What the future of Enduro is looking like.

My advice would be to try as many types of racing you can and follow whatever form of racing you enjoy the most. "All the money" in pretty much all forms of bicycle racing, whether it be cross country, enduro, downhill, cyclocross, or road, typically amounts to just parts and travel covered for all but the very top professionals. Even if EDR as it is known today goes away, I think there will always be cool destination enduro races to participate in - even if the format is a little different with something like Trans Cascadia for example.

There are a lot of parallels w/ adventure racing here; it used to be a globally televised sport w/ big purses/outside sponsors (e.g. Intel) and you could make a decent living as a pro but very hard to televise and very expensive to put on and travel to (even as top-level amateurs me and my team only ever got travel and expenses and gear plus whatever prize money we won).

It gradually shrank and the big money went away and it's now primarily a participation sport; you can still make money here and there but not a living.

@ALL-MTN-MTB's suggestion is good one, try a bunch of stuff and find what you love and do that.

Enduro 2: Electric Boogaloo 

enduro is not going anywhere, EDR, who knows... time will tell.. so instead of following , more rido-ing... after all, this is not a spectating sport.. we practice it , and follow it if we can..

Enduro is not going anywhere, tons of people enjoy this format, it existed before the EWS, and it will exist after.
Competitive Electric Enduro doesn't make sense, it removes aspects from the sport (the endurance part of the sport) and creates problems (motor power regulations and control).
If UCI fails the sport, maybe existing race promoters could band together to connect their event into a world series..

all jokes aside i fully agree.  enduro came from grassroots racing, it will continue there independently of whatever the UCI and Discovery choose to do with their elite version of it. 

@RealRiders if you have aspirations of racing professionally, its not just enduro where it's difficult to earn UCI points in the States / North America. Most of mtb elite racing is Euro-centric (and road formats too), but that's more of a UCI issue than that of any particular discipline / race format. If anything, enduro is probably is (or was) one of the least Euro-centric mtb formats. 

My son (just turned 16) and I have been having similar conversations. He's won a BME age-category. Podiumed at nationals. Raced and did well in "pro" in our regional races. He's very focused and very talented on the bike. His goal has always been to get a ride to Europe by the time he's 18, and he's feeling like it's very unlikely to happen with enduro at this point. To the point that he's flirting with DH some. DH probably suits his skillset better than enduro in all honesty (fitness stages are his weakness whereas the technical, steep and chunky stages are his strength), but living in Arkansas... it's just hard to travel to DH races not to mention having anywhere nearby to practice. 

We're also insistent that he's not going to home school or do virtual school, so that puts him behind a lot of the other up-and-coming kids that he races against and makes it even harder to get to races that aren't fairly close. Max Beapreau and JT Fisher are the two younger Americans I can think of who have managed to break into the EDR with team rides. There's a whole host of quick youngsters out there now all over the country, but I don't really think that there's enough rides out there for them to race the EDR. But... that makes our continental races that much better, I suppose.

It's a tough road but a fun one, I would suggest your son get some cash from some local business outside the industry and take off for Europe for the summer. Find a roommate in Morzine or in Finale Ligure then hitch a ride or get to know people to hit few races in Europe. It's the hard way but he will see tremendous growth by being exposed to a new environment. It worked well in the past for other Americans like Dak or Dante and for a bunch of kiwis too. It's really difficult to find a team and to progress at the European type of riding if you are not around. Money and support will come if he keeps grinding.

We also talked about that Morzine plan. B-practice pod talked about that being a better use of money than chasing regional races all over the United States. Right now, we all love traveling to races and such together, but we could easily send him alone to Europe for the summer for the amount of money we spend traveling regionally as a family to races (not that we'd ever just foot the bill for him to head to Europe). 

Maybe I'm misreading but it does sound like there are some misaligned expectations of outcomes here. I think racing is super cool, and I'd encourage anyone to go chase their racing dream, whatever that may be, but be eyes wide open. 99.9999% of racers will not see a financial return on the effort they put in. In fact, most won't see any financial return at all even if they have okay results at the pro level. This all the while taking incredible risk that is far in excess of most other sports  with no real safety net, D1 scholarship or other incentive of any kind. Be real with where you are, your actual ability and the future you could otherwise have.  

Do not compare bike racing to ball sports. They are no the same...and I'd argue chasing a financial return even in the ball sport world is borderline insane. 

Again, I'm not saying to forget racing or give up the dream, but there is a way to play the hand you are dealt in an optimal way for now, and later, without really giving much in the way of performance up. 

YMMV.
 

In my experience as a sponsored athlete, I found a surprising amount of sponsorship and financial support by being a familiar face at regional races, where I was able to consistently be at or near the top of the results sheet. By contrast, chasing the national series or the World Cup dream was EXPENSIVE (like 5-10x more expensive) and getting anything less than a podium at a national was effectively meaningless to sponsors.

As a sponsored athlete, it's important to remember that your job is not to be fast or win races. Your job is to sell bike products. If going fast or winning races helps you sell bike products, then great! But no one cares about your results in and of themselves; not sponsors, not other riders, and especially not customers. The impact of your results is based on whether people already know your face, your name, your life story, your instagram handle, your youtube channel, the trails you dig, your website, your clothing company, etc. You have to be a marketable person outside of racing if you want your racing to be supported by sponsors (unless you're currently winning the UCI World Cup).

For me personally, I found that going to the same races year after year, having my own website, digging trails, making videos, and just generally having my own personal brand and pseudonym (TEAM ROBOT) were all powerful marketing tools. So while I think the (seemingly inevitable) death of the Enduro World Series is bad for the sport and for racers who've made their name on the EWS, I don't think that means it'll be impossible to find sponsorship support for enduro racers. Like others have said, enduro was a grassroots sport from the beginning. Instagram and youtube are tailor-made for grassroots events, you just have to tell a good story!

