Analysis: 2014 UCI Mountain Bike World Cup Bidding Guide

"Hosting a round of the 2013 UCI Mountain Bike World Cup presented by Shimano is a major undertaking. However, it is one that promises to be unforgettable for the hosts and gretly appreciated by athletes and fans.[sic]" Those are the mistyped words which open the official guide to bidding for a round of the 2014 Mountain Bike World Cup series. Why the guide is talking about 2013 in the 2014 bidding guide and why nobody removed "gretly" from an important official document is beyond us, but we dive in amongst the typing errors and meaningless corporate nonsense to examine the guide.

While applications closed 1 April and the document states that the announcement of the 2014 schedule will be made 14 June, this guide doesn't change much from year-to-year, so it's an interesting look at what the current venues go through to host these races and what you'd have to think about if you wanted to bring one to your local mountain.


1. Bid File Introduction


Ok, let's get this out of the way now. It would be all-too-easy to spend this whole article getting irritated/depressed/confused by the way the thing is written. This is the kind of language the document uses throughout. What they are trying to say is "we put all this information in one place to make bidding easier," but yeah, that wouldn't sound professional, right? It's also full of typing errors. Why do we mention this? This kind of official document may well be a major part of how our sport is introduced to many people who are both influential and none-too-familiar with it. The errors in the document go well past the realm of the minor pedantic type, to the point where we have to say that it leaves us asking questions of how professionally mountain biking is being represented. Ask anybody who receives sponsorship requests from riders, the first thing they nearly all look for is a basic level of spelling and grammar in the applications, yet it is lacking here at one of the highest levels of our sport...


Nobody should really be surprised by this point, but it's an important one. Cycling's international infrastructure is based around this relationship between the UCI and the federations. So, if you want to hold a World Cup, you need to play nice with your national federation. In some countries this is going to be easier and more productive than others.

3. Organisation Fee


While we don't have €15,000 lying around in small change, in the world of international sports, that's jokeshop money. If you still have any thought that the World Cup is a big-money sport, then you just need to contrast that next to the multi-million dollar deals to hold a Formula One or a Moto GP race. However, you do need to remember that to put the race on will cost a lot more than that, this is just the fee to hold the event, you're also going to need a venue and infrastructure, but we'll get to that shortly.

4. Marketing Rights


This is one of the big draws for event organisers. However, there is a decision to be made here: do you use this space to promote yourself, or sell this space to your own advertisers to help you fund the race? Many venues opt to deck out much of the course with their own banners, so that they are present in all the media that comes out of the race.



If you do want to bring your own sponsors in, then there are some very strict limitations on what you can and can't do. Maybe the most interesting things here are the categories set aside for the series sponsor as this indicates where the UCI are looking for the main sponsors. Any organisation you want to bring in as a sponsor has to be approved by the UCI first. They are very clear that the series sponsors need to be protected as they are the ones making the investment in the whole series. There is also a moral element as to who can be accepted, sports betting, tobacco and pornography are explicitly forbidden. Although, in case the guys from Masters of Dirt are reading this, Golden Times could be an event sponsor as "massage parlours" are ok.


Title sponsor, presenting sponsor, you, other sponsors. That is the clear hierarchy for how the race sponsors will be presented and is reassurance for event organisers of their place in the grand scheme of things. Another important point they mention is that there will be no other location-based sponsors, so if you're running a race in Italy, the UCI won't come in and plaster the place with 'Visit Spain' banners.


The phrase 'ambush marketing' makes this sound much more fun than it actually is. Ambush marketing is when someone comes to an event, unofficially (ie. without paying), and covers it in their crap. This creates is a headache for the organisers who need to spend time removing it to make sure the companies who have paid for advertising space get their proper exposure. Without those companies who pay to advertise at the events, companies who invest in the sport, they simply don't happen.


While it would be nice to live in a world where people put these races on solely for the love of it, the reality is this things need to make sense financially. Depending on your business model or your goals, this might be the part of the guide where you can make it all add up.

5. Television

This title is actually slightly misleading - it covers the official video production, which today expands well beyond producing just television. In fact, the rights state that it covers all "multimedia rights." This is nothing unusual, try going to film a Formula One or MotoGP race if you don't believe us - you won't even get close enough to the track to film anything worth keeping.


This is worth a closer look. If you watch the races live, you'll notice that there are usually gaps in the feed, sections of the track that aren't on camera. When you realise how much hardware and how many people they have there on the hillside, you can really appreciate how much infrastructure you would need to completely cover a downhill race. This is all provided by the UCI and if you refer back to the €15,000 Euro race fee and start doing the maths about how much a cameraman and equipment costs per weekend, you're going to be lucky to have much change after this. Obviously, the maths aren't that simple, but it definitely puts things into perspective about how much one of these races really costs to put on. The document goes on to list the different outputs from each race, to summarise this it is a 26 minutes 1080p highlight programme of each race that will be available online, two 3 minute news clips per gender per race, a live HD feed of the race and "international distribution" of the footage. In certain corners there is much debate about how the UCI manage the video rights and footage of the races, but this is not the place to get into that.

6. Responsibilities of the UCI/7. Responsibilities of the OC

What is of real interest here is what responsibilities are taken on by the "OC" (this term is never clarified in the document, but we will assume it refers to the organisers). It is interesting to see that the anti-doping and insurance costs are borne by the local organisation. Timing cabling is an important note as the timekeeping system is provided by the UCI, but the responsibility for putting in the infrastructure for it is done locally.

11. Technical Information


With downhill this should be fairly self-explanatory, it's nice to see that they do note that downhill should be 100% descending. The question we find ourselves asking is how did some of the Eliminator courses we have seen this last year get through these criteria? We're not quite sure how tarmac roads fit into any of those criteria...