Zwift has a long and vibrant history of hinting at upcoming changes via financial media organizations such as Bloomberg. And the latest interview with Bloomberg news is no different. I mean, I suppose it was slightly different in that it was done while pedaling on smart trainers with both individuals suffering. But hey, that’s ‘on brand’ for Zwift CEO Eric Min.
As part of an outline by Bloomberg host Tim Stenovec, there’s two notable sections. The first is on pricing, and the second is on their goals for subscriber numbers.
Starting with the easy one, pricing, Min says that the current $15/month subscription is “not sustainable” for much longer, and that the company is considering annual memberships. Zwift is actually a rarity in not offering annual memberships in the indoor cycling space, with most of their competitors offering annual options that have a bit of a discount over the monthly ones. Additionally, most of their competitors have already raised prices in the last year or so (including TrainerRoad, Wahoo/RGT, Peloton, and more). Zwift’s price hasn’t changed in 5 years.
“It’s a virtual space where people come together.”
Join @timsteno as he takes a ride through the metaverse with the co-founder and co-CEO of @GoZwift and learns more about the company that’s bringing competitive cycling indoors pic.twitter.com/MiX720ljfa
— Bloomberg Quicktake (@Quicktake) February 3, 2023
In the video interview (embedded above), while riding Eric Min says:
“But let’s be honest, the cost of running our business has gotten more expensive. It’s been really tough. The supply chain issues are real. We are trying to run a business that is profitable at some point. It’s not at the moment. We’re really focused on trying to onboard as many customer as possible, and trying to make the pricing accessible.”
Keeping the pricing accessible does match their investor’s goals as well. They’d prefer to grow subscriber numbers now (for the long term), rather than try to increase short-term revenues. Still, that doesn’t change the reality that Zwift has said the current pricing isn’t “sustainable” for much longer.
The question is – what’s a reasonable price increase?
My bet would be on a monthly price of $20. Any price increase will cause internet grumbling, but a price increase to $20 (or, $19.99) wouldn’t likely cause much in the way of actual cancellations. At this point, people get that price increases are happening across the board due to inflation. That’s a reality. And I think people also get that Zwift hasn’t raised prices in quite some time.
I’d say any amount above $20/month, without some sort of significant extra increase in functionality, would be extremely risky for Zwift – both in cancellations and community blowback. Like it or not, Zwift isn’t Peloton (which charges $44/month for their ‘All Access’ variant). Peloton users knew those high prices (was previously $39) when they joined, and thus, that’s sorta part of the deal.
More than that, breaking the $20 barrier would be notable for the rest of the indoor training apps, which all remain at or below $20/month. And of course, mentally, it’s a big barrier to break for most consumers.
An annual option would make a lot of sense, and would likely soften the blow of a monthly price increase, if done correctly. The challenge is doing it correctly. Strava tried to bridge the gap by doubling (in some countries) the monthly price, while ‘only’ increasing the annual price by 20-30% (again, depending on the country). Ignoring Strava’s inability to communicate this, Strava’s total package pricing is far less than Zwift’s. Thus, people are more willing to plunk down $50-$80/year once, rather than a higher sum of perhaps $180-$200/year at once. Thus, trying to force consumers to an annual plan to save money if they significantly hike the monthly plan, for Zwift’s price range, is risky.
On the bright side, for all the grievances that people may have about Zwift (many of them probably valid) – the one thing people can’t generally complain about is Zwift’s communications. The last time they increased prices (in November 2016) they gave existing subscribers 1 year notice of the price increase. Seriously, what company does that?!? Nobody. That’s insanely unusual. Now, I’m not saying Zwift will (or even should) give a year’s notice, the key thing here is that I suspect they will communicate it well and clearly. In other words, they won’t pull a Strava (which, as a reminder, has yet to e-mail all members about the price increases). And I suspect Zwift will be rewarded for properly communicating with a lower cancellation rate than Strava has seen as of late.
Now, additionally, in the article, Bloomberg noted that Eric Min is hoping to take Zwift from a subscriber base “to 10 million, from roughly 1 million with 80% of them men” and “possibly taking the company public eventually”. Note that both of those are quotes of the Bloomberg article, and not technically quotes of Eric Min directly, though obviously, that’s the discussion with Eric Min that Bloomberg is pulling from.
In any case, a couple of thoughts on this single line alone:
A) Taking the company public: During the pedaling portion, Eric Min says “I think we all have aspirations of taking this company public.” This has been discussed before, and while their most recent investors (KKR, Permira, and Amazon’s Alexa Fund) would like that, there’s the simple reality this is not exactly the best time to IPO. Especially for an indoor fitness company. That said, there’s also the line of thinking that says it couldn’t be any worse (probably true) and that Zwift has likely hit the bottom of the post-COVID-peak subscription barrel. Thus in theory, it’s all new subscribers from here.
B) “Roughly 1 Million” current subscribers: This would be a question of how ‘rough’ is ‘roughly’. Is 800K ‘roughly’ one million? The concurrent user numbers simply don’t support any growth in their numbers, with Zwift not matching last year’s peak (which is typically the 2nd week in January with the Tour de Zwift). Since then, it’s been downhill again in max concurrent users. All of which is below peak Zwift of a few years ago. Of course, you can have plenty of non-active subscribers with people just not cancelling. Which, becomes risky for price increases, when people are often legally required to be notified of a price change (such as in the EU), and thus a reminder to ‘cancel that thing they never used’.
C) Aiming for “10 million”: I see this as exceptionally optimistic, to put it kindly. There would have to be a massive shift in the Zwift platform/product to achieve this, somehow making it more widely appealing than Peloton, whose subscriber numbers are at ~4 million paying members (and Peloton only sells in 5 countries, versus Zwift everywhere). Zwift would need a once-in-a-lifetime event to pop from basically ~1M plateaued subscribers to 10M, and that event was called COVID. And while it did pop Zwift up, that event is over.
Obviously, it’s good for all businesses to have goals – sky-high ones even. And that’s fine. But I’d say if Zwift is trying to achieve 10 million members, they need to fundamentally shift and re-think the product they have today. It’s simply not appealing to that kind of scale. And realistically, the only way to achieve that kind of scale is making the product more appealing to a wider base of users. While the Zwift Hub $499 smart trainer does that from a hardware standpoint, it doesn’t from a software platform perspective. It doesn’t bring in the true consumer mass-market features that Peloton has, or other platforms like it. Alternatively, they could do it through acquisitions of adjacent platforms.
But either way, that’s OK. You don’t have to be everything to everyone. But of course, the goals of eventually becoming a public company are at odds with the relatively small user counts and revenue that Zwift has today, from a global perspective. As to how that all lines up with pricing? I suppose we’ll all have to wait.
With that – thanks for reading!
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For me, Zwift is a seasonal product. I usually unsubscribe around April and join again around November.
So for this usage pattern a yearly subscription doesn’t make a lot of sense, unless it is cheaper than six monthly payments.
I wish they would have some automatic functionality around this. If you don’t log into Zwift for a whole month, your subscription for that year gets a bit cheaper.
And yes, $20/month is totally reasonable for Zwift. But the subscriptions for cyclists add up.
I end up with Zwift + Strava + Xert + MyFitnessPal + probably more, I am forgetting right now.
Maybe they should think about package deals, Zwift + Strava.
My sense is seasonal usage costs Zwift revenue that it makes sense for Zwift to attempt to capture. I could see a monthly subscription fee to $20+ and allow suspensions, with an annual subscription for a lesser cost with no suspensions available.
I would like to see Zwift & TrainerRoad collaborate or merge. TR’s AI functionality and FTP auto calculation is impressive. The TR interface is less interesting however. I’d happily pay more to use the two together were they more integrated (I now use two Ant+ sticks and do this, but it’s expensive).