Racing in general: team robot said it allready

the future of enduro.? Thats def gonna be like superD, imho, driven by the participants, and the core culture leaders that drive this thing. Uci really did let eso kill it. And while thats kinda sad, its the world we live in and that world has a lot of space for yhevtrue grass roots, the pirates, and the underground…… you just wont get rich.

Came back to write what Robot already wrote. Reason I skipped it in my first post was the line between "racer" and "influencer" remains fairly well defined in my head. IE, if you are really trying to be a professional racer, your results should be the thing that matters most. 

Reality however is marketing (selling shit) is what drives both racing and influencing/content/"media creation", which is a very different model than your traditional ball sports athletics (where your underlying ability in the sport matters most).

I wouldn't be surprised if the highest paid mountain bike athlete in the next 10 years doesn't race or compete at all. Mr. Beast of mountain biking will be a much more valuable asset than any one trick (racing) pony could ever imagine. 

Obviously, anyone reading this knows you can race, compete and be a content bemouth, but you have to give the market what it wants, and it has to be done in a way that makes brands want to work with you (and drives eyeballs).

 

Hey Jeff, the stick and ball sport comparison is good. If you play for the New York Yankees, your job with the Yankees really is as simple as winning ball games. You win, they pay you more. You don't win, they pay you less. Yeah, there are some exceptional players in stick and ball sports that bring value to their team beyond the win/loss record (team leadership, big name player, great interviews, etc), but a team will still drop or trade that player in an instant if they think they can bump the win/loss ratio by doing so.

I've heard a lot of jilted athletes or parents of athletes in bike racing who feel like they're entitled to support because of their race results, and they're pissed because they didn't get what they think they deserve from x, y, z bike company. I think they're expecting a paradigm like stick and ball sports, but it just doesn't work like that here.

I think marketers in the bike industry are lazy or bad. To sell a product you need first to bring brand awareness but you also need to prove your value proposition. Influencers do a good job of bringing eyeballs to a product and it's easily quantifiable which makes the marketer's job easier but do they prove the value of the product.. for the most part, no they don't. At the opposite the racer excell at proving the value of a product.. is it easy to measure?.. not as much... I hope at some point brands will realize if they just rely on influencers (who I believe don't influence much) they will fail to build value around their brand..  I still believe that nothing sells better an enduro bike more than a fast enduro racer.. or maybe I'm nostalgic of a time when racer's jobs was to race..

Keep in mind that outside of eventually earning money there is much more to racing, it's exhilarating, and fulfilling, it induces passion and it's a way to be alive..
It's our job as customers and fans to demonstrate that we cherish racing and support mtb as a sport instead of an entertainment so brands get back to our DNA instead of playing at the click game.
 

Agreed.

Frameworks will be a really interesting case next year as they are 100% a "race brand" and don't have much, if any, marketing otherwise. They are also poised to have the DH frames on the top step of some WC podiums next year, and the not-even-for-sale-yet enduro frame is the current US National Enduro Champion. Perceived value should be huge.

Win on Sunday, sell on Monday.

One aspect of sponsoring high profile racers/race teams that I think you might be missing is the level of risk from the brand's perspective. Elite racers can be very hard on equipment, and an equipment malfunction in a live broadcasted event can be very damaging to a brand's reputation with consumers who don't understand that many of the elite racers can brake most products at any time they wish (especially tires, wheels, and drivetrain components). Add that to the fact that these racers often get interviewed right after finishing while they are emotionally charged... In my opinion the risks associated with sponsoring high profile racers greatly outweighs the rewards when you consider the alternative risk associated with influencers/content creators. I would also guess that the MTB market as a whole does not factor racing/sponsorship into their buying decisions at all.

All that being said, I personally love racing and I've been trying to be better about supporting the brands that support people worth supporting.

At the same time, I think you could make an argument that it's also a content creator brand with all the youtube stuff he produces. It's basically content creation that revolves around racing in my opinion, which is a really cool balance of the 2 sides of sports marketing in our industry.

The way Neko is doing the videos is amazing, catering to such a wide audience, including the hardcore bike nerds, with the separate series of videos (Frameworks and In depth).

Enduro will always be there. It’s the gran fondo of the mtb world. 

EDR it will be there for a couple more years at least.  A worlds in 2024 and 2025 shows this. Marketing budgets from teams change yearly, the current situation in the industry is just part of this. 
 

some new teams may help route the pathway for enduro and how much electricity is involved… 

Perspective:

Just because the UCI holds a world championship for a discipline doesn’t mean it is strong or globally recognized-  4x and XC Eliminator still award rainbow jerseys, and they are about as niche as artistic cycling or cycleball.

The major bike brands used to sponsor 4x(when it was a staple of the gravity world cup) and XCE(when it was being used to set the grid for XCO on the World Cup).

Ones the UCI has it’s monopolistic fingers on a sport, it doesn’t let go…

UCI isnt failing the sport.

It's a tv channel/promoter with a bottom-line decision maker that "bought" the series then steers the direction it follows.

UCI basically delivers a rule book (heavily amended and influenced by eso), world titles and drug testing. They are by no means influencing how the series gets delivered.

How can one guy put together an hour plus mash up of racing around the world but no one can do anything like this for the EDR?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&si=lkly5uGi1BFhRM_7&v=cFom5AX…

I have no clue how he is funded or if teams pay him for his content but this is an absurd amount of coverage on races most people have never heard of

I will never not hate the sound of Mx bikes.