Two quick Tuesday sports tech items for ya today, both involving money. One costing you slightly increasingly money, but the other permitting you to make increasingly money…assuming you can pedal nonflexible enough.
TrainingPeaks Premium Price Increase:
TrainingPeaks has spoken a modest 5% price increase, for annually subscribed users, taking effect from March 15th. The transpiration increases the price from $119/year USD to $124.99/year USD. As with previous, TrainingPeaks charges in USD the same rate wideness all geographic regions, so the price increase is the same for all users. Existing sales tax and VAT remains the same as they previously did. This pricing transpiration only impacts yearly renewals and new yearly renewals, it does not transpiration the monthly price.
Having watched numerous companies transpiration their pricing in recent months, TrainingPeaks appears to have washed-up this properly. The most important bit? They unquestionably sent out an e-mail to users yesterday, notifying them of the transpiration (more than a month surpassing the transpiration takes effect). Here’s a reprinting of that letter:
E-Mail Title: Upcoming transpiration to your yearly Premium subscription price
Hi [Username],
Thank you for using Training Peaks Premium. We want to let you know well-nigh an upcoming price transpiration to your subscription.
Starting March 15, 2023, the price for yearly Premium subscriptions will increase from $119/year to $124.99/year.
Our teams have been nonflexible at work bringing you unconfined new Premium features and integrations to help you reach your goals stronger, healthier, and faster. This update will help us protract delivering plane increasingly to your TrainingPeaks Premium experience.
For increasingly information well-nigh this change, visit our FAQs.
Thank you for trusting TrainingPeaks to help you unzip your next Peak Performance!
It’s been funny to see how many people forwarded this letter to me yesterday, all with some widow commentary withal the lines of “Here’s how you do price changes right”, referencing the proper communications here compared to Strava’s fiasco.
And I agree. Beyond that, they moreover sent out an embargoed note to the media superiority of time with well-spoken details on the price change, and their willingness to wordplay any questions. They plane have an unshortened FAQ well-nigh the price change with increasingly details. Further, the first time paid/premium subscribers opens the TrainingPeaks app since the price transpiration was announced, a pop-over screen explaining the transpiration showed up. The same thing moreover occurs on the website. Legend is they moreover hired messenger pigeons, which should victorious in the coming days to your house.
So, just to recap, Training Peaks:
- Increased prices by well-nigh 5% for yearly subscribers
- E-mailed all subscribers of the transpiration immediately at announcement
- Gave increasingly than a month’s notice surpassing it takes effect
- Included a detailed FAQ web page with increasingly answers/clarifications
- Displayed a pop-over on subscriber’s smartphone apps with the details
- Displayed a pop-over on their web-based training log with the details (in specimen you didn’t see it on the app)
- Informed the media under embargo superiority of time
- May or may not have sent messenger pigeons
As always, no consumer wants or likes a price transpiration – but, I fathom TrainingPeaks doing it right here. I’ve been a longtime TrainingPeaks user (as is my wife), albeit in our cases we’re both ‘under’ plans from coaches (meaning, the coach pays for the account).
MyWhoosh Prize Purse:
MyWhoosh, a cycling esports platform that aims to compete with Zwift, has spoken a $1 Million (USD) prize purse for an event series they’ll be hosting next month. The platform claims this is the biggest pot overly offered for a cycling esports series, and I believe that to be the specimen as well. The race is an 8-day/7 stage race event, tent multiple routes and with multiple categories.
The visitor says that riders that wield to the race series “will be selected based on the performance data they submit”, and then “split into categories equal to their level of ability”. The platform moreover says that “the final selection will consist of 120 of the weightier and most competitive riders who have followed the MyWhoosh verification protocol to ensure pearly racing.”
MyWhoosh has their verification protocol published here (FAQ here), which increasingly or less seems like a slightly tweaked version of what Zwift does for the variant they created in concert with the UCI.
