Movingtarget, add the world-wide economic collapse just after those scandals and you have even bigger problems to attempt to overcome and recover from.
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I was nurturing my post and got out-posted by you.
In a triathlon-like model, it's two races within the race. Not about the overall win, but in the process some dudes will eat humble-pie. Longo, Vos and the likes could and can kick a$$. And I bet the women level would rise due to the competition and make them even better.
Maybe wrong. Maybe right.
I was in a bar in South Jersey when the US played and lost to Germany in the World Cup 5 years ago. Within two minutes, all the TVs were on baseball...same thing as cycling and other sports: there's a human thing about watching what you like, what makes you feel good, and just watch what you're good at.Pro cycling in the USA seems to be at the crossroads. The demise of previously dominant US teams and other quite successful ones like BMC has obviously had an effect. The end of the BMC development team before the pro tour team wasn't a good sign. But I am sure that other countries are also struggling, according to the amount of races that have disappeared from the calendar, some well established and prestigeous. It has also been noticeable in Spain and Italy, two of the stalwarts of pro cycling. I still don't think the sport has fully recovered from the scandals of the past twenty years and probably never will. Some sponsors have probably been scared off permanently not to mention the drop in TV time many countries give the sport now. No surprise that the organizers of the three grand tours are always scrambling to refresh their profile and keep viewers watching. I think the chipping away of traditional stage racing formats will continue and a shorter format and the enhanced use of technology will be a given in a bid to retain viewers.
Pretty much hits the nail on the head. I will add though that in the USA cycling is a past-time -- a personal activity, and there is not much economic benefit of riding a bicycle. Your "car country".Cycling? The US is a big country, big commutes, it's the car country. Bikes are for kids and then they turn 16. After that, not much, or older riders who understand the benefits of riding a bike. There's no structure where I live for kids to go into cycling. So unless an American dominates, there will be little exposure, I'm afraid.
Alien riders can do AdH in 37 minutes, normal ones can do it in 39 minutes, I would be happy climbing it in 55. Is that less merit to suffer for 55 minutes instead of 37? Women riders are not asking for equal pay, as far as I know.I guess my main point is that the expectations of the female cyclists wanting exact same pay and television time is out-of-bounds, realistically. Even noting the new sports you mention, i.e. MMA, it didn't happen over night. It took years of marketing and poor attendance to get there. It didn't mature because there were participants in the sport saying they deserved equal pay/attendance to some other sport (for instance NBA). It matured because they had a product that people wanted to buy -- OVER TIME. My whole point is what I said in the first post --let the market decide.
Of course the market is manipulated. Oh gosh! Realizing that is not an epiphany. Why would we have the MMA you brought up if the market wasn't manipulated? They started their own sport and suceeded, and in the meantime pretty much decimated the established boxing industry/sport. You missed the point though that I made. No one in the (early) MMA wanted or thought they ought to have as much television time and be paid as much as other sports. They did their own marketing, and pushed it w/o the participants saying they needed equal pay. From the reports discussed earlier in the thread, the females are wanting equal number of races and prizes as men. Also, see posts #489 and a few after about new laws for equal pay.Alien riders can do AdH in 37 minutes, normal ones can do it in 39 minutes, I would be happy climbing it in 55. Is that less merit to suffer for 55 minutes instead of 37? Women riders are not asking for equal pay, as far as I know.
Market is deciding, so what's your point? But as I highlighted, the market can be manipulated by people who want to feed you what they think is best for you, keep you ignorant, make money by keeping the status quo.
A ton of great points here, opportunity and courses come to the forefront for me. UCI, and the big players, ASO and the rest need to commit to the sport, not to their short term interest, see growth and be risk takers.The problem is that that is a paradox, as RedheadDane stated previously. The market can only decide if both are given equal opportunity to sink or swim, which at present, in most sports, is not the case. Men's cycling is televised to a far, far greater extent than women's cycling, and thus we do not have the same opportunities to form attachments to any of the competitors, and in order to follow the sport closely, you have to be pretty dedicated - take it from me - as much of the time you're relying on a group of unpaid enthusiasts hunting out local TV coverage, and mechanics, DSes and soigneurs posting updates of race situations from the road. It's understandable if many fans simply aren't willing to go to that extent, and therefore don't have the same attachment to the women's competitors. As a result, each and every race that does get broadcast in any detail is important as a shop window, because a bad race spectacle like Copenhagen 2011 here and there can be much more damaging for future prospects of coverage than men's cycling, where we see literally dozens of featureless flat stages a year with artificial break of the day action, and nobody bats an eye. Having no TV for mountainous and selective races like the Tour de l'Ardêche or classics like La Flèche Wallonne or Liège-Bastogne-Liège, while featuring start-to-finish coverage of a pan-flat crit course like London or the Champs Elysées La Course, also does not help, because a large part of why we're willing to sit through a lot of those terrible men's races is because of the counterpart epic, the Rifugio Gardeccia stage, the 2016 Paris-Roubaix, the Formigal.
