In this week’s AIRmail newsletter, The Outer Line takes an in-depth look at trending cycling news: 2025 Rwanda World championships at risk, MvdP is the greatest CX racer ever, WBD shocks British cycling fans, new sports gambling concerns and new UCI rules.
# 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:
- 2025 Rwanda World Championships at Risk?
- MvdP is the Greatest Cyclocross Racer Ever
- Warner Bros.-Discovery Move Shocks British Cycling Fans
- New Sports Gambling Concerns
- New UCI Rules on Carbon Monoxide and WT Event Participation
The UCI thinks the Rwanda Worlds are not at risk
A drama unfolding in Rwanda over the last two years may be coming to a head, putting the 2025 road cycling UCI World Championships at risk. The military, political, and humanitarian crisis just across its border with the Democratic Republic of Congo erupted over the past few weeks as the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group seized control of the regional capital, Goma. This region is critical to the DRC and the global economy because of its immense rare earth mineral and precious metal reserves, and Rwanda has long been accused of deliberately fomenting the ongoing strife through its direct military support of M23 – allegedly, to generate profit from the illegal mining and transport of these natural resources. Many African political analysts believe that area could erupt in another regional war as the DRC seeks to defend its territory; the Goma offensive has already displaced hundreds of thousands of DRC civilians, with many new refugees streaming over the Uganda border and potentially drawing it into the conflict as well. The current high likelihood of regional destabilization could threaten a wide spectrum of mining, tourism, and international business interests, including the Worlds, slated for October in the Rwandan capital of Kigali. The upcoming Tour du Rwanda may be the canary in the coalmine, if it should be disrupted. Either way, reports have already surfaced that key cycling nations may reduce their entourages for the World Championships. For all the UCI’s posturing in its Agenda 2030 initiative, the likelihood that bicycling can play a peacemaking role in Central Africa seems pretty slim at this point. Although the UCI insisted that the event was on track, we wonder if the UCI has a plan B, just in case its premier annual event ends up in the middle of a regional armed conflagration.
Second place for Wout Van Aert, but no battle with Mathieu van der Poel
Amidst a flurry of top-level road racing this weekend, the Cyclocross World Championships stole the show – featuring the 9th World Championship showdown between two of the sport’s biggest stars, Mathieu van der Poel and Wout van Aert. However, not even Van Aert’s late decision to enter the race could stop Van der Poel, who soloed to his record-tying seventh career world title, and sixth in seven years. Van Aert declared the race his best performance of the season, which further underscores Van der Poel’s dominant 45-second win. Van der Poel can legitimately lay claim to the crown of best cyclocross racer of all time, as three-time World Champion Van Aert has now come runner-up to Van der Poel for the fifth time. The CX season-climax may have taken center stage during the jam-packed weekend of road racing, but questions loom about how long Van der Poel and Van Aert will continue to devote a significant portion of their off-season to cyclocross racing – especially since Van der Poel now seems to be able to win at will. More critically for the sport, will cyclocross be able to retain its audience if these two big names pull out?
It was a close finish in Marseille
The GP de Marseille “La Marseillaise” – formerly known as the traditional opening event of the road racing season prior to modern era calendar diversification into the Middle East and Australia – provided several enticing outcomes. While Van der Poel and Van Aert were duking it out in Northern France at the CX World Championships, modest teams made a big impression on the Mediterranean coast over some of the richer WorldTour squads. Ineos showed up with strong representation from stars like Axel Laurance and Josh Tarling, but the tiny Team Flanders-Baloise outfit, who finished 59th in the 2024 UCI World Team Rankings, nearly won the day as Vincent Van Hemelen was pipped by Cofidis’ Valentin Ferron in a photo-finish sprint. This impressive result, which came in a race with six WorldTour teams, highlights the massive amount of depth present in the modern peloton; no matter their budget, smaller teams can still compete against even the most well-funded squads if they play their cards right. Behind the winners, one other notable result was the Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale team’s 18-year-old Paul Seixas, who finished a strong 5th and looked very capable in his professional debut.
Cycling on TV just got very expensive in the UK
Warner Bros. Discovery surprised and angered the British cycling audience when it announced the closure of the Discovery+ streaming service – and this occurred just a year after they launched Discovery+ following the closure of their previous GCN+ app. While GCN+ broadcast every major cycling race for a monthly fee of £6.99, the company has now moved all of its cycling content under its broader TNT Sports network, which costs significantly more at £30.99 per month. The move rightly incited uproar and concern over audience retention in the British cycling market, but the decision by WBD makes economic sense: to cover its massive streaming rights acquisition costs for the most popular sports such as the English Premier League, WBD has to create a bundled service that will attract more subscribers than just the active viewers of those games. In essence – as has been true for decades in the U.S.-based cable-bundling world – the companies that acquire major sports rights need to create a broad offering of different sports so that they can attract a wider range of subscribers, enabling them to offset the costs of acquiring those marquee events.
