How long before Outside Sells Out or Pinkbike is shut down?

I thought outside/pinkbike was in talks to buy the GCN rights forbews/DH? I doubt it will disappear just because the industry is slowing.

Pinkbike is the key MTB brand for Outside Inc (Velo for Road). They have already killed or sold of Bike, Beta, Cycling Tips, Peleton.

Love it or hate it Pinkbike is one of, if not the largest cycling websites globally and advertisers will spend their money to put their brand in front of the most sets of eyes.





Majority of the other cycling "news" sites all rely on ad revenue to pay the bills. Handful have subscription based revenue (Escape Collective), however that's the minority as mountain bikers are happy to spend $10,000's on a bikes and related product but not less than $10 a month for content. 

Agree that Pinkbike is an echo chamber of angry comment's and they are leveraging the hate to generate clicks. But who isn't? 

That’s an annual article they’ve been doing for at least 10 years

I literally can not fathom that this website gets less clicks and visits than MTBR. You’ve got Robot and Schroeder testing bikes over here, compared to a website that is mainly old guys commenting on incoming weather systems and water reservoir levels that used to rate products by amount of flaming hot chilis. MIND BLOWN. I’m gonna start clicking everything, Spomer. 

MTBR forums are HUGE compared to a what's happening here on Vital. Every mtb niche imaginable is well covered over there. 

The main page content has always been crap, but there is a vast wealth of knowledge buried in the forums. 

I enjoy almost all of the mtb related news outlets. Between GMBN, Pinkbike, and Vital lies the full spectrum of engagement in mountain bikes. GMBN seems to be very much novice/hobbyist focused. Very polished and produced high level overview of tech and rehashing of entry level skill development. On the other side of the spectrum you have Vital. In depth product reviews and 30min videos of a slow-mo clip of various bikes hitting the same rock over and over and over again (and I can't get enough of it!!!). Pinkbike lies somewhere in the middle. GMBN is a pint of beer, Pinkbike is mixed drink with an umbrella in it and Vital is straight Everclear. All serve a purpose and do it well.

I spend the majority of my time on Vital if you want to know a little more about the type of person I am. 

If Outside buy's GCN, they will most definitely do so to consolidate views further and will likely consolidate those brands into one of their existing brands or vice versa. Either way it would be a loss for the cycling community. 

The hypothesis this thread centers around needs work. 

Here is what we can likely all agree on: Sales in the specialty bicycle industry are down year over year since the "COVID Boom". As a result, its possible marketing budgets are being reduced which will result in a tapering of ad spending. How much this has an impact on the "online media cos" such as PinkBike is very much TBD. 

Pinkbike is huge relative to the size of the sport. This size gives them a lot of "operational agility". For example, if they really wanted to, they could cut 80-90% of their staff/G&A, have a handful of consultants they pay on a per-job basis and likely be very profitable just running Google ads.  

I'd argue there is very little threat of PB being considered some kind of liability or overhang on the Outside Mag balance sheet. Considering what they likely paid and the underlying valuations in the space now, I'd be hard pressed to think it would even be remotely considered (IE, they'd sell at a large loss mostly because anything digital has taken a pretty big hit from a valuation perspective).

TL;DR: The industry goes through ups and downs, online publishers usually do just fine through these cycles. Pinkbike is probably in the best position out of all them due to economies of scale/size. 

 

Can we come back to reality a bit? It's true that mountain bike sales and outdoor sales in general are down right now, but mountain biking and outdoor activity in general are as popular as they've ever been, other than a totally insane, unsustainable, and impossible to replicate 24-month window during Covid where no one had jobs. Go to any trailhead and you will find that bikes, hiking, backpacking, you name it, is more popular than ever and demand for our trails is super duper high. This is not the end of the world for the outdoor industry, it's just a revenue/cashflow/financing shitshow for a year or two because brands forecasted as if the Covid-era graphs would keep going up forever. This is a painful but temporary re-adjustment. The sky is not falling. When I was a kid, only nerds and weird crunchy old people backpacked. Now it's cool for rich beautiful young people. I predict that demand for outdoor activities will continue to be cool and desirable for a long, long time.

It's based on budgets. Those budgets are a financial blueprint for company activities and, due to a slow down in sales right now, the budgets are not adding up. This means they are getting re-balanced, and companies are looking for ways to cut expenditures to make the math add up. Budgets set during the covid boom may not have reflected current market conditions. For example, the war in Ukraine and its downstream effects on bike sales. 