There is certainly a strong possibility that if women's cycling were to be broadcast on an equal footing to men's, the increased depth in the men's péloton, increased familiarity with the competitors and so on would result in the market deciding in favour of the more established men's product. Of course. But at least then the market has decided based on equal opportunities, which there aren't at present. You mentioned MMA, but to a large extent combat sports are dependent on their personalities more than any other sport; the runaway success of, and successful marketing campaigns around, Ronda Rousey meant that when she was toppled, it would automatically be a big deal and would make a relative star of whoever beat her. However, I'm 99% certain that the average person on the street has more chance of knowing who Rousey is than who Holly Holm or Amanda Nunes are, just as I'm sure more people who don't follow the sport can name Conor McGregor than could name Nate Diaz or, at least outside of Russia and the Caucasus, Khabib Nurmagomedov. Cycling having its cast of hundreds does not really allow for that kind of marketing crystalised around a single individual unless their status is ingrained to an extent that really isn't possible within the current confines of the women's race calendar, otherwise Marianne Vos would be a much bigger deal with the wider world than she is.
A strange paradox that I have noted with women's (road) cycling is that, bizarrely, the performance levels of the women are much more often judged against those of the men than in those sports where the women actually do the exact same course as the men (which of course they generally don't in road cycling - often using the same obstacles or circuits but a different overall parcours). You would think that, seeing as their sports enable absolutely direct comparison, athletes or track cyclists would get more direct comparisons, but generally people are prepared to let Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce or Mariya Lasitskene get on with being the best women in the world at their chosen disciplines and not devalue their accomplishments because the equivalent men can run faster or jump higher.
In some sports, in fact, the women's events are actually the more popular. A good example is biathlon, where several years of domination by a single athlete - Martin Fourcade - and the concentration of the majority of high end talents into a small number of nations - Germany, France, Russia, Norway, Austria - have rendered the men's races far more predictable than the women's races, especially the relays where there are several teams which have two or three top level athletes but not a full quartet, leading to increased unpredictability and a wider range of potential outcomes.
The other problem for women's cycling is in the bias of parcours. There are far fewer mountain stages in women's cycling, and guess which are the most watched stages of stage races in the biggest men's races? There are several high-profile races in recent years where the women's parcours differed from the men's, meaning that even where the women's race is televised, they're still not given equal market opportunities because the women are being presented with a less interesting parcours to do something with - not getting to go into the desert in Doha, not getting to do the final climbs in either the ITT or Road Race in Innsbruck, not getting to do Mount Fløyen in Bergen, the absolute travesty that is the 2020 Olympic Road Race - not to mention having the city centre crits instead of a genuine race in London to allow hobbyists to ride the men's race parcours. But the women have climbed the Mortirolo. They've climbed Monte Zoncolan. They've climbed Mont Ventoux in a fairly small race even. They've handled the Koppenberg, the Muur van Geraardsbergen, the Stelvio, Madonna del Ghisallo, Jaizkibel, the Izoard, Xorret del Catí, and nobody died from the exertion being too much for their poor little feminine bodies.