The visitor has a boatload of payout categories for the race, wrenched out as follows, with prize money split equally for men and women:
– Top 10 Individual Winners
– Top 5 Team Winners
– Top 1 Youth Winner (Under 23)
– Top 1 Masters Category Winner (Above 50)
– Top 1 Sprint Winner
– Top 1 King/Queen of the Mountain Winner
Which, breaks out into much increasingly detail as follows:
Category 1
Overall –
- Individual classification:
- 1st – $10,000
- 2nd – $8,000
- 3rd – $6,000
- 4th – $4,000
- 5th – $2,000
- 6th – $1,000
- 7th – $1,000
- 8th – $1,000
- 9th – $1,000
- 10th – $1,000
- Teams Classification
- 1st – $42,000
- 2nd – $35,000
- 3rd – $25,000
- 4th – $20,000
- 5th – $10,000
- Sprint Winner – $5,000
- KOM/QOM Winner – $5,000
- Youth Winner – $5,000
- Masters Winner – $5,000
Daily:
- Stage Winner – $1,000
- Sprint Winner – $500
- KOM/QOM Winner – $500
Category 2
Overall –
- Individual classification:
- 1st – $7,500
- 2nd – $6,000
- 3rd – $4,500
- 4th – $3,000
- 5th – $1,500
- 6th – $750
- 7th – $750
- 8th – $750
- 9th – $750
- 10th – $750
- Teams Classification
- 1st – £31,500
- 2nd – $26,250
- 3rd – $18,750
- 4th – $15,000
- 5th – $7,500
- Sprint Winner – $3,750
- KOM/QOM Winner – $3,750
- Youth Winner – $3,750
- Masters Winner – $3,750
Daily:
- Stage Winner – $750
- Sprint Winner – $375
- KOM/QOM Winner – $375
Category 3
Overall –
- Individual classification:
- 1st – $5,000
- 2nd – $4,000
- 3rd – $3,000
- 4th – $2,000
- 5th – $1,000
- 6th – $500
- 7th – $500
- 8th – $500
- 9th – $500
- 10th – $500
- Teams Classification
- 1st – £21,000
- 2nd – $17,500
- 3rd – $12,500
- 4th – $10,000
- 5th – $5,000
- Sprint Winner – $2,500
- KOM/QOM Winner – $2,500
- Youth Winner – $2,500
- Masters Winner – $2,500
Daily:
- Stage Winner – $500
- Sprint Winner – $250
- KOM/QOM Winner – $250
Category 4
Overall –
- Individual classification:
- 1st – $2,500
- 2nd – $2,000
- 3rd – $1,500
- 4th – $1,000
- 5th – $500
- 6th – $250
- 7th – $250
- 8th – $250
- 9th – $250
- 10th – $250
- Teams Classification
- 1st – £10,500
- 2nd – $8,750
- 3rd – $6,250
- 4th – $5,000
- 5th – $2,500
- Sprint Winner – $1,250
- KOM/QOM Winner – $1,250
- Youth Winner – $1,250
- Masters Winner – $1,250
Daily:
- Stage Winner – $250
- Sprint Winner – $125
- KOM/QOM Winner – $125
The listed routes all favor the letter ‘A’, with this stuff the well-constructed list:
· Arabia
· Australia, Small Hills
· Alula, Medium Mountains
· Arabia, Nonflexible Mountains
· Arabia, Extreme Mountains
· Alula, Flat Time Trial
· Arabia, Flat
The visitor says that “each stage will full-length a new course, with men racing for approximately 70km and women for approximately 50km. No two days will be the same, with racers taking on routes in Tour of Al’Ula, Tour of Arabia, Australia, and Tour of Colombia. Each road stage will have a variety of sprint and climb segments, all ranging in distance, and day four will consist of a time trial.”
Sign-ups uncork on February 27th, and then racing begins March 30th, running till April 6th. They’ve got a full landing page here with details.
Of course, the obvious should be pointed out: The utterance timing on this is super clever. Later this week the UCI will hold their 2023 UCI Esports World Championship on Zwift. It’ll be interesting to see if Zwift and MyWhoosh will fight it out next year for rights to hold the event. Remember, the UCI in theory lets platforms compete for this, and is (also theoretically) platform agnostic. And while I kid well-nigh the ‘in theory’ part, the individual overseeing much of the UCI’s Esports push came from founding VirtuGo – so he unquestionably does know a bit well-nigh things other than Zwift, and my previous discussions with him indicated that they are indeed aiming to ensure that the race platform should be irrelevant to the World Championship title itself. Either way, with Zwift backed by the princes of Silicon Valley, and MyWhoosh backed by modern-day princes of the UAE, there’s plenty of money to be thrown at the UCI.
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With that, thanks for reading!
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