Thoughts on the 2025 UCI World Championship Format
Blog #27
While I was in Ireland, the UCI and MyWhoosh released the preliminary format for the 2025 UCI World Championship. Similar to last year, qualification rounds will narrow the field down to about 20 riders for the November 15 finale, which will again be held live in Abu Dhabi.1 This will be fifth UCI World Championship, and the second year MyWhoosh is hosting the event after Zwift hosted for the first three years.
The format for the finals consists of three stages: “Sprinter’s Paradise,” “Puncher’s Playground,” and “Last Rider Standing.” From the UCI Press Release:
Sprinter's Paradise – This will be contested over eight laps of a 1.5 km circuit. At the end of each lap, points will be awarded based on the results of the sprints. Designed for explosive riders, this race will see tension rise with each lap and will culminate in a final sprint allowing the best riders to earn more points than in the previous sprints.
Punchers' Playground – This will be contested over a 12 km course dotted with short, steep climbs and sprint segments, designed for riders who excel at repeated explosive efforts. With two intermediate sprint zones and two timed climbs (KOM), it will reward both strategic positioning and raw power. The final sprint to the finish line will offer the most points and play a pivotal role in shaping the overall standing.
Last Rider Standing! – This will be a spectacular elimination race contested on a 7.2km climb with an elevation gain of 554 metres. The peloton will shrink and the tension will rise as riders cross each checkpoint. Riders will earn points based on their placement and survival time. The last rider remaining will win the stage and the maximum number of points.
So with that out of the way, let’s get into the takes 😁
Expectations for MyWhoosh
When MyWhoosh bought the UCI World Championship away from Zwift in August 2023, it was a inflection point in the history of cycling esports. The UCI had a choice: sell its brand to the highest bidder, or continue to meet and grow the virtual cycling community where it was at. Of course, it chose the former, and it’s an understatement to say that the “blatant sportswashing” of that choice, as Anna Russell put it, caused significant consternation in the community.2
Moreover, when MyWhoosh won the bid, its platform presumably wasn’t ready to host the event in February 2024, the month where it had previously been held, and so the championship had to be pushed to October. I don’t think anyone would deny that the platform has made a lot of strides in the past couple of years, but this was the backdrop again which the first UCI World Championship on MyWhoosh was held last year. In general, casual fans were much less excited for the 2024 event, whether it was because they viewed the UCI as selling out, viewed MyWhoosh’s role in sportswashing as something they did not want to support, or simply because a championship held on a platform they were not familiar with fell off their radar.
This perception was borne out in two ways. The first was the viewership for the 2024 race: here are the numbers for each of the four UCI World Championships to date, along with the platform on which they were held:3
2020: 114,000 (Zwift) 2022: 145,000 (Zwift 2023: 157,000 (Zwift) 2024: 48,900 (MyWhoosh)
I mean, woof.
The second is the reaction from the cycling community to the first MyWhoosh world championship. Here, I’m not talking about those of you reading this article, or anyone else who is already wayyy too into virtual cycling like myself. I’m talking about folks who are passionate cyclists, but not necessarily into cycling esports. Here’s some excerpts from the Nero Show covering the race last year:
(Jesse Coyle) The other thing that popped up on the weekend was the Esports cycling World Championship. This was awful, seriously . . . . First of all, its a six and a half hour live stream. I don’t know why a men’s and women’s Zwift race . . . I’m just kidding it’s not on Zwift that’s MyWhoosh.
And look, cool setup right. So they’re in Abu Dhabi, they’re in a stadium, they’ve got all the riders in there with the national kit on, they’ve got a screen in front of them that has the nationality, it looks really cool. But then they’re running through this bizarre format, so if you are just someone clicking on, I have absolutely no idea what’s going on . . . . I watched for about five minutes and I just went, I don’t, I can’t follow this, this is just awful.
. . . .
(Chris Miller) I don’t care [about the race], but I also hate the fact that this MyWhoosh thing . . . [Holding the race on Zwift, the platform that everyone uses,] is what makes esports interesting, is that it’s relatable to all the people that are riding the same courses that you can log on now and ride. To put it in some environment that no one’s on because [the UAE] paid a bucket of money to do it, I just couldn’t give a shit. It’s just part of the UCI money grab stuff that disturbs me.
I certainly wouldn’t put it this harshly, but setting aside the rhetoric there are three core critiques here:
(1) Holding the race on MyWhoosh rather than Zwift, which is what we’ve been discussing above;
(2) The length of the race; and
(3) The format.
And when you boil it down to the substance of these three critiques, I actually think they have some merit. So let’s turn now to how the 2025 format addresses each of these issues.
Assessing the 2025 Format
To begin with, there really isn’t anything the UCI or MyWhoosh can do at this point to address (1) - that was done and dusted in August 2023. But continuing to build the platform through software improvements, Sunday Race Club, and relaunching the MyWhoosh Championship certainly doesn’t hurt.
The second complaint though is spot on - MyWhoosh absolutely cannot hold another six and a half hour world championship. For comparison, the previous Zwift broadcasts were 2:04 (2020), 3:15 (2022), and 3:27 (2023). 6:30 is laughably long, and even for us die hards is just too much to ask. The format this year doesn’t seem like it would take anywhere near that amount of time to complete - after all, it’s only 62.4 total kilometers of racing between both men and women - but last year’s format didn’t seem like it would take that long either. So I guess we will see, but if the goal is to bring in new fans, the race really needs to get back to the 3-3:30 range, if not a bit shorter.
The third complaint is the most interesting. I’ve written about issues with professional cycling esports events getting overly complex before in the context of Zwift Grand Prix, and I’m worried MyWhoosh hasn’t learned some of these lessons. Fans like Jesse with little to no background in the sport do need to be able to tune in and immediately understand the format. They need to be able to tune in an hour into the race and, within a minute or two, have a grasp on the race status, format, and what it takes for a rider to win. In other words, “there has to be an understanding that as complexity increases, so does the burden on the platform to engage fans, explain the format, and perhaps most importantly, create a broadcast that lets viewers easily digest what is happening at each second of the race.”
The preliminary details we have are not sufficient to know whether or not this burden will be met. So much will depend on the point structure and broadcast. But the test of whether a format is too complex isn’t whether or not a junkie like me can follow it. It’s whether someone who isn’t familiar with cycling esports, or someone who hasn’t read up on the format in advance, can easily do the same.
Finally, I want to end with some positives. I’m a little ambivalent about live professional cycling esports events for two reasons. First, they’re expensive, and I’d rather see that money in riders’ pockets. Second, part of the beauty of virtual racing is the accessibility, and holding live events cuts into that. But with those caveats in mind, a live world championship is flipping awesome. I wouldn’t want to see the rest of the sport move in that direction, but for the preeminent event we have it’s great.
I also like each of the stage formats in isolation, especially Sprinter’s Paradise. More point scoring locations (and elimination formats) are always fun, though to reiterate the above it’s critical to make these formats accessible and easy to understand. I’m also worried that it will be difficult amid the chaos of race to track what each rider needs to do to win in the final elimination race, especially if it is close and there are multiple riders with a path to victory. All those concerns can be mitigated by the points format and broadcast, but if they aren’t it could be a turnoff to more casual fans.
At the end of the day though, the success of MyWhoosh’s second crack at a UCI World Championship is going to be judged by viewership numbers. I don’t think the Zwift-esque, 150,000 range numbers are doable this year, but cracking 100,000 would be a huge move in the right direction.