In this week’s AIRmail newsletter, The Outer Line takes an in-depth look at trending cycling news: The Venu-Fubo saga – chaos in sports streaming, sports journalism trends for 2025, gambling in cycling, American WT rider analysis and 2025 Giro route announced…
# Catch up on pro cycling – and its context within the broader world of sports – with AIRmail … Analysis, Insight and Reflections from The Outer Line. You can subscribe to AIRmail here, and check out The Outer Line’s extensive library of articles on the governance and economics of cycling here. #
Key Takeaways:
- The Venu – Fubo Saga; Implications for Cycling
- Sports Journalism Trends in 2025
- Sports Gambling Concerns Touch Cycling
- Current Status of American WorldTour Riders
- Giro Route’s First Week Surprise
Changes and a major shake-up in the U.S. sports streaming
Head-spinning changes and a major shake-up in the U.S. streaming sports marketplace could have long-term implications for the distribution of live cycling – in both the U.S. and around the world. Venu Sports – a proposed joint venture which would have aggregated live sports content from Disney/ESPN, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery into a unified bundle – was suddenly and unceremoniously dumped by Disney after the “Mouse” decided to acquire a majority stake in streaming competitor Fubo Sports instead. Fubo had previously lodged an antitrust complaint against Venu and its partners, and the case had been successful in delaying the new venture’s launch. It appears that Disney took the legal threat seriously, and sought to squelch it by simply acquiring Fubo acquisition and cancelling the Venu plans. The whole series of events came as a surprise to almost all parties. However, by acquiring Fubo and launching its flagship standalone ESPN streaming service, other aggrieved competitors like DirecTV – and possibly Disney’s other spurned Venu partners – have already picked up the antitrust fever. This story is not likely to conclude anytime soon.
The U.S. streaming sports marketplace
The Fubo-Venu drama quantifies a new reality for the niche sports content marketplace: sports that are too small to be a live content anchor will be increasingly dependent on large streaming service aggregators for survival in the absence of free-to-air broadcasting options. Simultaneously, the factors which drive aggregation – which include the exponentially increasing costs to license sports like the NFL and NCAA football, soccer’s elite leagues, and the NBA – will likely have a suppressive effect on what the streaming providers are willing or can afford to pay for sports like cycling. Broadly speaking, these niche sports are essentially viewed as “filler” content in the overall revenue strategy. Continuous aggregation in the sports streaming marketplace may be an inevitability given the billions of dollars tied up in licensing and the billions of eyeballs which must be reached to recoup the investments. The key question is: will Fubo’s extensive library of top cycling races get lost in the shuffle? Or will pro cycling finally get its next major distribution break?
La Vuelta press hard at work
Each year, the highly-regarded Nieman Journalism Lab think-tank makes a series of projections for journalism in the upcoming year, including possible trends in the area of sports coverage. The annual predictions this year emphasize the decreasing need for and access to athletes by the media, saying “2025 will be the year when sports journalists start to really reckon with the fact that teams and players don’t need them anymore.” Sports reporting has traditionally been the way that fans connected with the players, and players have therefore always had an incentive to speak with the media. But that is clearly no longer the case as athletes instead use social media to connect directly with their fans and maintain editorial control over their stories. “Why open yourself up to stories where you have no control over the final product when you can have complete creative and editorial control over your Instagram story?” This trend has been emerging for years now in the pro cycling arena, with most teams building significant internal media and communications engines that push self-produced stories and press releases. This trend is probably not a good thing in terms of objective and critical sports reporting, but like it or not, all parties – in sports, politics or otherwise – now seek subjective control over interpretation and trajectory of their own stories, rather than being objectively scrutinized by critical journalists.
Man escaped Californian wildfire on bicycle
Notwithstanding the ongoing and terrible havoc fires have wreaked across the Los Angeles basin, the BBC this week outlined opportunities that could make the urban area more bike-friendly. Los Angeles has always been viewed as the capital of American automobile culture, and though it features some of the worst traffic problems in the country, it is also a beautiful climate for cycling as many pro riders can attest. The city is looking at ways to decrease its legendary traffic congestion in preparation for the 2028 Olympics and its share of the 2026 World Cup – including greater reliance on rail and other public transportation, and greater incentives and encouragement for bicycle travel. The city has plans for about 100 miles of new bike lanes (not a huge number given the size of the metropolitan area) but at the same time, some local cities are actively trying to remove bicycle lanes, claiming that they make the roads more congested and dangerous. As has been the case in numerous other cities, there seems to be only one certainty with regard to trying to make North American cities more bike-friendly: it is certain to generate heated controversy.
