How could pro level Enduro racing be fixed?

I think the biggest issue in enduro racing right now is the perception among many so-called fans and the overall negativity surrounding the sport. I raced in Finale in 2017, during the "glory era", and I’ve also raced at least two rounds in each of the last three years. The racing is the same. The sport is the same.

Since last year, the UCI reintroduced two-day races, which is something most people had been asking for. This year, they’ve extended that format to the Open categories as well.

Over the past two years, we’ve seen some of the tightest races ever: three men’s races decided by less than half a second, and one in the women’s field. From a fan’s perspective, the racing should be more exciting than ever.

Yes, there are only five UCI-registered teams, but that doesn’t mean as much as people think. There are other concerns that matter more, like accessibility. Right now, it seems like the only way for a new rider to get in is by winning their country’s National Championship. If I were in a decision-making position at the UCI, I’d address this by reintroducing the Qualifier series.

Another worrying point is that this year will be the first without a brand-new venue. I suspect the requirements imposed by the UCI are discouraging potential organizers.

I think this season will be crucial in defining the sport’s trajectory over the next few years. 2025 already showed some positives appreciated by riders, along with a slight increase in participation compared to 2024. If that trend continues, I’d say enduro is far from “dead,” despite what some claim.

There was a lot of damage done by adding the ebike race and cutting back on the pedal bike racing for organizational reasons.  but it seems they fixed a lot of the issues with the racing with the exception of not enough new venues.  

However the fact so many of the well known names have dropped out is hard to fix.  Which circles back to not offering enough of an experience for racers to for go better monetary options purely because they much rather race enduros.

So the simple answer is lots of new venues with 2 day racing where possible.  But of course that’s also pretty dang hard to organize and would require effort I don’t think uci/eso want to give.

You need to find a revenue stream.

It is not as TV friendly as other genres of bike racing

That is the other genres (likely) major money maker

Yeah, professional sport is a business. I think it's clear that professional enduro has likely never been close to being profitable for most parties involved. Add to that changing trends and things happening in the industry and it's not surprising enduro is not doing well. It's kind of amazing WBD hasn't ditched it entirely yet and anyone is still trying. Maybe it's not as bad as I think it is, but if it is it's kind of amazing we get anything to watch at all. 

A few years ago I was given access to some of the financial, viewership and attendance data from one of the World Cup event organizers during their negotiation with WBD over the (huge) host fees.  I came away thinking these guys were working hard to try and find all the money they could and even then they were asking the question of if they could even afford to do another year or if it was worth it.  There was/is a lot of friction between organizers and WBD.  I know a lot of people gave Loic Bruni crap for agreeing that there needed to not be 300 privateers at world cup races but he is right, the sport has to change for even XC and DH to truly be professional sports. Enduro is just so far from even where XC and DH are--enduro is still trying to find a model that works. 

One of the hardest nuts to crack I think is convincing sponsors of the value and finding ones that fit with the demographics who also have the bandwidth to take on, what for them, is a project. Why advertise your soap or paper towels to a global audience during a WC when you can just buy an NFL timeslot with a largely national audience? Cycling is hard. Cycling that no one watches is... even harder. 

Have you guys seen this? I could see this helping. Open racing with age categories. Go race one and stick around for the DH race if its on Sunday.

https://www.ucimtbworldseries.com/news/enduro-open-racing-your-adventure-starts-here

My 2c - Clip E bikes, drop UCI sanctioning, take it to more interesting locations like the golden era & make the coverage part race review part destination / travel show. This would also allow you to pull tourism money from local governments in return for running an event in their area. Having some events integrated with Crankworx also seemed like a good formula for pulling interest and unique talent to the events at least for a time, as was the Trophy Des Nations - would be good to see those two things back in the mix.

I know there are problems with blind racing (locals having an obscene advantage if they've ridden the trails before), but I think the future of "enduro" is to combine the various Trans races into a series and go deeper into storytelling and racer personalities for the coverage. Watching Jack and Charlie's recent videos from the Trans Tasmania race was some of the most enjoyable POV content I've watched in a while. I THINK one of the things that also makes it so great is that they were doing follow cam because they weren't really concerned about winning the race. I think follow cam is inherently more enjoyable to watch than single person race run... so you could actually do a format similar to the League of Nations of whatever it was(and Cape Epic) it was where it was team format with combined racer time. This would create sweet followcam footage. Then you let riders post all their footage, pull from that footage for the broadcast, and focus the official coverage on athlete-based narratives to tell the story of the race.

I might be an outlier but I would love to go do one of these as a vacation and then watch the DH. The price is pretty good compared to BME or Rev.