I liked Peloton a lot a couple years ago. Good quality paper, photos, stories. They started to go the sponsor route though, and the Outside immediately killed them. I have a few dozen issues on a shelf in my music room.
This reminds me of the Seinfeld Moviephone episode - âWhy donât you just tell me which movie you would like to see?â
Cough medicine! Why didnât I think of that before the survey?
CT was profitable, mostly because of VC from what they have said, so Iâm not sure this is true.
for some reason I canât quickly find the sponsored content portion, but that history of advertising is GOLD
EDIT: and the first 20+ seconds of this, then skip ahead to 1:35
Donât think there is enough ad revenue from cycling industry (which is currently lowering prices and having layoffs across many brands) to keep a site free. The other two remaining players are both subscription as well (Cyclingnews and Velonews). Maybe Pez is free? But in my opinion it was never the same type of site as those big three others.
There are some others that are free in the UK but in my opinion theyâre pretty terrible and mostly unreadable.
Subscription based service is the way forward, no question. Veloclub was a success and allowed them to make many of the podcasts and grow the womenâs cycling content. I would gladly support a new venture from Wade/Caley if it keeps the core tenets from Cyclingtips - same type of writing, independence, etc⊠and I think many others would support it as well.
âSome people say, âGive the customers what they want.â But thatâs not my approach. Our job is to figure out what theyâre going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, âIf Iâd asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, âA faster horse!ââ People donât know what they want until you show it to them. Thatâs why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.â
â Steve Jobs
There isnâtâŠthis has been proven time and time again.
At the end of the day, if you want quality journalism, you are gonna have to pay for it (general statement, not directed towards a specific âyouâ)
Well, the free sites are out there still and many of the subscription sites have imploded from dollar chasing. Bikepacking.com is free* and they put out great content.
I donât know everything and I could be wrong, maybe these principles donât apply to cycling but it makes me wonder exactly how many subscribers would be needed to keep something like CT afloat.
*with the option of supporting and receiving some kind of benefits
The problem with bikereg, other than itâs cost and that itâs outside, is that itâs become the default choice for promoters. There are better options out there, like webscorer. Sure hope to see something get more traction against bikereg.
Probably a fairly decent amount.
My guess is the employees will have to be OK not drawing tremendous salaries at first like any startup - but there is a huge gap in the cycling journalism space ATM. If they start providing the best journalism out there people will pay for it. Will enough people pay to cover everyoneâs salaries and overhead? Probably not for a while. Iâm sure alternate revenue sources will be necessary at some point or some level.
Yeah, I know I get the news quicker these days but curling up on the sofa with a brew looking at bikes is still better in paper form.
Although magazines are now stupid expensive in relation to a book.
/There ends my old man shouts at cloud moment.
I wonder if the could have a more sustainable business by having substantial employee ownership vs the corporate ownership model that outside and others have.
Ronan is coming to Placeholders!!
(Recent announcement on the podcast feed about a new geek warning pod)
Cycling shops have often been employee owned. Would love that for cycling media
No tremendous salaries and probably less of a travel budget. In the last year of CT, they sent multiple people to the TdF along with I think a couple weeks doing gravel bike testing. That canât be cheap. The rosĂ© budget alone. . . (I kid, of course)
I subscribe to Adventure Journal and the beautiful quarterly print issue is one of the things I enjoy about it. I read articles there online multiple times per week as well. Iâm a fan.
A twice/four time yearly physical mag was one of the things I mentioned on feedback also although itâs probably a terrible business idea!
Guess they are going to try to rebuild. Hope Brad is pulling a big salary there, he is setup for failure.
What an absolute crock.
He wrote, âI was excited when Peloton joined Outside in 2021 because it gave our writers and staff a larger platform and more support. We wanted more people to know about our brand and storytellingâ. He left out, âso we immediately killed the magazineâ.
He then says, âI want you to know the ethos of our content will honor the best of CyclingTipsâ. The best of CyclingTips was the people and the sense of community. They destroyed both of those too.
Sorry if this is overly confrontational. That letter flat out made me angry. I was a huge fan and a subscriber to both Peloton and CyclingTips. They ruined them both virtually overnight.