Pretty the same for me: april to september off Z.
But I’d be happy customer for à 199€ per year. I still like and use the free-monthly-25 km during summer break and surely will put some races in that period too with a yearly subscription.
20€/month seems reasonnable to me and if I don’t really care of FTP or training side of apps (I’m too mentally-unfit for structured plans), I put a lot of interest in sharing rides/races with many people. This side of things makes me reluctant to go all the way to RGT (2 to 30-racers’ races) or Rouvy (I’m not a real-video-virtual-ride guy).
Thanks for the work, Ray, cheers
If it’s unsustainable, that’s only because they chose the centralised architecture with ongoing costs. I fail to see how each user could possibly generate $5 of monthly costs, especially when most of those subscribers aren’t even using it regularly.
My usage, and I imagine a lot of other people are the same, is simply cycling in a 3d environment. That can and should be rendered locally and have no reliance on cloud connections or subscriptions.
Sure, some people like to race and do group rides, and I expect they are happy to pay for that functionality.
For me, all these subscriptions are unsustainable, and I earn a fair bit. Since the price increases started I’ve cancelled a bunch of things that I only use occasionally. I hope that falling subscriptions is more sustainable for them.
I’ll admit Zwift can justify a price increase more than Strava, but really these businesses need to take a hard look at how much their services are actually worth. 240 bucks a year is a very hard no from me to play a video game that doesn’t get updated all that often. XBox ultimate is 100/year, how can Zwift possibly think they offer more than twice the value of that?
Maybe, just maybe, they should not have created a hardware division to enter a well established trainer market and then claim to need to increase prices to the software customers.
They definitely are doing something wrong if they are unsustainable. EA charges $100 for (lifetime) access to their latest Fifa game. They also have $5/month option. And I bet EA spends a fortune to secure exclusive naming rights to teams and players.
Exactly Mo! Listing “supply chain issues” as a reason for an increase in operating costs was the dead giveaway there, and it also rubbed me the wrong way too. I have a trainer that works fine, thank you, my subscription to the software should not be impacted by Zwifts ventures into that market in any way.
To be fair, the more I listen back to the supply chain sentence/quote – I wonder if that was edited together a bit (by some Bloomberg video editor), it seems a tiny bit choppy.
Also, having done enough livestreams and such on a bike while pedaling hard, I generally give some leeway to ‘brain doesn’t always put the entire sentence in the right order’. Sorta like trying to do pace math after mile 15 or so on a marathon.
At the end of the day, we can quibble about the supply chain quote, but ultimately, the underlying cost increases Zwift is facing are no different than any other company. They are increasing – there’s no meaningful/real debate there.
Few things that come to mind that I hope are additive to what you said:
– With EA @ 13 million subscribers, even $5 a month behind in some serious revenue
– The marginal costs to go from 1M to 10M concurrent users would be relatively low – if only Zwift could get to there they could, IMHO, lower their subscription cost
– How many platforms does Zwift build for, I think it’s 14? – It’s just crazy, and I’m sure many of them do not go remotely close to justifying their existence
Someone definitely needs to take a red pen to a number of line items and make some prudent business decisions, that’s for certain.
I assume that when he says “supply chain” it’s code for AWS bills. If their software hasn’t really solved scaling and they can barely support a high number of concurrent users by throwing a linearly proportional (or worse) amount of hardware at it, that can really sum up. Given the extremely seasonal nature of Zwift, made worse by community events, they are a prime use case for preferring something like AWS over running their own servers and those cloud things that promise spare capacity available whenever needed do have their price.
You *could* probably run a Zwift-alike, with massive concurrence, from a surprisingly small server fleet, as in theoretically possible. It’s not *that* hard a problem. But what you can’t do is incrementally rewrite an existing codebase that was built on the assumption “we’ll solve that later” while keeping consistence, doing the occasional maintenance on the old one and generally dealing with whatever next big thing that has been promised to investors.
For me, put the price up too much and would seriously consider moving over to Tacx app.
Has improved a lot recently, more context, and (from the trail) seemingly less boring that Zwift.
Why should I pay more for Zwift when Wahoo RGT Events are completely free??
Free users can’t create even, but they can joint them for free.
I have done more than 2000km in the last two months on Wahoo RGT for free
Been a while since I played in Wahoo (last fall a time or two), but the low number of riders overall and in events may be a deal breaker for many. Riding with others is not a draw for everyone, but the most common complaint I see over and over again with RGT is the lack of enough riders.
It’s possible a trigger like a Z price increase will push more riders into RGT free or paid, but they have a long way to go to get pack size that many riders want.
I WANT to like RGT…but the graphics are still crappy (I’m on an ATV 4K), such as the rider’s feet not touching the pedals. It’s whiny, but those details when staring…staring…staring at the screen for hours are, to me, important.
And yeah, all bots, no real riders.
Exactly my point on RGT: not enough riders on races for me…and maybe too good: solo ride a race is not the type of fun I’m looking for–but “last group” races is absolutely ok!
For the UK a £19.99/month and annual of £199 would seem the right base for now. I’d still see it rise within a few years from that to £24.99 & £249.
Not raising the price for 5yrs is a thing of the past with current global inflationary pressures and logistics.
The above pricing would have me as an annual member without much though.
S
Hard disagree with this.
As someone who uses Zwift primarily as a visual aid to supplement running structured workouts (with TV or Discord in the background) Zwift needs to think long and hard about how its users are spread.
Yes, there may be people that are using Zwift clubs regularly, doing lots of races and group rides, that’s great for them, but most of the people I know on Zwift are using it to slog out 60 minute interval workouts and once a month might suffer through a long ride on there due to crap weather/ logistics. Now £19.99 is a lot of money given that the actual functionality for me is a) something to run ERG mode (but I can do that for free using my Garmin head unit) and b) some pretty pictures (but during an FTP set I’m not paying a lot of attention to this and in a normal ride I’m probably mainly watching TV).
Personally, I think I am struggling to justify it at 19.99 – £240 a year for something that I fundamentally get for free on my Garmin or the Wahoo app etc. is just not going to fly.
I think Zwift needs to look at different membership tiers. There should be a core tier that allows you to free ride, join groups rides and use your own structured work outs – and probably also have a “running core” tier that is equivalent for running. Then I think you need to treat it as bolt ons, £x a month for the Zwift workout library (the people who want that are probably prepared to pay quite a bit for it, but for many its worthless), £x a month for a “race licence” that allows you to enter formal races, £x a month for a run bolt on. If you want to retain core customer business but also increase revenue this is the way to do it IMHO – that way you can capture those who place value on stuff like running and the workout library, but you also don’t alienate the people that are happy with a more fundamental functional experience without “features” that they don’t use.
I pay £12.99 a month today, £19.99 is a 50% price rise, I would not be happy with that !!!
I like the idea of tiered pricing. If you want to just do your own workouts or free ride it’s $X, if you want access to Zwift workouts it $Y, and if you want to be able to participate in racing events it’s $Z.
I’m sure there’s other ways to skin that cat, but I would definitely be on the bottom tier.
SH
That’s actually a 35% increase.
It is not 35%. From 13 to 19 is a difference of 6, which is 46% of 13 (so about 50%).
Once you are there, 13 would be 32% cheaper than 19.
I understand that as a company they have to make a profit, but I think they have to focus on reducing costs.
I think its user peak was in the pandemic. Growth expectations are not real. I find it a useful application for training in winter. It makes training more enjoyable and I try harder.
However, every time I enter the app I see that the map with the most active users is Watopia. Spending time creating new maps I don’t think it translates into more subscriptions. On the other hand, they are spending a significant amount of money on sponsorships and advertising.