In the Giro in 2016, we had a stage where the best young rider, 5th on GC, attacked with the queen of the mountains and then dropped her on the first climb of the day, trying to ride the whole stage solo; on the penultimate climb of the day the maglia rosa and 2nd on GC attacked and rode across to her, dropped her at the top of the climb, only for her to chase them down on the descent, then the rest of the GC favourites had to ride hell for leather in the valley to the final climb to catch them, leading to a dozen exhausted riders battling tooth and nail on the final MTF and leading to a top 5 spread over under a minute but a top 10 spread by 6 minutes. Fifteen minutes of coverage were provided. On the same day, this Tour de France stage was broadcast for its full duration of 4 hours and 43 minutes. A two man break of Jan Barta and Yukiya Arashiro sat a couple of minutes ahead of the péloton for most of it before Mark Cavendish won a sprint. Are you telling me that the market couldn't stand to cut some of the coverage of that Tour stage down to make some room for a bit of coverage of that Giro stage?
Movingtarget, add the world-wide economic collapse just after those scandals and you have even bigger problems to attempt to overcome and recover from.
The problem is that that is a paradox, as RedheadDane stated previously. The market can only decide if both are given equal opportunity to sink or swim, which at present, in most sports, is not the case. Men's cycling is televised to a far, far greater extent than women's cycling, and thus we do not have the same opportunities to form attachments to any of the competitors, and in order to follow the sport closely, you have to be pretty dedicated - take it from me - as much of the time you're relying on a group of unpaid enthusiasts hunting out local TV coverage, and mechanics, DSes and soigneurs posting updates of race situations from the road. It's understandable if many fans simply aren't willing to go to that extent, and therefore don't have the same attachment to the women's competitors. As a result, each and every race that does get broadcast in any detail is important as a shop window, because a bad race spectacle like Copenhagen 2011 here and there can be much more damaging for future prospects of coverage than men's cycling, where we see literally dozens of featureless flat stages a year with artificial break of the day action, and nobody bats an eye. Having no TV for mountainous and selective races like the Tour de l'Ardêche or classics like La Flèche Wallonne or Liège-Bastogne-Liège, while featuring start-to-finish coverage of a pan-flat crit course like London or the Champs Elysées La Course, also does not help, because a large part of why we're willing to sit through a lot of those terrible men's races is because of the counterpart epic, the Rifugio Gardeccia stage, the 2016 Paris-Roubaix, the Formigal.
There is certainly a strong possibility that if women's cycling were to be broadcast on an equal footing to men's, the increased depth in the men's péloton, increased familiarity with the competitors and so on would result in the market deciding in favour of the more established men's product. Of course. But at least then the market has decided based on equal opportunities, which there aren't at present. You mentioned MMA, but to a large extent combat sports are dependent on their personalities more than any other sport; the runaway success of, and successful marketing campaigns around, Ronda Rousey meant that when she was toppled, it would automatically be a big deal and would make a relative star of whoever beat her. However, I'm 99% certain that the average person on the street has more chance of knowing who Rousey is than who Holly Holm or Amanda Nunes are, just as I'm sure more people who don't follow the sport can name Conor McGregor than could name Nate Diaz or, at least outside of Russia and the Caucasus, Khabib Nurmagomedov. Cycling having its cast of hundreds does not really allow for that kind of marketing crystalised around a single individual unless their status is ingrained to an extent that really isn't possible within the current confines of the women's race calendar, otherwise Marianne Vos would be a much bigger deal with the wider world than she is.
A strange paradox that I have noted with women's (road) cycling is that, bizarrely, the performance levels of the women are much more often judged against those of the men than in those sports where the women actually do the exact same course as the men (which of course they generally don't in road cycling - often using the same obstacles or circuits but a different overall parcours). You would think that, seeing as their sports enable absolutely direct comparison, athletes or track cyclists would get more direct comparisons, but generally people are prepared to let Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce or Mariya Lasitskene get on with being the best women in the world at their chosen disciplines and not devalue their accomplishments because the equivalent men can run faster or jump higher.
In some sports, in fact, the women's events are actually the more popular. A good example is biathlon, where several years of domination by a single athlete - Martin Fourcade - and the concentration of the majority of high end talents into a small number of nations - Germany, France, Russia, Norway, Austria - have rendered the men's races far more predictable than the women's races, especially the relays where there are several teams which have two or three top level athletes but not a full quartet, leading to increased unpredictability and a wider range of potential outcomes.
