The Future is Now: Cycling as Esport

“Build it and they will come” is an adage that comes to mind for what we are seeing in virtual cycling racing. Zwift has built out its roads and tools, and passionate volunteers from the community have invested their time/efforts to the business of race organizing.

Though cyclists have been racing on the evolving platform consistently for the past couple of years, its was just 12 months ago we’ve saw CVR up the ante, by hosting a live, in-person event broadcasted from Las Vegas. Now we’re seeing the creation of leagues and series for the sole purpose of the culminating in a live in-person event. Even Zwift itself (via KISS Racing Team) is in the game. On the heels of CVR World Cup Los Angeles, last weekend London played host to the European KISS ECrit Final. And this weekend, Long Beach will host the North America KISS ECrit Final. It thrilling that racing on trainers in a virtual world is becoming recognized as “real” racing. And as evidenced by the success of these in-person events, the world is ready for it. And with stakes for both racers and organizers, it’s exciting to watch this take shape.

The inaugural season of The CVR League launched January 1. Getting a global league up and running on a holiday (in the aftermath of the December holidays) wasn’t without its bumps. In its “new year enthusiasm” CVR may have been running before it could crawl, but the LA event proved its hitting its stride, and its mark. And for the Zwift/KISS ECrit series, it had its own false starts and a reboot to address some technical and marketing issues.

As an athlete, commentator and spectator, I experienced the live, in-person event from different perspectives in two CVR World Cup events (Paris and LA). Both events had 2 days of racing for a total of 8 races over the 2 days. Day one cyclists raced the preliminaries for placement in the three-stage race final the second day. It has been a little over 3 weeks ago, and I’m just finally starting to come down from the LA event. The excitement level in LA was amplified by anticipation accumulated from the weeks of league racing leading up to it. In this way, the LA event was different from Paris. The fields in LA were made up of racers from all over the globe who battled it out for points every week (save for a couple invited athletes, like rockstar triathlete Lionel Sanders).

The CVR LA race broadcasts were streamed to large audiences on multiple platforms, introducing “cycling as esport” to a wider community of athletes (and gamers unfamiliar with racing on Zwift). Though I don’t have specific viewership numbers, the “suffer faces” compelled droves of viewers to watch and cheer.

Much of those cheers were done through CVR’s Cycleview Platform where racers could see the messages come on to their race cockpit screens, and also benefit from the proceeds (cheers are donations to crowd fund the prize pool and directly contribute to the racer’s own winnings).

Fast forward to last weekend, in the live broadcast of the Zwift/KISS European ECrit Final we saw an experiment with a new race format, including primes and elimination rounds. This made for a compelling race with interesting dynamics for the top 10 women and men who earned the invite by battling it out in the ten race series this winter. But like the roads outside, technology is never perfect. Dropouts and programming bugs happen in game, and it’s not much different from flat tires and wind on open roads. Sh*t happens. But no one is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. And the live events hold a special place in the hearts of those who attend and intrigue those who tune in to watch. And I’m sure the ECrit in Long Beach will be no exception.

At the publishing of this, the Spring Season of CVR League has completed its first 3 weeks, with the next live final being held end of June in Vancouver. There are a growing number of race streams to view each Tuesday across the 8 global zones at www.cycleview.tv (CVR’s platform for watching & cheering). The streaming thing is beginning to gain serious traction with racers and it’s been cool to see the field swell as well. Teams are also rallying their numbers in support of racing and its fun to bear witness to the birth of a new sport.

For anyone who’s been involved in the birth of a company (or human) knows the way our perception warps in its infancy. And it warps two ways. The first is that it bends how we perceive the passage of time. In the early days we feel the simultaneous expansion and compression of time, in a rubbery cadence of “slow-fast-slow” but passing in a blink. The other is that it bends our perception and reality, making us forget the world we knew “pre-infant”. This is how I have experienced “cycling as esport”. It wasn’t, but now it is. And there is no going back.

Cycling as Esport has arrived.