I for one wish that, rather than creating new worlds, the existing maps would be expanded more. Scotland is a cool map, different scenery, I’ll definitely look forward to riding it again. However, I wish that Watopia would be expanded more. Yeh, they have their “real” worlds, but with Watopia, they should keep expanding and lean into the video game side of things (underwater tunnels, dinosaurs, etc).
I would just be happy with a badge reset, without having to start a new account and lose my tron bike.
Oh this completely – how many people actually choose to ride Paris? Maps are conceptually meaningful if you are doing races, but with Watopia and Makuri we have great options and for longer rides, Yorkshire, Innsbruck, Richmond (which I am pretty sure is hell on earth) and even New York don’t really cut it for variety – so they become effectively race only loops or a different background to a trainer set where the map is pretty inconsequential unless you are still trying to accumulate climbing (in which cases Alpe or Ventop) or distance (TickTock etc.) for the relevant challenges. But yet money and significant dev time keeps getting spent on gimic maps (Bologna anyone).
Heck, if you really want to create extra roads then make them offshoots of Watopia – I really don’t see why they need to be standalone maps which exist in isolation and don’t offer enough roads to really justify their independent existence (ditto one measly steering MTB loop which again was just a pointless gimic).
How does increasing price help to bring the platform to 10M users?
We have been asking Zwift to improve the game for years and the game is basically the same – all the routes behave the same, for god sake we still taking corners at 40mph+
Comparing it to a gym membership is not realist because in my gym I have access to swim, bike, run, weights, group classes.
Not sure how they unsustainable when the mechanics/graphics is below the rest of the industry that has once of pricing of <$100. They definitely need to look at cost cutting.
Not sure whether and where they will get to 10M users, but more money will be surely spent on advertising on other platforms to attract new customers and build up customer base. Paying customers! That will enable company to go public for more money. Once it goes public, a lot can happen….
Hopefully they will one day introduce a couples plan as my wife and I both cycle, we get charged twice every month. I’ve tried all of them last summer when I bought my trainer , some very good ones but I kept coming back to Zwift.
Rouvy has a ‘family plan.’ We had two users at the grandfathered $8/mo total for quite a long time. I was enticed enough by Zwift to drop Rouvy and now starting to regret it with the imminent price increase.
I always see couples ask for this. Why should you get a discount just because two users live in the same house?
I managed to stay on that as an annual plan. looking at planned cost increase I will stay there, I just did a couple of zwift rides, having more people around definitely is a bonus but not £11 a month better.
Because they often don’t ride at the same time and then each are using it less than a single person.
Because the phone company (land line), the cable tv, Netflix, hot water tank rental, my landlord all don’t charge me more because my wife and I share the subscription.
As a zwift runner. I am always curious when i see talk of price of zwift and increasing price. As the running side of zwift is still free but it also feels like a not complete product too. I mean I has alot to offer those of us that like to run on zwift but it also is not perfect. But i am sure the cyclists would say the same thing about zwift not being perfect and they are already paying. So curious if any cost comes in for runners. Or if they did a running cheaper than cycling deal or a combo deal for say those that want to both cycle and run. Given the numbers running maybe they have not reached enough people to start charging for that. I guess we will see. Let us runners know if you hear anything DC Rainmaker.
When Zwift goes public I predict it will be dropped unless it is self funded by subscriptions. It’s annoying that Min doesn’t speak about the future of Zwift Run.
Running was a pie in the sky hope to sell to investors (“there are at least 10x more runners than cyclists, if we extrapolate from our success in cycling we’ll print money forever!”) and when that failed to materialize they completely switched to spectator sports as their straw to clutch (“just think of how rich FIFA is! Or the IOC!”)
If they increase the price to $20, there is no question I will cancel. Been thinking about canceling anyway. I only do custom workouts, never any races and never ride with anyone. I have zero interest in the social aspects of Zwift and never have. If they were to offer a lower tiered subscription, say $10 a month, that removed all of the social aspects, races, events, basically everything except for just riding by yourself and workouts, I would be all in for that.
Same. At $20 I’m seriously considering other options because I don’t use enough of the features to justify. Right now the $15 price point is keeping me subscribed vs other options because it’s cheaper. But if they raise it and there isn’t some new features that are up my alley…. one less subscriber for them.
I actually just canceled a week ago at the $15/month price for the exact same reasons. I only use it to have something to look at while I ride. I almost never ride with other people or take part in races/events.
The rumours about a merger with Trainer Road seem to have gone quiet. With the current challenging economic climate I am not sure if this is more or less likely. A merger might sweeten a price rise but I can’t see it happening
Maybe Apple will get bored and buy peloton and zwift and bring it all under their fitness division
Any merger would basically mean that Zwift takes whoever they merge with into the grave with them. At this point the only merger imaginable would be in the form of a liquidation sale.
Won’t succeed without a 100% free option.
I can’t easily show others how it works without paying the monthly fee. Unless you can demonstrate all the features without the payment, it will never be fully accessible to everyone.
I’ve been saying for a while that Zwift and Peloton should partner up. The Peloton bikes have these great screens that can be utilized much more with some partner integrations. The same goes for Peloton, I feel they could greatly benefit from allowing their platform to be used on some of the higher end treadmills that have built in tablets.
yup sign me up to the “nope” group. Currently have 3 accts with Zwift and I question the “worth” and how it’s kinda cheesy and slightly lame. They can’t even handle the basics and it’s quite “buggy”. Step it up a bunch and I could live with the price increase, but now? no way! They have a lot of issues that need fixing. Run is embarrassing…. even their basics are off like the “weight” penalty is complete bs….. everyone just cheats their weight, which of course yields ridiculous improved ability…. again, listen!!!! your dang algorithm is messed up! Even the “prizes” are lame and goofily (ha) set up…. don’t get me started on the bike frame and wheels choices…. ha!!!!! honestly i like/love it…. but “prime time” it ain’t.
absolutely right on the algorithm patrt, in real life on the flat the strongher cyclist are almost always the heavyer ones, but in zwift ? cheesus…. and dont get me wrong but, how much time they needed to fix the ridiculous “bug” where, if you start a race and change the eight nobody notice it if you change it back before the end of a race ? they are going nuts if they think that increasing the price is a good idea
make different plan like RGT for god sake, basic for who enjoy company and want to ride with others, plus for people who want to workout and premium or ticket base for the ones who want to race !!! ITS SO EASY !!
@jerome, Q/ What is « change the eight »?
yup sign me up to the “nope” group. Currently have 3 accts with Zwift and I question the “worth” and how it’s kinda cheesy and slightly lame. They can’t even handle the basics and it’s quite “buggy”. Step it up a bunch and I could live with the price increase, but now? no way! They have a lot of issues that need fixing. Run is embarrassing…. even their basics are off like the “weight” penalty is complete bs….. everyone just cheats their weight, which of course yields ridiculous improved ability…. again, listen!!!! your dang algorithm is messed up! Even the “prizes” are lame and goofily (ha) set up…. don’t get me started on the bike frame and wheels choices…. ha!!!!! honestly i like/love it…. but “prime time” it ain’t.
I would be easily fooled into paying more if they would offer day passes:
1 ride 3$
If you pay 10$ a month you get every ride for 1$
If you pay 20$ you get unlimited rides per month.
Or the ultimate challenge, percentual ftp increase per season equals monthly discount!
MyWhoosh is free, although I admit it’s a bit buggy at times. link to mywhoosh.com
I won’t support anything from UAE. No thanks, I’ll rather pay the increased price for zwift.
You’re just bigoted to try anything or embrace anyone or anything new..
