The UCI and Warner Bros. Sport announced yesterday that 2026 will be the last year of the UCI Enduro World Cup.
The cancellation follows a tricky period for the sport, but read the press release announcing the end of EDR and you'll find a lot of words doing a lot of work. Enduro’s future, we’re told, will be “best served through a structure designed specifically around the format’s unique identity, one that offers greater flexibility in its operating framework, more room for innovation and a stronger focus on participation and community engagement.”
Or put in simpler terms: Enduro was too expensive and too much of a headache to broadcast, so now it’s gone.
The trouble with broadcast
Downhill and cross-country mountain biking share the same qualities that make them easier to show to the world. They both happen on one track, at one venue with one finish corral. That means setting up cameras for a broadcast is straightforward. Getting fans in one spot is simple and so is selling hospitality tickets.
Enduro is the total opposite. A race will have multiple timed stages scattered across a mountain range, and sometimes over multiple days. To cover it all would require multiple crews in multiple locations. It costs more to produce and delivers less of the coverage broadcasters want – a continuous live feed with a clock ticking down.
So, the EDR suffered. It was characterised by delayed highlights and patchy coverage. That treatment doesn’t grow a discipline; it quietly starves it. Riders lose visibility, sponsors then pull out of teams and eventually teams pull out of enduro.
But we’ve seen how it can be done
Here's the part that annoys me most: we've all seen how it can be done.
The Enduro World Series (EWS) became a UCI event in 2023. But before cycling’s governing body got involved, EWS had broadcast figured out. The coverage wasn’t live, and nobody cared, because it was made by people who clearly loved the discipline. The highlights that landed on YouTube a few days after a round were mega. You got a sense of what the racing was actually like, who was struggling, who was pinning it or who'd binned it on stage three.
I’d wait eagerly for the new EWS highlights video to drop on YouTube. I’d look forward to them more than I looked forward to watching the downhill – and the downhill had the live feed and the commentary team.
That tells you something. Enduro coverage was never impossible. It just needed people who wanted to make it, rather than a corporation trying to force it into a template built for something else.
We’ll have to wait to see what happens next. The UCI and WBD Sports that a “path forward is still being defined” to ensure Enduro’s future. Hopefully the UCI realises that there is a solution to EDR’s broadcast problems ready and waiting in the wings.
