The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) is delighted to announce today that it has extended its exclusive partnership with Red Bull Media House for the television production and media rights distribution of the Mercedes-Benz UCI Mountain Bike World Cup through to 2022. This agreement also gives Red Bull Media House global broadcast rights for the series.
Since 2012, Red Bull Media House has been broadcasting programmes with innovative formats to fans in several languages, contributing to the popularity of the series around the world. Based on this partnership, audiences for the Mercedes-Benz UCI Mountain Bike World Cup enjoyed significant growth over the last years.
Linear television:
Red Bull TV:
These excellent figures have enabled mountain biking to strengthen its position on Red Bull TV.
The announcement of the partnership extension between the UCI and Red Bull Media House coincided with the publication at the UCI Management Committee meeting, held during the 2018 UCI Road World Championships at Innsbruck-Tyrol (Austria), of the 2019 and 2020 Mercedes-Benz UCI Mountain Bike World Cup calendars.
As in 2018, each of the two seasons will have 10 rounds. Simultaneous communication of the 2019 and 2020 seasons, featuring both new and established venues, provides greater visibility and enables the riders, teams, organisers and partners all to be better prepared.
Maribor (Slovenia) hosted rounds of the World Cup from 1999 to 2001 and from 2007 to 2010, as did Les Gets (France) from 1998 to 2000 and then again in 2002. The latter venue then went on to host the UCI World Championships in 2004. Two venues are on the calendar for the first time: Snowshoe (USA) will be part of the 2019 series and will be the first time that the country has hosted an event since Windham in 2015, while Lousa will see Portugal as hosts for the first time in a series. The UCI also unveiled the list of venues which will host the UCI Mountain Bike World Championships presented by Mercedes-Benz through to 2024:
The 2023 event will be part of the UCI World Cycling Championships, covering a number of disciplines and which are held every four years.