You need to pay to have TV access to major cycling events
With this bundling change, WBD has created a situation where – even if a high percentage of die-hard cycling fans refuse to fork over the higher fee – the price increase will still allow WBD to realize more revenue per cycling fan than they were before, and save costs due to efficiencies created by consolidating the services. It is also important to remember that while relatively low-cost cycling-specific streaming services were great for cycling superfans, they likely kept the sport’s audience from growing, because few more general sports fans would sign up for a cycling-only service. That much larger fan base will now have access to major cycling events via their TNT Sports package. While it may not offer much solace to U.K. cycling fans, this is basically already the situation in the U.S. – where fans have to subscribe to multiple streaming services and pay even higher prices for commercial-free viewing.
The UCI Track League, not so popular TV viewing
With road cycling’s broadcast future uncertain, it’s instructive to examine the contrasting fortunes of Cyclocross and Track racing this winter, for additional perspectives on how professional cycling’s participation and markets are changing. The season narrative of top Belgian CX races and the UCI World Cups has captured a wide swath of die-hard ‘cross and road fans, eagerly following the march towards last weekend’s inevitable rainbow jersey showdown. On the other hand, the Track World Championships were held in October and the subsequent UCI Track Champions League barely made a dent on behalf of velodrome racing interests in the sport. One only needs compare the viewership tracking on the UCI’s YouTube counter – even for just the October to December timeframe in which both disciplines overlapped – with free-to-view cyclocross races regularly clocking mid-60,000 livestream views for each men’s race and mid-30,000 for the women, but the entirety of its current Champions League series track content only having been viewed by about 40,000 fans in total. The 2025 CX season was one of the most competitive in recent years, particularly for the women, but track cycling has arguably provided a more reliable and accessible racing format to introduce new riders into elite road cycling – so why has the UCI not emphasized track in its programming? And what can the sport’s stakeholders do to refocus on this invaluable talent development pathway?
On course cycle betting in Belgium
Sports gambling integrity issues have resurfaced during one of the most chaotic and lucrative wagering periods in world sport – the run-up to the NFL Super Bowl. The 2024 game-fixing scandal in which basketball player Johntay Porter sabotaged games in which he played – or withdrew from due to mysterious injuries – heated up last week when the NBA announced an investigation into a much bigger star player who may have also been involved in the gambling ring which was indicted late last year. Terry Rozier, a key starter and sixth-man on several prominent teams, and who has earned over $133 million throughout his career, could be facing a lifetime ban from professional basketball should the allegation about his involvement be proven. However, the real story is about the levels to which league-permitted gambling could be corrupted by combinations of external influencers and athletes. In the Porter case, a relatively low-level player on a middling contract could be seen as an easy “mark” for a gambling ring, but Rozier’s clutch reputation as a playoff star presents a different situation.
Colluding to shape the outcomes of races
Regardless of athlete motivation, it’s becoming clearer that professional sports has to come to terms with the fact that the risk vs. reward equation for athlete corruption is nuanced and often undeterrable by “rules” or “consequences.” And more to the point, the cases in question weren’t detected by the league but instead by a third-party data analytics agency – in one instance, negating the betting line, but in others, only detecting the fraud after the bets were won. One of pro road cycling’s greatest narrative strengths is the cooperation of riders, often with different personal and team motivations, to determine the outcomes of races. And as we’ve summarized in prior articles, the potential for misuse of that narrative – riders colluding to shape the outcomes of races to surreptitiously favor a betting line, would be difficult to prove and at least as damaging to the sport as a doping scandal. Now that betting is part of the formal sports league landscape – and betting on cycling is becoming more commonplace – we may be watching an expected outcome: wagering on the bed, and having to sleep in it, too.
In other UCI news this week, the international federation announced new rules against the “repeated inhalation of carbon monoxide,” a fringe training practice that most of the cycling world only learned about in detail over the last year. The inhalation of CO will still be allowed if it is administered in a medical facility and under the guidance of doctors experienced in using the gas for medical reasons – such as for testing an athlete’s oxygen consumption limits. At the same time, the UCI announced new rules for required team participation in WorldTour events. Going forward, all WT teams will be required to participate in all grand tours and monuments, as well as the entirety of the remaining WT calendar, with the exception of one event of the team’s choosing. Presumably this measure was taken to discourage WT teams from skipping major WT events to head to lesser races where it’s easier to pick up critical UCI points – to reduce the risk of relegation. This practice has become fairly widespread, particularly toward the end of last two seasons. At the same time, the challenge of fielding a high-performing team across a full ten-month calendar of events is becoming an increasing liability for the entire sport. ProTour teams are largely unencumbered by the regulation in their quest to gain points for WT promotion, while lesser-capitalized WT teams can understandably become worn down and vulnerable on the relegation hot-seat.
# 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. #
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