The other problem for women's cycling is in the bias of parcours. There are far fewer mountain stages in women's cycling, and guess which are the most watched stages of stage races in the biggest men's races? There are several high-profile races in recent years where the women's parcours differed from the men's, meaning that even where the women's race is televised, they're still not given equal market opportunities because the women are being presented with a less interesting parcours to do something with - not getting to go into the desert in Doha, not getting to do the final climbs in either the ITT or Road Race in Innsbruck, not getting to do Mount Fløyen in Bergen, the absolute travesty that is the 2020 Olympic Road Race - not to mention having the city centre crits instead of a genuine race in London to allow hobbyists to ride the men's race parcours. But the women have climbed the Mortirolo. They've climbed Monte Zoncolan. They've climbed Mont Ventoux in a fairly small race even. They've handled the Koppenberg, the Muur van Geraardsbergen, the Stelvio, Madonna del Ghisallo, Jaizkibel, the Izoard, Xorret del Catí, and nobody died from the exertion being too much for their poor little feminine bodies.
In the Giro in 2016, we had a stage where the best young rider, 5th on GC, attacked with the queen of the mountains and then dropped her on the first climb of the day, trying to ride the whole stage solo; on the penultimate climb of the day the maglia rosa and 2nd on GC attacked and rode across to her, dropped her at the top of the climb, only for her to chase them down on the descent, then the rest of the GC favourites had to ride hell for leather in the valley to the final climb to catch them, leading to a dozen exhausted riders battling tooth and nail on the final MTF and leading to a top 5 spread over under a minute but a top 10 spread by 6 minutes. Fifteen minutes of coverage were provided. On the same day, this Tour de France stage was broadcast for its full duration of 4 hours and 43 minutes. A two man break of Jan Barta and Yukiya Arashiro sat a couple of minutes ahead of the péloton for most of it before Mark Cavendish won a sprint. Are you telling me that the market couldn't stand to cut some of the coverage of that Tour stage down to make some room for a bit of coverage of that Giro stage?
But is that a reflection of women's sports specifically, or those women's sports, many of which are comparatively underdeveloped? At events where the women and the men both compete as part of the same event, there isn't the same gulf in prestige that there is with a lot of sports, especially team sports where the women's side of the sport has been relatively underdeveloped (you mention football, softball and cricket there, for example) other than a few games where the women's events are comparatively well-known in relation to the men's events, but these are few and far between, and often in sports with comparatively lower audiences, such as field hockey or volleyball. Handball is a potential exception, I guess. Look at events like swimming galas, cross-country skiing, biathlon, grand slam tennis tournaments or athletics events, and things tend not to vary so much. I suppose you could look at audience figures or live attendance for the individual events on the tennis circuit for men and for women, and that might tell different stories, but certainly at the Grand Slams there doesn't seem to be the same divide in esteem between the genders' competitions (and if anything, at least for the first week, the women's events are usually more interesting because the same three men have dominated competition for several years).TV ratings for women's sports is problematic. I know that many men simply won't watch any women's sport at all. Many think it's a joke and not worth their while. I don't how the Women's Football World Cup rated. I watch some women's cycling, tennis and softball and bits and pieces of other sports but it would be a small percentage of my viewing overall. I know in Australia that some women's sports are becoming more popular like cricket and Australian rules football and they have had to fight for an increase in games and payments, while cycling for women at the pro level in Australia is struggling. Payment issues, and attracting viewers with so much sport going on has it's own set of issues and do sponsors think they are getting the exposure they want with female sports ? In many cases probably not.
And the ratings for the men's ToC were ... what? Ballpark figures will do.TV ratings for women's sports is problematic
But is that a reflection of women's sports specifically, or those women's sports, many of which are comparatively underdeveloped? At events where the women and the men both compete as part of the same event, there isn't the same gulf in prestige that there is with a lot of sports, especially team sports where the women's side of the sport has been relatively underdeveloped (you mention football, softball and cricket there, for example) other than a few games where the women's events are comparatively well-known in relation to the men's events, but these are few and far between, and often in sports with comparatively lower audiences, such as field hockey or volleyball. Handball is a potential exception, I guess. Look at events like swimming galas, cross-country skiing, biathlon, grand slam tennis tournaments or athletics events, and things tend not to vary so much. I suppose you could look at audience figures or live attendance for the individual events on the tennis circuit for men and for women, and that might tell different stories, but certainly at the Grand Slams there doesn't seem to be the same divide in esteem between the genders' competitions (and if anything, at least for the first week, the women's events are usually more interesting because the same three men have dominated competition for several years).
