UCI & Warner Bros. Discovery Announce Full Calendar: 2023 UCI MTB World Cup

The revised 2023 UCI Mountain Bike World Cup Calendar is announced, including a historic 10 day festival in Les Portes du Soleil (Les Gets, Morzine …

By amandawishart

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UCI & Warner Bros. Discovery Announce Full Calendar: 2023 UCI MTB World Cup

Daft question but why aren’t the events in Scotland for the UCI Worlds not mentioned? I thought there was some DH and XC stuff…or have I mixed up stuff?

Still no mention on how we can actually watch it tho…

World Cup vs World champs? Different innit

Ah gotcha…ta.

Ooh, racing in March! That;s not long to wait. Cool

 

Is it daft to have a 10 day event outside of school holidays?

Edit: what Tom Howard said above.
Maybe because this is the world cup calendar? Discovery don’t hold the rights to the 2023 world champs. I think it’s the BBC who are the official broadcaster.

Wonder why they have Ebike enduro but not Ebike XC (or downhill for that matter). Must be a lot of ex- XC racers who could get into racing again with a bit of assist 😀

So if all the UCI Enduro World Cup events are one day affairs, is the start/finish in Chatel or Morzine?

Correction: Story should read “However, the 2023 edition will be the first time the Portes du Soleil has brought all the major mountain bike formats (and e-bike racing) together in a single event.”

They should run the XCM course around the Passportes loop, perhaps on the same day as the PPdS.

Is it daft to have a 10 day event outside of school holidays?

I dunno when French school hols are, but they probably want to bring people in when they’re not already going to be busy.

I think the Morzine date sort of ties in with the end of the summer lift season. This is a good way to eeek out every last penny worth, I’m already thinking it might be worth a late season visit.

Is it daft to have a 10 day event outside of school holidays?

its already “full” in the school holidays. Not actually full, but everything is set up for the max capacity.
Bringing more people outside of these dates will be a big help to the town.

Harley Davidson week was an experience last year. (Biannual though).

Ooh, racing in March! That;s not long to wait. Cool

only enduro (while I love riding enduro, the practicalities of filming and watching it remain a dissappointment). Although I am open to be surprised by Disco’s checkbook.

Mid may for some XC action.

Is it daft to have a 10 day event outside of school holidays?

Not everything has to revolve around families with children.

Not everything has to revolve around families with children.

But surely that would increase income for the event? The ability to have more people there to watch/spend ?

I’ll be willing to bet children don’t add that much to the whole thing. Besides it’s probably down to some other logistics or scheduling.

Lame. I’ve still got my fingers crossed for a Red Bull downhill series.

So the original first XC round in Valkenburg has been dropped – and they haven’t said why. Then there is a month’s wait until the next round. Not great planning – at the other extreme where we get a CX World Cup every week.

As it’s their first attempt at a calendar, I’m prepared to qive them the benefit of the doubt.

But surely that would increase income for the event? The ability to have more people there to watch/spend ?

Its either the last week of the season, or they have extended it by a week. So every additional person that goes to watch it is more income.

Peak season, its people who were already there – or replacing people who would have been there.

To answer my own question the PDS enduros are going to be based in Chatel and the XCM in Morzine.
The DH in Les Gets is the same date as the last leg of the French DH cup in Valberg, for now.

Assume coverage will be through usual Discovery Subscription channels (Discovery Plus, Eurosport, GCN) can’t be anything else, can it? Maybe free highlights on YouTube as with EWS last year.

On the cancelled Valkenburg round of the XC – I read somewhere that this has been postponed until 2024

Privateer/individual riders registering for each race will also see a rise in costs next year as Elite (and U23 for XC) downhill and XC entry rising from €80 to €150. A Junior downhill racer will now need to pay €80 instead of the €40 this year. XC Marathon, Enduro and E-enduro races will have to pay €150 entry fees

So you get more winning the XC World Champs than the DH? Would love to see the reasoning behind that

It made me laugh last year at the Worlds .. the same weekend Bruni got £4500 for winning, Rory Mcllroy got £17m for winning a golf game.

the 200 for coming 10th is what makes me laugh the most though. The time, money effort, training, coaching, riding, bikes, spares, fuel, entries, to make it to that sort of level to get a top 10… your prize…. Enough for a new set of pedals. Plus…. you had to pay 150 for entering anyway.

