Big numbers and big growth for the 2025 season’s broadcasts.
Whoop UCI Mountain BIke World Series press release:
2025 WHOOP UCI MOUNTAIN BIKE WORLD SERIES BREAKS GROWTH RECORDS AS REFORMS SHOW EARLY SUCCESS
The 2025 WHOOP UCI Mountain Bike World Series delivered over 87 million cumulative views across WBD channels, attracted over 250,000 new followers on official social channels, and generated more than five million page views on its website
A record 440,000 fans attended rounds on-site
Growth supported by major reforms including new team qualification processes, simplified Downhill qualifying formats, and increased visibility for athlete and teams
19th December 2025 – In its third season as broadcaster, promoter and organiser, Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) Sports drove the 2025 WHOOP UCI Mountain Bike World Series to new records across broadcast, digital and social platforms, and on-site fan attendance.
2025 reached a true turning point with significant updates to UCI Regulations, including major changes to the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup qualification system and the introduction of WHOOP UCI Mountain Bike World Series Teams. These reforms build on a groundbreaking long-term partnership between WBD Sports and the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) launched in 2023, unifying most major mountain bike formats under a single brand for the first time.
During 16 race weekends in 10 countries across three continents, 64 UCI World Cup winners were crowned, with new overall champions emerging in all-but-one Elite category, highlighting the heightened competitiveness and excitement driven by the latest reforms. On the industry side, 30 mountain bike manufacturers secured UCI World Cup victories through their trade teams during the season with Canyon leading the table, closely followed by Cube and Specialized.
The 2025 season also welcomed an exciting new long-term partner venue in La Thuile – Valle D’Aosta (Italy), which hosted the first-ever UCI Enduro World Cup night race, alongside the introduction of a thrilling Downhill course at a 2024 newcomer venue Lake Placid Olympic Region (USA) and the return of several iconic venues across South America, North America and Europe.
For the third consecutive year, the WHOOP UCI Mountain Bike World Series saw record-breaking worldwide TV viewership. WBD’s channels and platforms (HBO Max, Eurosport, discovery+ and TNT Sports) accounted for the majority of the audience, generating over 87 million cumulative views across the season. This growth was fuelled by thousands of hours of racing broadcast on over 25 partner TV and streaming channels, extending the series’ reach to fans in over 150 countries and territories worldwide.
As part of the reform, the UCI and WBD Sports also worked closely with the teams to deliver greater exposure and enhanced marketing opportunities. Broadcast graphics were upgraded to maximise on-screen visibility and increase the media value for teams, athletes and brands, incorporating elements such as headshots, race bike images, team logos, colours, career numbers and national flags. These enhancements helped raise awareness among millions of fans watching worldwide, while creating a more cohesive and recognisable visual identity across events and media platforms.
In parallel, WBD continued to enhance its broadcasts to help viewers better understand the racing and provide deeper context for fans at home, with accessible, data-driven insights such as heart-rate zones and athlete strain metrics during races — all powered by WHOOP.
In 2025, WBD also invested in a portfolio of non-live cycling content, with the launch of two new, original documentaries – Grit and Glory: Enduro Mountain Bike Racing, an inside look at the 2025 UCI Enduro World Cup season, and Race Bikes, a deep dive into the sport’s fastest machines.
FAN-LED GROWTH
WBD takes storytelling beyond live broadcasts, capturing every moment on and off the track through comprehensive digital and social coverage.
During the 2025 season, more than 250,000 new users followed the WHOOP UCI Mountain Bike World Series official accounts (TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube), bringing the total follower count to 1.25 million. This season, social channels have continued to bring fans closer to the action whilst attracting new audiences to the sport, surpassing one billion impressions since the start of the WBD Sports era in 2023.
This interest carried over into the expanded media coverage of the series on owned and earned platforms. The new official WHOOP UCI Mountain Bike World Series website (an essential hub for all news, previews, reports and athlete profiles) saw record-breaking volumes of traffic in 2025, generating 5 million total page views (+233% vs 2024) taking the total to more than 10 million since the series’ inception in 2023.
EYES ON 2026
The 2026 season kicks off in May with the Race of South Korea – marking the return of the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup to the Asian continent for the first time in 25 years. The series will also make first-time stops at Soldier Hollow, Midway, Utah (USA) and Downhill’s spiritual home of Whistler Mountain Bike Park, British Columbia (Canada), delivering on decades of anticipation from fans, teams and athletes alike. And this is just a taste of things to come, with 14 race weekend across three continents, nine countries, including two quadruple headers and a series finale in the US at the iconic Lake Placid Olympic Region.
Hmmm. Couldn’t be bothered reading the press release above. Of course it’s going to be all good news. I therefore may have missed how many new accounts they signed up expressly to enable watching MTB racing.
TNT will also be the place to watch the commonwealths next year. So that’s more sport people who didn’t want to pay to view won’t be watching.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yj9pnl5n4o
I may be reading this wrong, but…
87 million cumulative views.
Over 16 race weekends.
So ~5.5 million per weekend.Â
Split that down into XC, Enduro, DH, qualifying 1+2, juniors, elites, etc.
Suddenly it’s not huge figures.
I’d say unique viewers (or at least unique IPs) might be a little less disingenuous.
Yes, I’d say that nobody believes this – but most of us don’t even understand it.
I certainly don’t, and I’ve worked in digital media for the large part of my career.
That is really sad about the Commonwealth Games – TV like that was a staple of my growing up.
Completely unbelievable figures – i don’t know anyone who watched the live feed. They must be including the free to view YT highlights etc.
I was closely involved in the 2014 Games from a city wide marketing perspective. The BBC did a lot of activity over and above the broadcasting. With the Games moving to the TNT pay wall, I would be interested to see what the viewing figures end up being. These are going to be a hugely downscaled Games in comparison to 2014. It was a major event in the city. There is nothing like the build up there was then and given the scaling back of events and the use of Scotstoun for the athletics which is dwarfed by Hampden which we used back then, I would not be surprised if this is going to be their last hurrah.
The absence of the likes of hockey, bowling, rugby sevens, shooting, table tennis, badminton, mountain biking, squash and road biking suggest that it is going to be a low key affair. There is a noticable lack of public interest and engagement just a few months out. It feels like we are almost apologizing for hosting it.
Glasgow has a proven track record of hosting big events which I was privileged to be part of but this one has me almost questioning why we are bothering. Sure, we will make a bit of much needed money for hoteliers and local businesses but the lack of scale and ambition is a disappointment before the Games even start.
Cheers
Sanny
Did they include tizcycling numbers, too?
Would expect nothing less than record breaking figures in this post truth world
wWhat will be more interesting is when the whole takeover nonsense is complete and the new owner looks and realises what they have actually bought. I don’t wish things to crash but it’s clearly punching above its actual financial weight. Interesting times ahead I would suspect.
The 50-odd attempts it takes to get a stable feed might explain the number of “views".