Revival of the UK Events Scene; Any Ideas?

 In Cycling

Why is the UK racing and events scene in such a terrible place?

There are, I am sure, much bigger brains than mine working on the conundrum. Industry and governing body boffins, squirrelled away behind sliding glass doors, meeting with focus groups, ploughing through ever depleting flip-chart pages and upping the value of Post-It shares. But, it’s been something spinning round my head for some time now, and having experience in the cycling industry from a number of angles, both as an event participant, organiser, rider and exhibitor, I feel my thoughts are at least worthy of me letting them bleed onto the keyboard, even if just to see if they lead me anywhere. Could they spawn any ideas that could help the dire situation that the UK cycling events and racing scene finds itself in in 2025?

Enjoying the closed roads of London while we could.

Ultimately, and above all else, I am a rainbow-stripe bleeding, yellow jersey dreaming fan of the sport, in all its glorious formats. As a result, every news bulletin sharing the news of another race or event that has pinned on it’s last number or uploaded its last sportive photograph to the cloud makes my heart sink a little more. At times it seems like every time you open an email from a cycling news provider there is another race or mass-participation cycling event that’s closing its doors due to lack of sponsorship or willing pedal-ers.

It’s seems like there is a central paradox to the cycling event problem. Whilst the sport clearly continues to attract new riders and fans, the popularity and sustainability of races and events seems to be evaporating. I feel like I have a decent understanding at least of why this is happening. How to change it I am far less certain of, but let’s see where we get to….

It appears that the very circumstances that are making cycling more popular, both as a participation sport and as a spectacle are also the things that are meaning any business plan or event proposal immediately looks like the proverbial inflatable dartboard with overly optimistic budgets, wishful entry numbers and rose-tinted spending projections of spectators. The joys of being able to ride the same roads as the top professionals and/or watch them fly by in their beautiful technicolor swarm without having to pass through a turnstile or scan a barcode you have paid £50 for the privilege of downloading are undeniable. These are, however, the exact same things making it impossible to financially justify hosting the same events. Other sports can contain people in ticketed stadia, bending them over a barrel and force-feeding them over-priced hotdogs and beer that leaves them with little change from a twenty. Cyclists can rejoice in the fact that they can watch for free on the side of the road, bring their own sandwiches and ride from home to their front row seats and back, but perhaps because of this, there are ever fewer opportunities to do so as event organisers can’t make the numbers stack up.

I think the UK is also in a slightly unique situation too, such is the unpredictability of the weather in the UK, that means that people will hold off deciding to enter a sportive or going to watch a race almost until the day itself incase it’s pissing down, forcing them to further dilute the average price they pay per-race for their Eurosport or Discovery+ subscription. It’s arguably a lot easier for the organisers of the Majorca 312 to get people to book their flights, accommodation and entry fees in the relatively safe gamble on warm sunshine. I know of at least 2 events organisers who had to pull their rides from the calendar last year because they simply couldn’t wait any longer for the entrants to hold onto their credit card details until days before the event.

Sportives are a great day out but how can we keep them alive?

Even if the day of the ride turned out to be wall-to-wall sunshine on the costa del Bolton, it was too late by this point and the organisers were left to console themselves with a ride in the hills that perhaps they wouldn’t have got if they were busy handing out finishers medals; small consolation.

Technology has come along and hammered its own usb-charged nail into cycling’s event coffin too. Now that we can all use our chosen route planning app of choice, not only can we plot our own routes wherever we want to travel to all over the world, but we can also find in just a handful of clicks, the exact routes that the race or event organisers use for all the most popular events. A quick search, and you can download Colin’s “Tour of The Peak” route, or even Gerraints “TDF Stage 14: Alpe D’Huez” (that may not be exactly true, but you get the idea). So it only makes sense, that there are a load of people that adopt the “Let’s just ride it ourselves on a nice weekend” approach, opting to ride with a group of friends and make their own coffee or supplies stops rather than paying the entry fee to ride amongst a few hundred other enthusiasts, stopping at the designated feed stations and collecting the finishers medal. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good mass-start, well organised ride or challenge, I’m just exploring the reasons people are not engaging with them in the hope of stumbling upon some ideas to help them regain some popularity.

