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So, the US market is monstrous and desirable to the bike companies because a large contingent of the primary players are US based. They'd love to have a World Cup here. It has NOTHING to do with brands being in Europe at ALL.
It has everything to do with the POPULARITY of the sport in other countries and the resorts in those countries being able to justify the EXPENSE of a World Cup on US soil.
Resorts in the US have one optic regarding the World Cup and that is that they LOST MONEY hosting them in the past. The TV money from Tailwind Sports and all the Lance Armstrong & Shaun Palmer crossover culture exposure talked US resorts into hosting a lot of World Cups, but most of them made no money.
The OPTICS for US resorts is that World Cup isn't a popular spectator sport here so it doesn't have that enticing revenue stream that comes with the UCI event. Winter World Cups are easier to host because of the mass of humanity that is already skiing and vacationing at the resorts.
As for spectator interest, I completely agree with you- it's nowhere near the level of Europe. Stateside, people are caught up in ball sports over the summer or going to the beach or having BBQs rather than watching cycling, of almost any form. I remember hearing a stat about Big Bear making more money in the first day of ski season than they made the entire summer for mountain biking. All of this adds up to brands not wanting to waste more money by having to crisscross the continent for two races. Ideally, there would be a string of them to justify the cost of providing racing support, which is very expensive.
To me the big issue is the tv contract. In Canada Sportsnet one use to have the races on later in the day for a few years then it just stopped. I read bizutch's comment about ski racing. The one thing that sport has is a network tv contract. If I am correct NBC and CBC (sportsnet) have all the races on in the winter months on the weekend. Where I live, people watch this or pvr it. At least they have the opportunity to watch it on tv, WC racing, not so much.
Also, do the Euro races charge fans to enter the venue? I have been to MSA a shitload of times and never paid a dime to go (minus the hotel, beer, and gas for the 12 hour drive).
I actually did not even know that it was the case on other WC venues!
Considering that Asia hasn't had a World Cup since the beginning of this century (with attendance in the thousands at Arai, too), any new bids coming from Europe or North America need to be compelling ones to compete.
Or perhaps we may end up with more stops in the coming years? Not sure how the teams will react to a development like this though, budget-wise.
This is the FIS skiing world cup for 2019:
discipline: men/women rounds
slalom: 12/12
GS: 11/10
Super G: 10/9
DH: 10/10 plus like 3 days of training before each event
Combined: 3/3
So competitors for the large crystal globe (overall) easily do over 30 events/races (many events do multiple disciplines).
Going up to 10 UCI DH events shouldn't be much of a problem. I think the main issue might be the event organisers, UCI and so on, ut this is just an assumption, I don't have any info regarding this.
With less riders the track will be in better condition, less expensive to run (maintenance, logistics?)
This could open the way to more resorts hosting a WC and more rounds per year.
Keep the field at 50, have more races.
As for professional racing in other series:
1.) you mentioned IXS, which is exactly where i would point my finger, together with other continental, national, etc., series. But given the state of the national cup in Slovenia, this might be an issue (the amount of racers and amount of races is arguably quite low).
2.) you said other series to race professionally. How, when people race at the amateur level (i.e. they are not paid and buy their own gear) in the world cup?
But i still think all the people not being able to get into the world cup would strengthen other series, since they would have to race there to get UCI points. Kinda like how the Brits invaded Romania and other European countries with weaker series to get UCI points to be able to race the WC (at the amateur level of support of course).
We are not like F1, never will be. I would like to see more rounds that are more across the world, not just Europe and North America. Bring back Oz, NZ and SA as regular stops and maybe include an Asian or South American round. Extend the season to 10 races plus world champs. The UCI should stop charging such massive fees for a venue to host an event.
Not a rumour but one for the oldies , Look who's back
Edit: motorsports is probably not the best analogy, I think ski racing is somewhat better but still not the best since mountain biking is after all a different sport altogether.
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