They should be able to support this user base without increasing prices… Planet fitness is still $10 bucks a month… that has physical location overhead… It’s miss management… move HQ to somewhere with lower overhead… Reduce head count… with 1 million subscribers at 15 bucks a month that is 180 million a year… with each additional new user costing the company maybe a dollar bandwidth…
That is the baffling part. At least if they had an IPO we could see their financials and get some insight into that. Clearly 180 million isn’t going back into development, or the new UI wouldn’t have taken 3+ years and virtual roads wouldn’t be built slower than physical roads. Not to mention the bugs that are introduced with every update. Probably pennies go into development and maintenance and most spending is advertising and sponsorship.
Good point comparing to a physical gym. It does seem like $180 million/year would cover a lot of development. If you figure $100k/year per employee, that would be 1800 employees. Sure there’s executive compensation, licensing, advertising, and sponsorships to come out of that, but it seems like there should be a lot of room for coders/infrastructure.
Yikes, so many problems with this (and other) comments.
* “roughly 1 million” is likely a guess by the writer at Bloomberg. Zwift has never revealed subscriber numbers and the article did not quote Min.
* Acquiring new subscribers through advertising, etc. is expensive. Generally, each new subscriber is more expensive that previous subscribers, because they are more difficult to persuade. For comparison, each new Netflix subscriber costs the company more than $100.
* They recently did reduce head count and cut their hardware division.
* Moving HQ to somewhere else with lower overhead and likely no game developers, when you already have trouble hiring developers, is a good idea?
Software development is a field with the potential for infinite inefficiency. No amount of money spent comes with a guarantee of a positive outcome, it’s perfectly possible that you have only dug yourself in deeper.
I think some of these “struggling” companies need to start considering parternships.
I recently got an offer from Stages where they bundled a discounted SB20 + 1year of Zwift – $1399! That was a pretty sweet deal.
Karoo + Polar (or Suunto), Zwift + Stages — stuff like that. I guess Wahoo would be hosed though 🙂
Users still talk about gamification and graphics? Zwift is a training/racing platform. Instead, keep your eyes on the power meter and plan your attacks! If you like games, get off the trainer and go play Oculus, PlayStation or XBOX.
Those things don’t contradict themselves. Having more ways to ride is always a good thing. Adding more gamification/skill aspect would be beneficial for a platform. Many people need some additional distraction to train more or get hooked. Also it would add some depth to esport aspect of Zwift.
Interesting point.
I do all my training using TrainerRoad along side Zwift for the gamification. Really it’s something to chase eg the rider in front, another route badge or just getting to level 60.
So for me if they stop investing in the ‘game’ including updating the graphics, I’m gone. as Zwidts training offerings are very poor compared the companies specialising in this – TR, XERT, SYSTM etc.
Zwift is the every person tool. Doesn’t excel at anything but does a reasonable job for the price. If the price get too high then people will vote with their wallets.
A very insignificant portion of their users participate in races. Around 1M active users, races have some thousands per day. It is not a racing platform primarily, it’s an entertainment platform. You might not care about usability or graphics, but the people do, there’s no way they’ll go to 10M with the current offering.
Of course xbox and others can be cheaper.. they millions of more users, hence a much larger total amount collected..
They’re trying to make it work for 1 to 2 million users. The gear to get up and running for zwift is far more than an xbox and you have to really be into cycling to spend that and set it up etc.
I’m likely missing something, but can someone please explain how supply chain issues and inflation significantly affect the financials of a software company? I can see this with JetBlack, but I’d think their core product (the software) is safe from those influences.
Well – software engineers will probably want a payrise to keep up with inflation – that said, if you’re a software engineer in silicon valley, I’d imagine you’re probably more keen on having a job at all given the recent industry wide lay offs!
You may have missed where they launched a hardware division into an already established trainer market. Someone thought they could go up against hot marketing brands like wahoo and financial behemoths like Garmin (tacx) and see success… and didnt. by spring of last yeah they shelved their plans and laid off a bunch of engineers
link to dcrainmaker.com
now on top of their shoddily coded app which is long over due for some resources to be thrown at it, they are forcing end users to pick up the tab on their ill conceived trainer plans.
To be fair, while they killed off the new smart bike/own-trainer hardware division, the reality is, according to Wahoo (and their court filings), the new Zwift Hub $499 smart trainer has decimated the smart trainer market.
Based on what I’m seeing, that seems to be the case. Now, whether or not those are moving people onto Zwift is a different story. Most of them were probably on Zwift already.
Oh, they absolutely threw a lot of money at the trainer space and were (to an extent) victims of supply chain issues on that front. But they seem to have thrown just as much money at software features/improvements that have likewise never made it to the customer. And, given that they’ve entered the trainer market through JetBlack, they’re dealing with the same sourcing and inflation effects that every other trainer manufacturer is, they just have millions of dollars coming in every month off of subscriptions to help them stay afloat.
It just seems rather disingenuous to me to blame those issues as the cause of their pricing increase when I can’t see how they’re having much effect on the company.
Supply chain issues for smart trainers? Nah. Brand new smart trainers are stacked up high in warehouses across North America. Distributers ordered a sihtload of them for winter 2022-23, anticipating similar demand (and charging full-retail-msrp) – as during the pandemic lockdown.
Unfortunately for them, once gyms re-opened and pandemic lockdowns were over, demand for smart trainers went way down.
Hence the quasi-liquidation prices on the Wahoo Kicker outgoing generation, as well as for competitor’s models.
Demand for smart trainers has dropped. Period.
Zwift came in a bit too late to the party with their cost-cutted smart trainer version
The price of a ZWIFT HUB in Europe is lower than a second hand WAHOO CORE… this is the truth. ZWIFT is inflicting losses to WAHOO…though I am not sure if ZWIFT is making any money with this move…
Here comes the blatantly obvious….
Why don’t they just start charging for running and keep the cycling side the same price?
When I use it, Zwift doesn’t exactly seem to be swarming with runners. I doubt it would make a difference on a scale that mattered if they charged runners.
Thanks for keeping us appraised of this Ray. One thing of note regarding the previous 1-year notice on price increase is that it seems to be indicative of a more long-term vision from Zwift’s senior leadership team. I hope that continues and I will say that if the next price increase is reasonable (that’s relative for each user) and gives me ample warning and a clear idea of what to expect I’ll probably continue supporting them.
Like many others I am currently a seasonal user and I think if they offer a 6-month winter subscription for $120 I’d do it without much complaint. But, their competition in this space is pretty significant. I recently went to play on Wahoo X/RGT and must say that I like a lot of what I’m experiencing there. Notably, the way I could “feel” the draft when I got behind another rider – unlike Zwift. The lack of riders on RGT is a factor – most of my friends are on Zwift and riding with friends from different parts of the planet is big draw for me. I also like Wahoo’s training resources (the science behind their Half Monty ftp test is one example). I’m about to start a Zwift training plan and I’ll see what that experience is like…
Interesting times ahead in this space and I hope Zwift continues to develop with an eye towards sustainable, long-term growth rather than Strava’s short term, and clearly short-sighted, approach.
Zwift is great… No problems with paying them a montly fee.
What would be however an awesome addition is adding a “family plan” for which I would be happy to pay a small premium.
At this moment both myself and my wife are using Zwift but having two accounts makes for steep price especially if you look at the actual monthly ride time. Hope Zwift is reading these comments 🙂
My question to you Ray would be: do you recon a price hike is justified against what they offer?
I have a bias against SaaS but for online multiplayer games I understand the rationale. But for a “game” that has been out for quite some time, the Zwift experience feels quite rough at times. If the day comes a serious game studio will decide to dab their feet in this segment they will probably be done for very quickly.
I also worry if they decide to go public, from my perspective this can only be bad for us users, as their focus will necessarily shift to pleasing their investors, potentially at our expense, even more than they need to do now.