Neilson Powless (USA and EF Education – EasyPost) showing US riders can do it – Gran Piemonte 2024
Our sister publication Beyond the Peloton took a deep dive into the status of elite men’s racing – summarizing the general situation as one of low quantity but high quality. The analysis showed that while the total number of U.S.-based riders in the WorldTour has dropped to a nearly two-decade low of 12, the quality of their performance is near a 15-year high when measured by top-tier wins and PCS points per rider. Both of these numbers are likely due to the fact that there are no true American teams that make it a priority to sign U.S.-based riders; the EF Education–EasyPost team is owned by the Swiss-based EF firm, while Trek’s team has a German title sponsor in Lidl. Hence, every American rider in the WorldTour has to clear a fairly high-performance bar to earn a spot on a WorldTour team and can’t afford to have any sustained dip in performance while holding that spot.
Matteo Jorgenson doing well in Europe
Furthermore, the near-total collapse of professional-level road cycling in the United States has forced the best American non-criterium road racers to make the jump to foreign teams as early as possible, which has led to a “sink or swim” culture which forged stars like Matteo Jorgenson, but which has also seen other talented riders struggle to find their place or fail to thrive. Top American talent is so dispersed that the top four riders in 2024 PCS points terms were on four separate teams, and only two of those teams had more than a single American. These factors are unlikely to change in the near future, but we are likely to see impressive results from the small number of talented young American riders entering the WorldTour. However, given pro cycling’s extremely elite subset of true superstars – often referred to as the Big Six – it is likely to be a long time before any American racers (a la Armstrong or LeMond) are able to generate the kind of results and name recognition that could drive significant interest from the casual stateside audience.
Ilnur Zakarin lost a packet on teammate Marcel Kittel
The rapid growth of legalized sports gambling in the United States has led to legitimate concerns – and a few examples of players making illicit bets about the very games they are competing in – but so far, these occurrences have been far and few between. Sportsbooks have been able to systemically flag such activities by implementing heuristics programs that draw on vast amounts of historical betting data. However, there was a recent anecdote from former WorldTour rider Ilnur Zakarin – bizarrely shared on Facebook – where he outlined how the dinner table behavior of his teammate Marcel Kittel at the 2018 Tour de France prompted him to call in a large bet on Kittel to win the next day’s stage. Kittel did not win, but the incident raises questions about how commonplace it might be in cycling for riders to bet on races in which they are participating. Outside of the threat to the sport’s integrity and how riders might collude or otherwise impact the outcome of the race to cop a wager, this story will almost certainly pique the interest of the sportsbook agencies who offer betting lines on cycling races, and who proactively and often aggressively protect their businesses by reporting violators to law enforcement agencies.
After a significant delay, the Giro d’Italia finally released the route for its 2025 edition, with the major headlines being the inclusion of its foreign start in Albania – which appeared in doubt after the initial route release was delayed – and, secondly, a 20% increase in vertical meters gained vis-à-vis the 2024 edition. Rumors suggested that the delay in releasing the route was due to Albania having second thoughts about paying the agreed-upon €7 million fee to host the opening three stages of the event, but any behind-the-scenes disagreements have apparently been cleared up. The small, secretive, and often controversial Balkan country will serve up three challenging stages, including a tough time trial that will likely break up the GC contenders on Stage 2. Although defending champion Tadej Pogačar is unlikely to defend his 2024 title, the battle for the overall win is likely to be contested among several other big stars, with 2023 winner Primož Roglič (sticking to his 2025 strategy of avoiding Pogačar as much as possible), Visma-Lease a Bike’s newly acquired veteran Simon Yates, and UAE’s wunderkind duo of Juan Ayuso and Isaac del Toro already committed.
# Catch up on pro cycling – and its context within the broader world of sports – with AIRmail … Analysis, Insight and Reflections from The Outer Line. You can subscribe to AIRmail here, and check out The Outer Line’s extensive library of articles on the governance and economics of cycling here. #
The post Chaos in Sports Streaming, Sports Journalism, Gambling in Cycling, American WT Riders & 2025 Giro Route appeared first on PezCycling News.