The problem with some women's sport as I said before is the competitive level is low and the skill level is low. College basketball is a good example. The women's side is so much lower than the men's side that is very painful to watch if it isn't the top maybe 4-6 teams playing against each other. The competitive level is very low and part of that is due to how poor the skill level is. Women's skiing/snowboarding is a totally different thing. The skill level is on par with the men and the competitive level is also on par with the men. In those sports there are times the women's side is better and more interesting to watch than the men's side. I agree with whoever mentioned biathlon. The women are just as skilled as the men and the competitive level is higher. My husband and I are willing to watch women's sports (if we enjoy the sport) as long as both the skill level and competitive levels are high. We aren't going to watch soccer because neither of us care enough about the sport to watch in the first place. From what I've seen of women cycling (which isn't much) the skill level is high and with a proper course the competitive level can be good. Part of the problem is that they do need good/proper courses which they don't always get. I think that's one reason so many like the women's versions of both Strade Bianche and San Sebastian. Both of those courses are, although shorter than the men's, good solid courses for the women to race on. Of course in the US neither of those races (men's side) are broadcast in the US, so of course the women's aren't going to be either and I'd love to have those two races on TV here.
We're missing a big point in the Murica beside TV exposure. USACycling and traffic liability laws have killed events in the US unless they are parking lot criteriums with full volunteer staffing. Long road races have little chance without deep local support which were part of smaller town events, traditionally. Now the Feds, State, County and City law enforcement have their hands out for insurance coverage and usually a demand that an organizer hire off-duty officers, on overtime pay to control key intersections.I was in a bar in South Jersey when the US played and lost to Germany in the World Cup 5 years ago. Within two minutes, all the TVs were on baseball...same thing as cycling and other sports: there's a human thing about watching what you like, what makes you feel good, and just watch what you're good at.
Design, tech won't do it I'm afraid. It starts with kids, parents being involved, et caetera...in that light, football/soccer is getting bigger and bigger in the US. There is hope.
Cycling? The US is a big country, big commutes, it's the car country. Bikes are for kids and then they turn 16. After that, not much, or older riders who understand the benefits of riding a bike. There's no structure where I live for kids to go into cycling. So unless an American dominates, there will be little exposure, I'm afraid.
We're missing a big point in the Murica beside TV exposure. USACycling and traffic liability laws have killed events in the US unless they are parking lot criteriums with full volunteer staffing. Long road races have little chance without deep local support which were part of smaller town events, traditionally. Now the Feds, State, County and City law enforcement have their hands out for insurance coverage and usually a demand that an organizer hire off-duty officers, on overtime pay to control key intersections.
Having larger participation would amortize these costs but the egg hasn't hatched that many chickens so races disappear. Also disappearing is the younger fan base that would tune into the rare NBC broadcasting of the Tour of Cal that has included women and men. Considering the scale and cost of the endeavor versus commercial exposure it's likely the prize lists could become the tipping point. As it was; the women's Tour of Cal paid almost everyone that raced as the fields were smaller and the prize list was deep.
People ask me constantly if I use Zwift, Peloton or go to the newest indoor spinatorium to compete. When I respond by asking where the same person rides outdoors or what bike they own more than half the time the answer is "no" to both options due to a perception of danger. US participation in field sports is very high, people get hurt but entire families still invest time in baseball, soccer, field hockey...all other things. The organizing costs per participant are much lower for the leagues. Parents pay the burden of transportation, training, etc.
It'd be interesting to know what percentage of Londoners and Parisiens prefer indoor training to outdoor exposure now as opposed to 10 years ago.
One word. Velodromes. We have virtually none of them in the US.
No "Lance Armstrong type" dominant US contenders to bring in the mass viewers
We have several in our region and participation is flat to down. Youth programs are available but the cost of entry to racing is much higher than other sports. Young riders that do participate are largely following parents that race as well from what I can see. They also give it up more quickly once they face up to senior age groups. Cycling's a tough sport with very little immediate gratification. How many people that race actually ever win an event; let alone win often enough to be motivated by it? Most of us love cycling because we love to ride. Racing tends to be a different beast in the US. There is huge participation in charity and non-competitive group rides, though.One word. Velodromes. We have virtually none of them in the US.