I do actually think the price is justified, depending on how you use the platform. As someone else in the comments said, Zwift is sorta good at a lot of things, but not necessarily the best technical platform at any one of those things. Obviously, it’s the best when it comes to the social side – but not really the structured training side, or drafting bits, or graphics realism.
However, for a lot of people, for $15, it’s a pretty good deal. Even despite Zwift almost always seeming to ignore the things that the community asks for, while giving it lots of things the community hasn’t asked for. Yet at the same time, the community is massive, and asks for a lot of things. Some really smart, and some really dumb. That’s what happens when you have nearly a million people asking of things (in any category).
That said, where I think Zwift’s challenge is, is still the internal dev process and total sum of employees. I just don’t really understand what 500+ people are doing when I look at that output. I do get that supporting a million customers adds up, but still…
I work at a 500 person Tech startup/scale up with a high touch B2B sales motion as well as self service direct sales side that keeps support busy. When I look at what our devs produce month after month it really makes me question what those 500 people at Zwift are doing most days!
Although it does remind me of my 15 years at enterprise software companies where software release came at 3 year cycles 🤣🤣🤣
Thanks for your input. Just to clarify, I don’t have a huge issue with their current price, but if it goes up to 20USD|EUR/m that’s where I’d argue the cost/benefit analysis starts tilting against them and people will start scrutinising further whether it delivers enough to sulk it up.
Didn’t know they had so many employees. That’s actually really a lot, especially if that’s only direct employees and not also contractors (I would assume they have at least some for customer care matters – that’s pretty much the norm) or freelancers.
I ride indoors and outdoors, but because of my work schedule I’m on an indoor trainer 3 days a week pretty much year round. I would re-subscribe and pay for a Zwift annual plan (and even accept a price increase) — but ONLY if Zwift expands the roads and maps with dependable, consistent updates.
After being a Zwift subscriber for 7 years or so, I cancelled my subscription last year because frankly I was bored riding the same roads over and over and the new “features” Zwift has added are not compelling to me. Post Zwift, I’m using TrainerRoad (which I’ve used for quite a while), and I’ve subscribed to Rouvy as a Zwift replacement (which I’m really enjoying). For both of those products, I paid for an annual plan.
What better way to become profitable than to take on $640 million in debt? And I don’t think there are even 10 million cyclists and triathletes in the world. This is the beginning of the long road that many specialty endurance companies travel and will continue to travel in the future – a road that leads to from passion for endurance sports and building a healthy business that gives all employees and shareholders a healthy lifestyle and the customers a nice product to an undisciplined pursuit of more through the “general fitness and exercise space” and eventually to irrelevancy and death.
Investor capitalism is a poison for healthy businesses and quality products.
They raised $620 in funding. That’s not “debt”. There are 47 million cyclists in the U.S. alone. GIYF.
I wonder where the 47 million number came from? But take it as true, how many of those 47 million own a smart trainer or have the desire to own one? Far, far fewer, I’ll bet. And of those who own or acquire smart trainers, not everyone is going to use Zwift. I only started using Zwift late 2022, and I’ve owned a Tacx Neo 2 for years.
It’s worse than debt, because those investors actually expect the money to be spent, at a considerable pace, chasing whatever “10x” return illusion was promised to them in order get that investment. It’s very difficult to build a sustainable business when your job description says “aim for the stars, anything less is failure”.
How do you think funding works? Do you think it doesn’t have to be paid back? “Investment” and “funding” are euphemisms for debt to make people think it’s a sign of success, not a sign of massive irresponsibility caused by a disconnect between ambition and reality. If a company said “We took out a $600 million loan” we would laugh at them. But it’s worse than normal debt – unlike a bank which expects you to pay back all of the loaned amount at 3-6% interest over 5-20 years and then it’s done a “funding investment” usually expects a tripling of the invested amount in 3-5 years. Then they continue to own a % of your revenue basically forever.
47 million people who ride bikes does not mean 47 million people who ride trainers.
He would lower costs if he didn’t hire a woke person for every demographic.
I know it’s hard to address your own fragility, but you should try – Ron Desantis is too busy canceling higher education to try to require that Zwift hire you.
Please, there are other sites for this. Do not litter this discussion with this nonsense.
what I personally take from this news is that Zwift is still a relatively small business which is very long way from meeting the financial expectations of their VC backers. 1 Mln users x 15$/month x maybe 6 months of subscription per year = 90 Mln USD revenues in a niche business… not really any “Unicorn” status in sight.
To list the company now would take in only few Mln USD!
I think that the management is taking the sensible path to make the business sustainable with the current revenue base … the 10 Mln users is just more like an aspiration and unfeasible with the current “user base”: let’s face it… Zwift is for very hard core cyclists… the casual rider or just fitness lover gets pissed off after 10 minutes of staring to a screen with a bunch of weird data
yes, you nailed the point…
Taking VC capital, then you are “forced” to grow beyond what is healthy for the business and the industry.
Simple math makes Zwift a 100Mln USD revenues business, which is a decent business if managed without leveraging debt. Now Zwift is “strangled” by the unrealistic expectations of the investors… let’s be real that cycling is still a relatively niche sport and few companies in the industry are over 1bln
I was an early Zwifter, back with blue riders and 1 world. Finally left b/c I didn’t like paying for half the year that I never used (ie, no monthly cost or 12-month discount). Zwift hit me up with 2 months free as a come-on to come back. So I’m at around day 45 right now. It’s enjoyable enough and a nice change from System/Sufferfest, which I’ve done for 5 or 6 (?) years now.
Aside from some odd interface things (like why can’t I leave a world and just go back to choose another? why do I basically exit the app?) it’s been fine. No real glitches, etc.
But the training just doesn’t work for me; I just like System better. And the cost is (for now) better. I don’t race, don’t interact with other riders IRL, etc. A lot of friends use it, but I can’t run my life around scheduled events like meetups b/c: life (kids, spouse, work, etc). it’s hard enough to make group rides from April-Oct, let alone ones all winter. So Zwift holds little appeal, esp with cost rising.
Just my $.02
I have been on the verge on cancelling Zwift for a long time. I don’t see them as having made any fundamental improvements as far as I can remember. They still use a homemade rendering engine that doesn’t perform nearly as well as commercially available ones. They have never improved the game interface. I still have to start a ride to change the color of my socks. Or do anything else in the basic interface.
Until, they improve some of the stuff that I care about- which is NOT racing- then I am unlikely to pay more.
“I don’t see them as having made any fundamental improvements as far as I can remember…
They have never improved the game interface.
I still have to start a ride to change the color of my socks.
Or do anything else in the basic interface.”
Literally none of these statements are true.
I cancel every year from April to October.
Price increases I will probably reduce that even further.
Like other have said I have zero interest in the social features in Zwift. The gamification is what I enjoy and they have barely invested in that.
I can’t wait for another company to step into this gap. What does zwift really offer? Cartoonesque maps (not very many at that) and a few servers allowing tracking of position data. I find 15 EUR a month very expensive for something relatively simple (from a technological cost point of view) as zwift. The zwift hub is amazing. The application is sad and poorly thought out. The maps are.. well ok I guess.
Zwift needs to distance itself from “Metaverse” references— there are other ways to substantiate their innovation without drawing a parallel to a product that has Meta’s own investors very worried.
The only thing bigger than the 10m subscriber target is Min’s ego. Started well but product is sooooo flawed.
This is also still a company that gets hours of free labor from its community. How many events and races are on the backs of clubs and groups that don’t get compensated by Zwift (absent having a kit in game)?
And, don’t get me started on the supply chain disruption quote. SMH.
€15,00 not sustainable? Sure, they spend it all on marketing and sponsoring, definitely not on any kind of QA.
