The 2018 cross-country World Cup series attracted more viewers than downhill for the first time ever.
Red Bull saw a rise in viewership of 50% across all live mountain bike broadcasts in 2018, but cross-country benefited the most, gaining the most overall viewers.
With shorter races and thrilling battles all year, it’s no surprise that more viewers tuned in to catch the action. There’s also no doubt that cross-country’s viewing figures have benefitted from the introduction of the short track series this year, meaning two broadcasts each race weekend.
Christoph Tritscher, the mountain bike World Cup manager at Red Bull Media House said: “I think this is to do with the development of the sport in cross-country in the past six or seven years. The races have got a little bit shorter, which helps TV, and on the other side we have the new people coming up, especially on the women's side. You have a whole bunch of women who are competing on a high level so this year we had fascinating races.”
There’s a hidden secret to the success of the cross-country too. While downhill is mainly growing in traditional mountain bike markets like North America and Western Europe, cross-country is reaching new markets thanks to the exposure of the Olympics. Christoph said: “One big market is also Brazil, especially last year with the Olympics. Of course, we can't rule out Henrique Avancini who is quite popular in Brazil. I talked to him a lot of time this year and he told me he's not the Neymar, Neymar is a different level of course, he's more of a down-to-earth celebrity in Brazil.”
In response to this news, Martin Whiteley, the teams' rep for World Cup downhill, has asked Red Bull to broadcast the downhill qualifying next year. A rehash of the rules would see the top 60 men and top 10 women run their qualifying in reverse order with one-minute gaps to create a broadcast worthy product. This has not yet been confirmed by Red Bull.
Martin said: "We'll spin the top 60 around so the number 60 comes down first, down to number one. There will be one-minute intervals because at 30-second intervals you could have nine riders on track, which is impossible for the cameras. At least with one-minute gaps you might have three or four on track but you can cross over to where someone had a bit of an issue.
"There's always this stuff, especially on Pinkbike: "why is so and so so far down, what happened in his run?" and I think it's just a lot easier to bring that story live in qualifying. And also, my argument was cross-country ratings had gone up, which was great for cross country but a lot of that was due to the fact that they'd introduced a new event, short track, so they were getting two days of coverage, why aren't we?"
The live broadcast is the biggest draw for sponsors so seeing both series grow is great news for the sport and athletes. Hopefully, this trend will continue in 2019 and beyond.
Too soon?
As long as TV brings “modest” changes to the racing side of the sport I don’t see it as being ridiculous at all. Need to be careful how the sport caters to TV, but fundamentally I don’t see how it is ridiculous.
Waiting on my down votes
The necessary terrain drop and size of the thing requires mountaineous terrain and that is not often found around big cities, (where plots are expensive to make things worse) hence... sorry, that is a one hard nut to crack. I loved 4x but...
DH vs XCO? Gwin (American) out and a big slice of the audience is off.
I know that "I" don't reflect the opinion of the masses, but the Redbull viewership stats don't surprise me either.
"Whada da fuka isa Chinese Downhill"-
Hotdog
youtu.be/_Qe3HBqFhTU
Give that man a raise.
????????
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob7rW6Q1v3M
m.pinkbike.com/forum/listcomments/?threadid=72182
Here are your Pinkbike emoticons.
I hope Red Bull gets the rights to the enduro series and finds a way to make it work. It doesn't need to be live take a day and edit the footage I will avoid spoilers if the coverage is good. Give each rider a helmet camera and pull the footage together the night after they race.
In terms of watching DH or XC in person, both are great.
I find WC DH to be fascinating, but I don't think I'd appreciate the same subtleties of line choice, risk management, and technique if I hadn't raced DH myself.
On the other hand, XC shows you battles, strategy, and overtaking in real time - things that 1. you don't have to be a mountain biker to appreciate and 2. much more closely resemble more popular racing sports like Supercross, F1, and NASCAR.
Could it be that as the global audience for MTB widens, viewers are opting for the sport that's easier to appreciate?
An anecdote that supports this idea: when showing non-MTB friends WC DH, I'll sometimes get comments along the lines of "...So you just watch different people ride down the same hill for two hours?"
The time trial format of DH means you are essentially watching the same run 40 times in a row. The tiny differences between each racer are over the heads of anyone not deeply involved in the sport, and even if you understand what's going on it's really only interesting on a technical level. The "battle" between racers is purely abstract, and other than the clock you have no way of comparing different riders. The most thrilling moments are, like NASCAR, the crashes.
In XC though the battle is immediately apparent. If someone is in front of the pack, they are leading. When two racers are elbowing each other side by side, it's obvious even to someone who knows nothing what is going on. The tension builds as the laps to go drops and fatigue sets in, and it makes for a great story.
Does downhill get tv coverage during the season?