What Should the Future of Pro Zwift Racing Look Like?
Blog #5
Pro Zwift racing is at a crossroads.
Coming into this season, Zwift canceled the Zwift Grand Prix in favor of the Zwift World Series… and promptly postponed it after three stages due to a series of trainer malfunctions. The Grand Prix itself had been the progeny of the old Zwift Premier Division, a team-centric elite series weaved into the fabric of Zwift community racing.
We at Pro E Cycling loved the Premier Division. Last week in the first part of this series, we took a look at what made that race so great - and the mistakes that Zwift made in transitioning to the Grand Prix that diluted the race’s popularity and ultimately led to its demise.1
This week, we are taking those lessons and using them to create a blueprint for what the future of pro Zwift racing should look like. So without further ado, let’s get into it!
The Basics
The first thing to make clear is that, despite the mistakes Zwift made with the Grand Prix, it created something truly incredible last year with the Zwift Games. The Zwift Games attracted more virtual cycling fans than any other non-UCI World Championship race, and frankly it wasn’t even close.2
EDIT June 17, 2025: When I published this article, I did not realize that the 2023 UCI World Championship was broadcast on both Zwift’s YouTube channel and GCN’s. The above chart accounts for only the Zwift broadcast that year. As of today, the Zwift broadcast has 105,000 views, and the GCN one - which I didn’t account for initially - has 52,000. So the total viewership for the 2023 UCI World Championship should be 157,000.
So the first principle for the future of pro Zwift racing is pretty simple: keep the Zwift Games. No notes.3
The second principle is more of an assumption. We all want to see as much pro racing as platforms can support. The more the merrier. But reading between the lines, it seems like Zwift only has the budget for: (i) Zwift Games; and (ii) one other elite-level series. So while I’d love to see a revamped Grand Prix and World Series, for the purposes of this post I am assuming that there is only room for one non-Zwift Games pro event each year.4
Now, the Harder Stuff!
So in that case, what should that event be? Well, the core format should resemble the old Premier Division rather than the World Series. Specifically, this entails:
Team-centric points races, not scratch races: The beauty of the Premier Division (and the ongoing community Zwift Racing League) is how collaborative teams needed to be to win. Unlike traditional road racing, where teams mostly exist for the purpose of supporting a single rider, the Premier Division points structure - with numerous intermediate points locations throughout the race - meant that teams needed to find ways to leverage each rider at different points along the course to win.
Indeed, of the 14 editions of the Premier Division and Grand Prix, the rider that scored the most individual points was on the winning team just four times.5 These were proudly, emphatically team races. And the team element is what makes community racing on Zwift so great. It’s part of what produces community in this weird little virtual world, what makes Discord channels for teams pop up, and what makes fans actually watch the sport.
The World Series threw this all away. But how its structure developed is instructive and demonstrates the desire for team-centric racing: when Zwift first announced the World Series, it was just a scratch race. There was a token team prize for each stage, but nothing for series results.6 But after a significant amount of pushback from the community, Zwift added a $10,350 prize pot for team results in the series.
Critiques about the slow individualization of pro Zwift racing have continued. NeXT eSports p/b Enshored team president Greg Abbott recently pushed for more of a team focus on the Virtual Velo podcast. Members of Aeonian did the same, and also discussed some the difficulty of having to choose between riders when Zwift decided to award teams only three “series passes” for the World Series.7 Indeed, Arielle Verhaaren called “los[ing] the team component” her “chief complaint” with the World Series.
But here’s the thing: the individual vs. team dynamic is, at its core, a question of race structure. Scratch racing is inherently biased towards individual performance, whereas points races force the focus beyond one rider. Zwift grew up on team rivalries, epic battles between Heino and Aeonian, Coalition and NeXT. It should go back.
Stay connected to community racing: To its credit, Zwift has learned this lesson well. The World Series was launched alongside an identical community series, and open qualifiers provided a path for community riders into the elite races. During the Premier Division days, team relegation and promotion served a similar purpose, and at times the elite races were scheduled a day or two before identical Zwift Racing League races so that community teams could watch and scout the course. All good stuff, but Zwift should never lose sight of the fact that intimate connection to community racing is what drives interest in the sport.
Keep race structures simple: Some of the Grand Prix race formats got… way too
confusingadventurous. It’s fine to experiment a bit with a stage or throw in a scratch race just to keep things spicy, but fans need to be able to tune in midway through a race and immediately understand the race situation.Invest in broadcasts and race websites: A corollary to the “keep it simple, stupid”8 maxim is that Zwift should continue investing in the broadcasting and results-publishing infrastructure that allows fans to easily digest the sport. Again, this is an area Zwift has done a good job with recently - the Zwift Games broadcasts were very good, and the World Series website is exactly the sort of resource fans need to be able to follow these races.
So there you have it. Ditch the World Series and go back to the Premier Division with some tweaks. We fixed everything! If you agree, please comment, share, and subscribe. And if you don’t, still do the same and let us know why 😀
If you are sitting here thinking “what the hell is the Zwift Grand Prix and Zwift Premier Division,” then we’d recommend reading last week’s post. The history of the race series is all in there.
Reusing this chart from last week. The same caveats/explanations for the figures apply.
On a separate note, platform championships are pretty awesome and other platforms should do them too!
I’m also assuming Zwift can’t or doesn’t want to increase prize pools. It goes without saying that more money for riders would also be great.
(1) Louise Houbak for Heino in ‘20-’21 Season 3;
(2) Thomas Thrall for Next ESport p/b Enshored in ‘21’’22 Season 1;
(3) Arielle Verhaaren for Aeonian Race Team in ‘22-’23; and
$1,000 to the top team in each stage, based on the top three riders for each team.
The top eight men’s and women’s teams from last year’s Grand Prix received three “series passes” each, allowing those riders to automatically qualify for each World Series stage. Beyond those 24 riders, the rest of the field had to qualify through the open qualifying rounds.
Appropriate, given that the first pro race in our database was the KISS Super League - or, quite literally, the “Keep It Simple Stupid Super League.”