3 more badges to get in Scotland and I’ll pause my account anyway. Time to try other platforms, then maybe I’ll come back to Zwift, but I’ll know why.
I use Zwift maybe once or twice a week during my TrainerRoad workouts for entertainment… maybe if it was packaged with TrainerRoad? But hard for me to justify paying more ( for what I use it for)
Any increase in monthly pricing and I‘m out (as with Strava). Zwift is pretty and can be fun. However, indoor riding is only needed that often and structured workouts can be done with a Garmin/Wahoo device only as well.
Why don’t they release the rowing feature that, according to the dev who worked on it for four years before it got shelved, is pretty much just sat there ready to go? That would probably bring in a few hundred thousand rowers across the globe. If they leave it much later I doubt they’ll ever get those rowers back as EXR is making a lot of headway in the space. And like others on here have mentioned, why not proper personalised coaching for a premium price? Why not try and push to get Zwift setups in gyms?
Fundamentally I suppose you’d have to ask users whether they think they’re getting value for money *now* before kicking prices into the stratosphere to mitigate spectacularly bad timing into the hardware market.
I don’t know anyone that’s impressed with the current UI, which should be a relatively easy fix yet has been sidelined for years.
It took ZwiftPower to fix the virtual doping problems.
Workout creation is still a disaster.
All the Japanese maps make me motion sick. Watopia is abandoned. I don’t know anyone who disagrees so who is Zwift getting feedback from that says “keep making twisty little maps with small climbs”?
You want me to pay £250/year yet you don’t even allow me to pick my own graphics settings.
If I had the impression that they’d done anything to it from a codebase point of view (still no proper M1/M2 support) I’d be more inclined to consider a price increase.
Sorry if this sounds ranty but Zwift gives the continual impression of delivering a major middle finger to their user base and until they acknowledge this they’re going to struggle with support from users moving forwards, IMHO.
Unfortunately it’s articles like this that remind me that I just don’t use it enough and time to cancel.
I find Zwift hasn’t really done much new that I find interesting. Sure if you like virtual races or whatever, then fine, but it just doesn’t entice me. So many people just altering their weights make them a farce.
A few other commenters have said why not a pay per ride fee structure (decreasing with more use). I could go with that. Or even just a basic membership, with no races, no groups, and limited workouts.
Surprised there is no ad-supported version that could be offered, in conjunction with more limited functionality (i.e. no training plans), for free. Seems totally logical you could place in roadside billboards with ads, make the jersey and bikes printed with ads (doesn’t have to be a bike/cycling maker, put Starbucks on the jersey for example). Only thing I believe preventing this is the janky graphics model, such as how everything needs to be hand painted in like the jersey graphics, so this ad version could not happen until the tech engine changes, which to the point of other posts, part of the problem the game feels of low rent quality in the visuals.
Put me down for wishing Peloton would host Zwift on their screens for a slight upcharge. Really what I want is my Peloton screen with streaming movies that have transparent Zwift stat overlays. That’s all.
I’ve been a long time Zwift user on the Peloton Bike (Garmin Vector Pedals, now DFC) on the iPad/iPhone or Apple TV. I’m either paying for Zwift OR Peloton, not both. Currently wife is using the bike again, so Zwift was cancelled back in June with no plans on paying for it again anytime soon, price increase or not.
I use Zwift for the Running version in the background while on the Peloton Tread just because I can, wouldn’t pay just for running. It offers nothing for me and I prefer to watch a Movie instead on the iPad, while Zwift runs on the phone, and the “Just Run” Peloton screen is on with stats. It’s ridiculous to have three screens just for a run. Unfortunately Zwift, wife chose Peloton over you, sorry.
So around 1 million subscribers, of course I guess this is the total over 12 months so I know my maths are going to be inaccurate, but on UK pricing thats £13m per month in revenue, £150m per year, if Zwift can’t make a profit with that revenue they are going the way of Peloton.
Now saying that, no rise for 5 years, I think a rise is justified, I see some people saying £19.99 a month, not a chance I would pay that, thats a 50% rise, I will cancel, £15 or £16 would be OK.
I’m not far off level 60, I use Zwift a lot and through-out the year, if I’m considering cancelling they need to think carefully, Zwift is not an essential bit of kit, I can use Garmin, everybody is being squeezed right now, everything going up, some things have to pop, Zwift need to be very careful or they will be part of my pop.
A price increase will make large numbers of zwifter’s rethink their subscriptions especially without significant improvements to UI and graphics. There also needs to be a long hard look at what the 500 or so employees are actually producing in product. New roads are slow to arrive and still buggy, and even when they do arrive you still can’t just choose to ride or run them. UI still terrible.
Whist Zwift has taken a jump into the hardware market, it jumped into a well furnished market, upsetting the current incumbents on whom zwift needed to make their product usable (those with functioning trainers aren’t going to update the trainer if it still works). This Hardware jump didn’t help the software side the business and likely has a very tight margin. Why on earth they didn’t go down the line of their own version of apple tv, where they could have defined core functionality, processing and graphics power, connectivity etc. This would have allowed developers to develop to a core product spec. I’m sure there’s a large group of subscribers out their that would drop their apple tv, pc, ipad, in favour of a Zwift box that just worked. They would then be able to reduce software dev costs as could rapidly reduce dev on other platforms.
Zwift has one thing going for it and that’s its current subscriber numbers and base. It won’t take much for a new alternative with a high quality product to do to zwift what it has just done to the turbo trainer market. if it want s to charge a premium its got to become premium otherwise it will get usurped.
At Zwift’s level of efficiency (that apparently can’t even make a few hours of server connection per month viable at $15), their “Apple TV” would cost as much as a Tesla to not be sold at a loss.
All they had to do was write a spec list and go to one of the many far east manufacturers and ask them to build it. Just like they did with the hub. Yet unlike the hub, it wouldn’t have bitten the hands that feed it. Zwift wouldn’t exist without Wahoo and its open approach. They could have kept all the trainer manufacturers on side, instead of passing them all off. No treadmill or rowing machine company is now going to want to do dev work with Zwift as they’ll all expect Zwift to do the same with running, rowing etc as it has just done with cycling. The market just isn’t big enough. The other issue for zwift is product cycle. Trainers last a long time, once a customer has a reasonable trainer, they aren’t likely to upgrade unless in breaks which could be 5 plus years. If zwift trys to close out everyone other than the hub. People will just drop zwift like a stone so it has no leverage. They have written their own demise.
Zwift has made some missteps, sure. And possibly guilty of over hiring like many start-ups do. But to go against the grain and cut them some slack / software engineers / game designers at any level are 1) Not cheap and 2) Very difficult to lure away from current game houses. I’m not saying things haven’t felt glacial in pace for “progress” in the product. But it’s not as easy or simple as some reactionary comments suggest. No matter how much VC capital is costing about. They weren’t first to digital training but they definitely created the space as we know it.
Honestly, zwift has been loosing me over the years. In canada, zwift prices went up a 2 years ago and honestly not much in the support. Additionally I’m already paying over $20 dollars, with this it’s going to be a lot more expensive then TR and for that I would just go in that direction.
But we will see how this pans out.
Add in $5 per event costs for people who don’t want to subscribe but maybe want to do the odd race and get a base of casual users? My kids aged out of their child account and I’m not paying an extra 40 a month when they hardly use it.
Family memberships would also be worthwhile.
Annual subscription for any indoor training app?
Nope, not a hope in hell. I’ve tried various apps over the years including Zwift, Rouvy, Systm, RGT and Tacx.
I re-start my monthly subscription once the weather finally deteriorates and cancel the subscription as soon as it improves. Even in the “worst” winter, I don’t think I’ve paid for more than 4 or 5 consecutive months so an annual plan is a hard NO from me.