I mean it’s 10th in a world cup….

So you get more winning the XC World Champs than the DH? Would love to see the reasoning behind that

They have to ride uphill as well.

It made me laugh last year at the Worlds .. the same weekend Bruni got £4500 for winning, Rory Mcllroy got £17m for winning a golf game.

the 200 for coming 10th is what makes me laugh the most though. The time, money effort, training, coaching, riding, bikes, spares, fuel, entries, to make it to that sort of level to get a top 10… your prize…. Enough for a new set of pedals. Plus…. you had to pay 150 for entering anyway.

I mean it’s 10th in a world cup….

There’s more money in golf than mountain biking. If you win every World Cup of the season you’d be out of pocket. Just the way it is in most sports. Winning the America’s cup will cost you about 100 million dollars with no prize money

There’s more money in golf than mountain biking. If you win every World Cup of the season you’d be out of pocket. Just the way it is in most sports. Winning the America’s cup will cost you about 100 million dollars with no prize money

I absolutely understand that part… it just makes me laugh at the massive difference between sports, especially in a danger vs reward context. If you think that even a non-league footballer would potentially earn more than with DHWC in a year lol

I guess the finances side of racing will mean riders/teams have to get better & more inventive at selling sponsorship.

There’s a few really good YouTube videos from BSB/WSBK rider Taylor Mackenzie all about sponsorship, costs, deal structures (including how racers sell their own sponsorship to buy a seat on a team) and selling his own deals when he had a contract end.

Hopefully being a televised sport will open the door to better conversations around non-industry sponsorship – riders and teams then need to brush up the skills to do the deals. It’s all part of professional sport now.

Hopefully being a televised sport will open the door to better conversations around non-industry sponsorship – riders and teams then need to brush up the skills to do the deals. It’s all part of professional sport now.

That remains to be seen as no-one has any idea yet where/how it’ll be broadcast. Apart from ‘Discovery’ in some context.

Run by Warner brothers but no Rob Warner commentating just put Rob on the job

Agree with andyrm; Yes the prize money is awful, but where is the money coming from to pay? There aren’t any big money TV deals like in the major sports. And neither are there too many big money sponsors clamouring to sign up.

Let’s be honest, MTB racing is pretty poorly promoted despite the Red Bull years; and the media/ journalism involved needs a kick up the backside……The cycling media still pays scant attention to MTB racing….

At the recent Velo d’Or cycling awards, not one MTB racer was among the Top10 male nominees. WTF?? Even after winning his 10th World title, no Nino. PFP with 4 World titles only manage joint 2nd…..MTB racing still seems to be looked down on.

They’ve mentioned 13 rounds of the World Cup, but that’s not strictly true; none of the disciplines have that many rounds – and there is your problem. In a whole year of MTB racing, there aren’t a lot of opportunities to sell the sport, are there?

MTB racing is pretty poorly promoted despite the Red Bull years

I’m not so sure that it’s despite RedBull. You could easily say that they ringfenced MTB within their in-house media universe, preventing it from growing a wider sponsorship portfolio over the years.
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how things progress over the next few years for media exposure and the money that accompanies it, but I’m certainly not counting on any miracles the first season.

But if the masses wanted to grow it the crankworks, ixs etc would all have grown too.
If you look at DH racing at club level, every single race fills, pretty much without fail, so there’s a certain level of interest it seems. But how to get bigger sponsors in, I have no idea.

The obvious answer as stated is ‘mainstream tv’ and if Discovery play it like they can, it could fly in a few years. I wonder how much Mercedes had to pay for having their cars and vans at races this year. You need several of those big names to come in

Exactly that. Mainstream exposure and broadcasting will be more likely to bring mainstream sponsorship and the trappings associated with it.
I’m not sure that Crankworks or the iXS cup are able to reach that level of exposure. Something that isn’t a mainstream sports event won’t have the same gravitas if it isn’t the official world cup race.