Tour of Britain pulling in the crowds consistently but struggling to survive

Obviously, there are 2 different sets of moving parts involved here, one set for the spectator sport of making professional road racing, or any cycling competition for that matter, profitable enough for the organisers, and another entirely for the participation side of events. We have seen attempts to bring the 2 together, such as the Ride-london being run on the same roads as the London Cycle Classic, which for 2024 was a Women’s Pro Tour race held over 3 Stages. As a prime example though, this too will quote “Take a hiatus in 2025….as the organisers work on a new concept for the worlds greatest festival of cycling”. Really? The optimist in me wants the event to come back better after a year off, the realist in me wonders if those words are simply Willy Wonka speak for an event that has just been sucked up the chocolate hoover ready to be spat like a heavy sprinter on a pyrenean climb.

Add to all the above the logistical hellishness that is faced by anyone trying to put on a bike race or ride in the UK. Risk assessments for every part of the route, marshalling, police involvement possibly, parish council meetings with or without the rage, closing roads throwing locals into meltdown that they can’t get to Aldi for the day, all sorts. I have no idea whether there is any scope in legislature changes that could break down some of the bureaucracy for events organisers whilst keeping everyone safe, I’ll leave that for those much cleverer people behind the glass doors to tackle.

In the meantime, what could we do to help?

  • Plan your events early – If you are thinking of doing a ride, race, event, why not sign up early, you often get an early bird discount anyway, and maybe, just maybe having the entry fees in the bank will help the event organiser live to fight another day.
  • Pledge to get your riding group/club/mates to ride one organised event this year? Why not sacrifice one weeks club run or one of your big sundays out with Dave and the Badger Killer, and get them to ride a big challenge ride. I hear you, “we can do the route without having to sign up” , but these events help new cyclists get into the sport, generate good publicity for the whole scene in the UK, not to mention helping countless charities fundraise through official partnerships and individuals riding their own “everest”. It may not be your bag, but you never know, you might have some fun and discover some new roads in the process.
  • Get your tame non-cyclists involved: Take them to a cyclocross race (make sure it’s cold but sunny!), get them to go to the finish of a stage of the Tour of Britain (assuming it survives and is on this year), give them that pair of clappy green hands that you got on the Champs-Elysees and take them to the top of the hill-climb in September. They may not become a cyclist overnight, but at the very least they will undoubtedly have a great time and will be a little more positive to all things 2-wheel when they are out and about in the car or come across a closed sportive route in the future.

As for trying to think of ways to create added value or make race series or events financially viable, maybe it’s just still early days, will the TV rights slowly become more valuable as UK media outlets start to realise the potential of the growing market for people wanting to watch domestic racing on their telly box?

Trinity Racing, a great domestic team, sadly no longer a road team.

Once again it feels like our beloved past-time may be trapped in a vortex. After the boom of COVID times, the inevitable dip in bike sales and industry struggles means firms are having to cut marketing budgets, does this mean that TV outlets aren’t willing to risk paying race organisers for TV rights only to find there’s little appetite for the commercial break or sponsorship slots?

Is there a way to incentivise businesses, local tourism organisations to put their hands in their pockets to get both TV time and real-world spectators? The Tour of Britain regularly boasts of getting over 500,000 spectators out on the course for any given stage, surely there’s a way to leverage this audience and turn it into sustainability for races?

Maybe the media and/or advertisers look at the division and antagonism between cyclists and car drivers and don’t want to be seen to be taking sides with the minority for fear of upsetting the majority like the squeeze of the energy drink through the window after a close pass? Does this all just boil down to if we can change the culture of “Us Vs. Them” on the roads of the UK then everything else will stand a chance?

At this point, I realise that I am seriously guilty of ending up with more questions than answers, so feel free to comment below and tell me I’m talking out of my hoop (as the Irish would put it. I know, it should never come out of an Essex boys mouth). But let me know your thoughts, maybe together, we can save the UK events and racing scene!

Recent Posts

Leave a Comment

Get in Touch

Please leave us a message and we will get in touch with you as soon as possible.