Didn’t the outside guy get into outside after making boatloads of money in finance.  I doubt outdoor sports ad revenue is his only means of income.

Wait, now there is a bubble!? LOL.

My gawd this thread is pure comedy. Next to some pageview data, there is next to nothing quantifiable or qualitative here of note. No leaked emails, no internal data that is evidence the hypothesis may be true. Somebody tap me on the shoulder when I can come on a podcast and rant on this one. 

Love talking bikes & business, but this is missing the mark on a number of levels. 

Pinkbike is the most visited action sports website.  It’s not going anywhere.  The content may get worse over there(and yes, it has already gotten worse), but Pinkbikes ain’t going nowhere.

What ISN’t scary that Outside has done in the last few months publish the VeloNews archives that they had recently digitized and uploaded.

From its founding in Brattleboro VT in the 70’s to it’s pivotal role in the 80’s covering the beginnings of domestic and international MTB, VeloNews was the definitive source for actual news and reporting on the state of american bicycle racing.   I do enjoy being able to dial up an issue from 1999-2001 so I can share actual bylined reporting with people on just exactly how destroying American MTB racing was an Inside Job that happened in the board room and c-suite at USAC, with less of the normal tinfoil hat hate response i got before I could share links.  

Sure, the Outside roll-up saw almost every single “reporter” who covered bike racing in the United States lose their jobs, and helped to cease publication of many of the remaining print titles… but getting the VN archives online, well, it opens the historical facts of how bike racing and it’s attendant “industry” got to this broken moment.

I know the best “clicked” articles on the bike web are pitbits and bike checks… it really is time for the remaining endemic media to start investing more time in the history of the actual sport, and how the domestic bike industry became the global bike industry, the “big 3’s” pivot from NORBA to the Tour De France and the very, very small number of people that have had access to the levers of power in cycling in the 30+ years i’ve been soaking it up
Robin Thurston and his dumb Nun-fungible pipedreams are fueled by fake money, like almost everything else in the modern world- the harm of one rich guy who is friendly with Lance Armstrong being the “publisher” of the highest profile mtb website should certainly worry people.

I much preferred it when he dunked on the big V and encouraged people to imolate themselves rather than talking actual sense.

Leatt isn't doing VitalMTB any solids to stay ahead of the competition.

In my inbox just now...

PB entertainment has gone down.  They still cover bikes, but a big chunk of their success was from being both informative AND entertaining.

Entertaining is a very important part of getting views.  If entertainment weren't important, the biggest bike site would be the one that had every little detail in a spreadsheet format and only technical tests of bikes with lots of pictures.

The whole disappearance of Levy is also weird as shit too. Hope he's all good.

They mentioned it on one of their podcasts. The tl;dr is roughly "he's fine, he's doing his own stuff, leave him alone. If/when he wants to tell y'all what he's up to he will, but until then please respect his privacy".

PB going away is sweet to me. After getting attacked and banned for just contrary opinions. They define the term Go Woke, Go Broke. Hilarious. 

My pb account was banned for a year on the last UCI rule change article around trans-women. I used the phrase "men-living-as-women", trying to balance accuracy without being incendiary. I haven't been back. 

I got banned off and on.  But then earlier this year, I got over the whole site and the constant attacks.

I actually deleted my account on there several months back.  Didn't even know you could do that.
Made me so happy.

Felt like a normal person finally saving up enough to get out Portland.

From the negative count "thumb downs" on my post me thinks some of the woke clowns from PB have ended up here. Does not seem promising for VitalMTB  if true.

I tried to give you a thumbs up just now but apparently I already did.

My goal is to not have to make Spomer monitor and delete my posts.

So....I'm gonna go edit a post real quick. Be right back.

Maybe calling people clowns isn't a great way to get people to engage in a productive discourse on any particular issue. 

Also, relivent:

https://xkcd.com/1357/

As far as Pinkbike, I think they'll be fine for a long while. Their operation isn't too capital expensive (it's basically hosting cost and an office in Squamish) and they can always shed payroll before taking servers down. We'll probably see more "sponsored" reviews in the future, as that's just becoming more of a thing across all review sites for anything. 

Clowns confirmed.

LMFAO!!