts me in mind of Team McCoy but at least he had the decency to be honest and say that he just liked their products and wasn't affiliated with them.

It may be that the bloke is a chancer who got some rich people to pony up some money to try to create a new brand from scratch but I doubt it.

Posted 8 months ago #
atlaz - Member

mustard - To be fair to him, he was a bartender only as recently as 2001. Plenty of time to reinvent himself. I'd be more concerned that he's only had a bit of over a year of online marketing experience if I was the UCI.

Posted 8 months ago #
mustard - Member

atlaz - fair point; I'm not really doing any proper research myself, which I'm sure my, former journalist, father would be ashamed of. I do think there is something funny going on though, although it could just be someone who wants to keep a low profile using this guy as a front to support a sport they love, or he could be a marketing genius who is going to make a fortune by selling his brand on to a bigger player and end up getting mountainbiking seen on a far bigger platform than it has had for years. Or it could be something well dodgy... Or it could just be what it claims to be, except they've obviously masaged their figures quite a lot!

Posted 8 months ago #
thepodge - Member

I assume rr have given the uci a load of cash so why should they care?

Posted 8 months ago #
atlaz - Member

Loads of deals like this. Arrange a deal, get a loan/investment based on the traffic/sales you expect to get from the deal. Use this money to pay the first instalment. Pray to whatever God you pick that the money coming in covers the repayments and the next round of payments/loans. Unsurprisingly, fairly frequently the whole house of cards collapses. If you're lucky, it doesn't take everyone else out at the same time.

Posted 8 months ago #
wrecker - Member

Hobbies
» basketball, swimming, rock diving, football, judo, skiing, climbing, walking
» listening to music, dancing
» composing music, playing oboe
» writing poetry, watching deep movies
» travelling, mainly for business
» freelance webdesign
» getting to know people, socialize

Not cycling in any form then?

Posted 8 months ago #
Ewan - Member

Rockdiving? Playing the oboe?

Atlaz - I suspect you're right on both counts. Maybe STW can step in and offer UCI £3.50 next year when it all goes to t*ts.

Posted 8 months ago #
Northwind - Member

thepodge - Member

I assume rr have given the uci a load of cash so why should they care?

If it all goes pear shaped they should care about the year after, and the year after that.

Posted 8 months ago #
mustard - Member

I assume rr have given the uci a load of cash so why should they care?

I've a vague recollection of something about football and tv money...

Posted 8 months ago #
steezysix - Member

watching deep movies

What, like The Abyss? That was pretty good - I didn't really like The Core though.

Posted 8 months ago #
mustard - Member

steezysix - you read my mind!

Posted 8 months ago #
martinh - Member

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/rockyroadsnetwork.com
Alexa Traffic Rank: 1,473,365 Traffic Rank in DE: 113,303 Sites Linking In: 239

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/singletrackworld.com
Alexa Traffic Rank: 25,838 Traffic Rank in GB: 1,054 Sites Linking In: 838

Bruno wltm
http://www.youforme.com/benl/Member/Bruno-Mazereel/137362__detail.aspx

Posted 8 months ago #