the stats don’t lie

<instantly imagines Jimmy Hill image>

Good to see viewership has increased (although, source?) goes against all the commenters who claim they and everyone else are never going to watch it on a paid-for site and its the death of the sport etc.

I’m a little sad to see the reduction in teams, potentially shutting new riders out. Seems if you can’t get yourself results on the WC circuit as a junior – which in turn means being noticed as a youth on the national circuit by a team to get you there – then you might be out of luck.

Still, looking forward to 2025, with more rounds; and selfishly hoping that Gwin remains on the mike, rather than on his bike as he added a lot to commentary.

I doubt Red Bull would ever publish figures or WB put the truthful figures out there. So big success is a baseless claim.

There’s so much corporate bull**** in that thing it’s embarrassing.

The only truthful thing in there is that the racing (DH at least as that’s all I watch) has been spectacular. Not that they can take any credit for it, that’s all down to the riders and they’re being ****ed over in all this.

They’ve ****ed it, we all know they’ve ****ed it and now they’re lying about it. Quel surprise.

ossify

I am curious though if their promotion to a wider audience is better than RB’s. Redbull is known for action sports, its audience is people who like watching this kind of thing. People will only go to RB if they a) like these sports in general or b) like a specific thing (eg mtb) and want to watch it. Whereas WB is huge and covers many forms of media – they’re able to push it to a wider variety of people and perhaps bring in viewers who had no previous interest but see it and think “that’s looks fun, let’s give it a watch” and then perhaps get hooked.

This is all assumption, no idea how (or even if) they do promote it, but it makes me wonder if they have the potential to be better than RB in this regard.

I don’t doubt it has the potential to be bigger and better than before but it was well served to it’s core audience on a free to air platform.  It’s now bundled up with a load of other **** that I for one, don’t want to watch or pay that much for.  I get the impression that’s the general consensus of most of the previous audience.

Not only have we lost out but the sport is losing it’s soul.

On the up side this could be a new dawn where the not quite top riders can start earning some decent money for once..