$20 is more than Netflix…
I would also add, if Zwift think adding an annual price to save money is a good thing whilst we are struggling to pay monthly heating bills then they have lost touch with reality, this isn’t the time to ask for £180 (or whatever it is) up front, and if you can’t afford that we will charge you more…. when we have all been on monthly from the start is a real kick in the teeth.
Zwift user since June, 2015 here. Let’s be honest, Zwift has shown considerable goodwill in the past – with free membership for a long time during their infancy, even when the ‘Beta’ was working exceptionally well. With the advent of greater virtual cycling competition across the spectrum nowadays, it is reasonable to expect that a subscription increase is inevitable if they are to continue to innovate. Let’s hope they keep it realistic (as you have intimated) and it’ll be no worries. Ride on!
That wasn’t goodwill. That was building up the user base to gain traction as the platform with users. That is the reason they have users now. I don’t go there because there tech is anything special at all. It’s buggy, amazingly slow to be improved, and lacks features of others. But its where the daily group rides are, the weekly TTT races, the many other race series, etc. That ‘goodwill’ was an investment in attracting a user base that then sticks around, solely because that’s where the people are. It’s the same reason a strava competitor would struggle and classic social media strategy.
Facebook and Twitter don’t stand a chance against MySpace, right?
{end sarcasm}
Looking for a 10X grown and raising prices is, well…a contradictory strategy. Sorry, can’t do both unless you DRAMATICALLY increase the Value Proposition.
I think their best bet is try to capture those seasonal users with annual subs. For the seasonal user that only subs from November to April, they are paying just $90 a year — pop the monthly sub to $20, increase that to $120, then maybe offer an annual sub that is around $160-180.. a lot of those seasonal users might just keep Zwift going year round as they only pay a little more and will have access to Zwift for all those rainy days or late night workouts, and even better you don’t piss of the base of users that are staying subbed all year as they don’t have to pay more than they already are paying.
Pretty sure a price hike is also going to cost them a chunk of long time users. Sure, they haven’t raised prices in 5 years but they also didn’t improve the game in any meaningful way and Eric Min has been breaking promises left and right. To a degree that would be unacceptable after an IPO, for example the “rowing is a couple weeks away” thing.
If they increase the price to $20, I’ll pause the subscription for the summer months (something I didn’t do in the past) and re-evaluate in the fall. The main reason why I’m a Zwift user right now and not a Trainer Road user is because I’ve been always been a Zwift user.
at 20 EUR/month, it should be biking for me.
It’s my first month, it’s already $22AU, they advertised it as 19.99, but forget that to Australians, that means all inclusive including tax, not post purchase, add 10% for Tax,
I find the lack of integration of all the numbers between Strava / Garmin Connect already underwhelming, and the lack of control regarding privacy and posting ride results, without consent on clubs, disturbing.
I would probably try wahoo, as I have a wahoo trainer or something that gives better transfer of Data,
PS, as for Strava, unless I get feedback about cost going forward, I may cough up a lot more, for Training Peaks for a year or a month to see how it works long term.
At $20 I’ll go back to watching documentaries while I ride instead of 1990s graphics.
I pay $15 month all year, but don’t use trainer during riding season, just during winter months, or a rainy weekend…..that said I would cancel.
.
Always wondered why they don’t leverage an ad-supported model to offer free subscriptions. Put up billboards and dashboard ads, force riders to use ad-supported jerseys and bikes (not even real bike companies, just any name tagged to a Zwift-style bike), even have audio ads when crossing finish/sprint lines. All this could be bypassed with a paid subscription. Such an effort would attract more membership numbers. Heard something about them stuck with a janky graphics model that wouldn’t allow much, if any of this though – true?
An ad that is seen by a few hundred people won’t get cents
I love Zwift when the air quality where I live is poor in the winter. I agree with you: $20 seems fair. A jump to $25 would *feel* like a lot of money monthly. If there’s a significant annual discount, I’d be tempted. $180?
I could add, I’ve liked the new roads, liked the addition of lace partners, and liked the addition of the ghosts. The rest is just biking for me.
If they want ten million, they’ll have to figure out the MarioKart. 😉
The evolution and improvements of Zwift are so slow or insignificant, that i have a hard time seeing Zwift not being run over some time soon. I dont see a price hike doing them any favours either.
Not event he UI, which would be the most obvious glare has gotten the love it needs for a long time. Races have so much more to offer if they would start working more with the dynamics of them. Integrated group chats? Pro Tour Teams much more integrated with full kits.
Theres no limit to what they could experiment with, but in genereal they are just dumbing it down for it to have wider appeal, and instead making it boring, predictable and unexciting. Lucky for them no one else has figured it out yet either.
So I won’t be able to renew my account monthly and will have to buy entire year?
On the bright side we don’t have to spend money to update our PC. Zwift graphic engine is still the same of the beginning… Second Life style.
Also a seasonal Zwift-rider, and won’t join the price hike. I’ve mainly used it because I like getting a map on my virtual rides in Strava…!
I think there’s so many missed opportunities with Zwift. And the rewards for events and achievements are crappy, if they added more gaming incentive I might be more engaged, but I barely look at Zwift except to follow the workout imported from TP…
Have a look at link to trainerday.com .I am in the same page as you….just following a workout from TP….
Agree with you Ray about how a challenge it is if they add an annual option, moreover unlike any other app/service, a lot of zwifters want to ride 1 to 4 monthes/year inside, it depends of where you live but I feel it’s more a majority (who want to ride indoor only during winter/bad weather) than a minority.
I think they’ll add an annual option with no increase and even cheaper (like 150-160$/year instead of 180$ today), but will increase between 18 and 20$/month 🙁
“But let’s be honest, the cost of running our business has gotten more expensive. It’s been really tough. The supply chain issues are real.” => Let’s be honest, it’s more a matter of huge costs for marketing/sponsoring with an agressive strategy than true cost of running the business…but no one will even notice that. All the TV, teams, riders + events, those are insane costs, although they won’t brag about that (nobody want to discover how huge this is in % of what you pay each month).
Before trying to reduce those costs, they probably want to see if they can keep the same agressive strategy by increasing the price for user.
This strategy helps them keeping the lead (ahead of RGT, Rouvy,etc..) because clearly the are on a “lazy programm” (lowcost) for developping features/maps, most of the money goes to market/sponsoring branch.
First Zwift has to prove that they can make a product of decent quality, then we can talk about price increases…
I get easily bored indoors, so I shop around and do maybe one month of Fulgaz, one month of RGT/Systm, one month on BigRingvr and one month of Zwift. Whenever I get back to Zwift I get surprised that all of the known bugs are still there. And then they add some new as well!
So I already think Zwift is too expensive for the quality they deliver. If they raise the price, I would just feel bad about spending that much on them and they would not be included next time I think about who I want to switch to.
Annual will never be for me, since I use the indoor trainer less than half the year…
I’m actually migrating over from Zwift to Mywhoosh which is FREE and cancelling any further subscription models at risk of price increases as my own “inflation busting” measures.
I actually like to make my own workouts and download them into my head unit and then just use Zwift as a visual aid.
I can do that in Mywhoosh. I can take part in their events/races if I wish.
I may sign up to trainerroad if I want the Ai coach to make my workouts if I get tired of planning my own stuff every week and use Mywhoosh as a virtual backdrop.
Actually in reply to my own comment.
I found Xert Cycling for $9.99 for adaptive training plans, if I need it which undercuts TrainerRoad.
Wow for $9.99 I can have a virtual free world and an Ai doing the work for me in my planning…. That sounds appealing. 😎
Q/ Free? For how long? How long can any “free” business model last – realistically?
Would you (could you) work for free, month / year after year?
Unless they get their money initially from Sponsorships first and grown their base model of users until they justify a solid price point.
