A Seismic Week in Cycling Esports
Blog #40
The landscape of professional cycling esports looks very different today than it did a week ago. In particular, two stories have shaken up the status quo and, taken together, made me pretty pessimistic about the future.
First, after announcing earlier this year that it would be canceling Zwift World Series, Zwift announced it has canceled the elite Zwift Games as well, meaning that there will not be any Zwift-sponsored elite races on the platform this season. Second, the chaos surrounding the qualification process for the UCI World Championship has reached new heights.
We get into it all below, but before we do: if you aren’t already, please do consider becoming a paid subscriber or buying us a coffee. Running the blog and website costs money, and even the smallest contributions go a long way to offsetting that (trust me, I’m not making money from this haha, just trying to lose less).
Zwift Cancels Elite Zwift Games
Yesterday, the Escape Collective reported that Zwift has officially canceled the elite version of the Zwift Games for the 2025-2026 season. Quoting an email to riders from director of racing Sean Parry:
"Following the decision not to run the Zwift World Series this year, I know many of you have been waiting to see what will happen with Zwift Games," Parry wrote. "We're excited to announce that Zwift Games will return in February 2026 for its third edition. The 2026 Zwift Games will be a community racing event only, meaning there will be no Zwift-organized elite racing events in the 2025/26 season."
We discussed Zwift’s step back from elite-level racing back when it canceled ZWS:
Following that announcement, Zwift was non-committal on the status of the elite Zwift Games, telling Pro E Cycling that it did not “have anything else to add beyond . . . [the fact that] at this time, the only decision made is not to run an Elite Zwift World Series this year.”
Still, I think a lot of folks in the community - myself included - were pretty pessimistic about the chances of Zwift Games surviving, and weren’t that surprised to read the news yesterday. This is primarily for three reasons:
First, professional cycling events are expensive to run. As I wrote when ZWS was canceled:1
The obvious problem for Zwift is that it actually has to care about profitability. They put out almost $250,000 of prize money this year for professional races - not to mention the back-end expenses needed to make it happen. At a certain point, you have to wonder if the investment is worth it. These are basically advertising events for Zwift - they aren’t profitable in their own right - and Zwift has concluded that it isn’t worth the effort.
Compounding this is the second issue: the onslaught of money from MyWhoosh. Gone are the days when Zwift was the only game in town and could attract the best virtual cyclists in the world with a few thousand dollars in prize money. MyWhoosh will pay out over $5 million in prize money on its platform this year.2 It’s sportswashing with a power washer and an endless flow of water. The roughly $250,000 in prize money paid out by Zwift for ZWS and Zwift Games is cute by comparison, and Zwift would have to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars more to compete. It just can’t do it.
Finally, there are the ever-present verification problems that have made putting on professional events more expensive and a massive headache.
All told, the writing was on the wall. Still, Zwift is disputing that it is fully out of the elite cycling esports game. In an email to Pro E Cycling following the publication of the Escape Collective story, it called the headline (“Zwift Cancels Elite Racing for Good”) “misleading.” According to Zwift, while they “have no plans for Elite competition in the foreseeable future,” they have “never said ‘we’re done for good.’”
Personally, I think that’s a pretty unfair critique of the Escape Collective piece. When a platform cancels both of its elite events and affirmatively says it has no plans to hold any others in the foreseeable future, that headline is a fair summary of what is happening. Of course Zwift isn’t going to say “we will never hold an elite event ever again, definitely not, and we are fully foreclosing the possibility.”
Semantics aside, the other piece of this that I’m very interested in is the possibility for other event organizers to hold elite events on Zwift. So I asked the following:
[W]hat support, specifically, is Zwift willing to provide to organizers that want to host elite events on the platform? My understanding is that up until now that support has been limited while Zwift was holding its own elite events, so I’m wondering if there will be additional resources now to fill the gap.
The response was that it depends: “The specifics would depend on the proposal from the event organiser. At minimum, they would be responsible for performance verification and broadcast production.”
To be honest, I read that as a tacit admission that support will be limited. With Zwift’s renewed focus on community racing, I imagine they’ll be open to elite events. But my guess is that it’ll be up to the organizer to do the leg work.
The UCI World Championship Qualifying Process is Becoming More and More Chaotic
Last time we spoke, it was two days after the deadline for national federations to notify the UCI as to whether they had accepted their quota allocation.
Two weeks later - and only 2.5 weeks out from the actual semifinals - the headline here is that there are still federations that have not named their riders. Honestly, this is pretty shocking to me, and confirms what we discussed last week: namely, that (some, not all of) the federations have become the biggest roadblock in the process, with the UCI doing little to ameliorate the situation.
Picking up where we left off last week. As we’ve previously discussed, August 31 was the deadline for the federations to accept their nominations, but not to actually name their riders:
The federations have autonomy to accept/decline and fill their quotas as they see fit, and the UCI qualification rules state that the “[d]eadline for National Federations to indicate participation and how many allocated places they will fulfil[l] in the semi-final racing” is August 31. The actual names of the riders don’t appear to be due by this deadline though - it’s just the number of places the federation will use, and the rider list is only required to be sent “if available.” According to ruleset, as summarized by The Zommunique, “[t]hose [federations] failing to meet the deadline may forfeit unused spots, which the UCI reserves the right to redistribute.”
It appears that this language has turned out to be critically important. First, it’s clear that at least some - if not most - federations did not provide names by August 31. Second, while I don’t know whether or not any federations blew the deadline, given *gestures widely* this whole… process… I’d bet some did. But whether or not the federations then lose their quota spots is within the discretion of the UCI.
Anyway, where does this leave us now? I know most federations have notified their qualified riders, and that MyWhoosh has gone ahead and told at least some of the riders that have made the semifinals through the open qualifiers the good news. There also won’t be a fifth open qualifier, which the UCI and MyWhoosh were at one point considering. But at least some federations are still twiddling their thumbs. From MyWhoosh:
The UCI, as the official body, is responsible for publishing the final start list for the upcoming semi-finals.
On the [national federation] side, we [at MyWhoosh] do have visibility on the submissions, which has helped us narrow down the MyWhoosh [open qualifiers] list. Since the majority of countries have sent in their nominations, we decided to notify the [MyWhoosh] qualified riders. That said, there’s still a small chance of roll-downs or tweaks as a couple of federations wrap up their selections. However, this won’t affect any rider who has already been qualified . . . . [F]rom our side, we have ensured that all the qualified riders have an understanding of their qualification status.
Honestly, I feel for MyWhoosh here. This is… literally all they can do. The rest is on the UCI. And speaking of the UCI, this is what they told me:
If you have questions specifically for National Federations regarding their selection process, I’m sure they all have appropriate avenues for those requests as well.
Of course, as I’ve detailed, many of the federations just don’t have these avenues.3 They’re completely disengaged. And so the buck is passed… to no one.
Honestly, the only one that is coming out of this looking good is MyWhoosh. Truly. Say what you want about them, but their people genuinely give a sh^* about the sport. They care about pushing it forward. We might disagree on the specifics of how to do that, but the recent MyWhoosh Championship was a massive success and my impression is that they’re working their asses off to make this thing work. They just are reliant on partners that don’t seem to care.
Paraphrasing for brevity.
Which includes prize money for non-elite events as well.