In short: they are failing, a dead company walking. It was kind of obvious before, when they kept needing another investment round year after year (well, more like tri-annually, but still) to keep the lights on but now they’ve pushed that wagon as far as anyone could push it, given their limited market. That market is cyclists, apparently they *still* haven’t managed to grow running to the point where they’d even bother introducing a fee.
As a consumer I really like Zwift, as a virtual winter stopgap that I have in common with many of my real life riding buddies (it will be an actual quality of life loss when we inevitably spread out to a dozen post-Zwift platforms!) and for the reproducible challenge of taxing against my old numbers from last week, last month and last season on that watopia loop I consider “mine” (more virtual environments have zero appeal to me, they are not *that* attractive) and for the “something is happening” of random passers by on the same virtual environment, but if they can’t operate on those $15/mo/user, sorry for you guys, start sending out resumes. A price hike won’t save them, too many alternatives.
In an ideal world the least bad outcome *for me* would perhaps be some buyout of the IP rubble once the failure materializes, buyout by some of the engineering team who think they can keep the backend (or a streamlined version of the backend) running on a fraction of the cost, and without whatever overhead the current company has for world building, marketing and the like. I don’t know if that would even be possible (depends on how big of a server fleet they actually need), but I consider this the only imaginable future world that still contains Zwift three winters from now.
My guess is closer to $18. That’s 20% more that goes straight the the bottom line and minimizes churn risk.
KKR probably doesn’t want an IPO. IPOs are risky, distracting and time consuming. They’d prefer a sale.to a strategic or another global PE firm. IPO would be last resort.
If Zwift could connect their worlds together, so you simply cycle through a ‘portal’ in London and you’d be in Richmond… that would be cool. Also, if they did what RGT did and created a course generator, and then ran competitions to see who could build the best courses (something RGT should do/have done). Imagine a user built library of rides and climbs, which could all be accessed through one portal in world in Watopia. That would be something.
I really wish they would at least connect all of the UK worlds with a portal. London/Yorkshire/Scotland would be fun.
But still nothing like that would make anyone spend more hours per month on Zwift. Those hours are entirely based on training goals, life constraints, weather. And nothing like that would increase the effective hourly rate subscribers would be willing to pay. There’s only so much value a training gamification platform can bring and there are alternatives like doing a workout with golden cheetah, grabbing gtaV in some Steam sale and cruising around in that trainer control mod or just doing the Netflix&sweat routine without any smart trainer features at all. Either they solve their cost problems or they are done.
I have very rarely been in a Zwift event that was 20% women unless is is a women’s only event. 5-10% women is more standard.
Ray-
Thank you for the insights. Great point on the software platform. Actually sold my peloton when the Hub became available. Great price at 499 and the monthly $$ did not seem out of line. That said, I am still struggling to figure out if “I am doing it right” when i get on the thing and pick a workout. Seems that it is geared toward a different demo than me. Used to ride alot, but life gets in the way, etc. Anyhow, thank you for the insight. I never buy any product without first seeing/reading your thoughts on the item.
Thanks as always Ray. Good insight into the Zwift vision of expansion. I agree that the time for massive expansion (onset of pandemic) has passed, any push towards 10 million subscribers will require significant marketing efforts to bring the brand name to a wider audience than avid cyclists.
I’ve been on Zwift since late 2016, joined a team (Team TFC) and race/ride year round. My Zwifting falls off drastically in the April to late October months, but I still participate because of the community aspect. Our virtual team also rides extensively in real life (twelve of us did the Triple Bypass Ride last August in Colorado) — so (for me) there is value in year-round membership. The social aspect (again for me) makes Zwift different than simple training….some like it/other don’t care YMMV.
My subscription suggestions would include:
1. Monthly membership with the ability to pause at any time
2. Family (same address) Membership at a discount
3. Annual membership with a discount (two months free?) with no pauses
Other commenters have cited Zwift’s limitations and frequent misfires in updates. These are frustrating, but Zwift is unique in promoting eSports and Community interaction. Is Trainer Road better for “real” training? Probably, but you don’t get 5-6 people together to do intervals. Do other platforms have better graphics? Yes…but again great graphics in a significantly less populated platform makes indoor riding a solitary effort. Another YouTuber promoting indoor training reminds people that Zwift will work from everything from an expensive gaming PC all the way down to a mobile phone — both Apple and Android. So Zwift generally gets it right, but not to everyone’s satisfaction.
Love it, like it or hate it Zwift has done more to promote cycling to a wider audience than anything I’ve seen in my 66 years. Is it “real?” Heck no, but if just a handful of people riding on Zwift decide to venture outdoors, I’d say the platform has done a great service. IMHO the 10 Million Subscriber Dream is better kept in house, with Zwift concentrating on improving quality at a decent price point.
A surprisingly positive take that I can agree with. Zwift has its deficiencies (modest training features compared to something like trainerroad, modest “game experience” compared to anything from that field, modest “social” if you happen to be into the “hot live host” model offered by peloton), but nonetheless the combination works out really well for consumers like me. What doesn’t work out is their cost structure and no amount of improvement in any of those fields could solve those, only bringing costs down.
That 10 Million Subscriber Dream (thanks for the very accurate use of capital letters!) was probably mentioned quite deliberately, to avoid annoying investors even more (10 million is already borderline tiny relative to the investment volume already taken in)
I keep hearing why Zwift doesn’t offer an annual that could include a discounted price, like how nearly everyone else does it, the answer is clear – there is no customer loyalty with Zwift. They know the ones sticking to their product will pay monthly regardless so why bother with an annual plan that only reduces their till. Their drops (virtual currency) is also a joke – why not be able to use it to buy real products or credit to a monthly plan? I have 20 million drops and would see a new light in customer loyalty if Zwift even gave me 1 free month to cash in. But nope, cheap and anti-customer. See this with a lot of retail stores and guess what, they come and go.
I WILL NOT PAY ZWIFT A PENNY MORE IN 2023 OR BEYOND
I WILL NOT PAY ZWIFT A PENNY MORE IN 2023 OR BEYOND
I WILL NOT PAY ZWIFT A PENNY MORE IN 2023 OR BEYOND
I WILL NOT PAY ZWIFT A PENNY MORE IN 2023 OR BEYOND
I WILL NOT PAY ZWIFT A PENNY MORE IN 2023 OR BEYOND
I WILL NOT PAY ZWIFT A PENNY MORE IN 2023 OR BEYOND
I WILL NOT PAY ZWIFT A PENNY MORE IN 2023 OR BEYOND
I WILL NOT PAY ZWIFT A PENNY MORE IN 2023 OR BEYOND
Zwift should strongly consider microtransactions as a way to increase revenue. Sell drops and balance the bikes like bikes are balanced in the current industry – each model year is 3% faster.
No, no no no… Noooooooo… please god no
How about dropping some of those pro sponsorships to cut on cost. I could care less about them zwifting. Id rather zwift with my friends that actually have to pay like me.
They can’t simply not throw cash at frivolities like sponsoring and TV ads: they took in hundreds of millions from investors in exchange for a (likely court-proofed with deadlines and the like) promise to try and build a billion dollar business from that money. They are under contractual obligation to create something incredibly successful (and not just barely self-sustaining) or go broke trying.
Their problem is not that they have no money, their problem is that they are not profitable. Those can be two very different things when six-digits investments are in the picture. Monetary bonfires like ads and sponsoring are the least bad ways they have of spending the money on time without further inflating their running costs (by hiring even more people)
That’s a pretty significant price increase but it’s understandable. However if they make me subscribe for a year forget about it. I love Zwift but I will only ever use it in the cold winter months.
I would pay more if they improve the game listening to the users:
– workout editor is shit
– displayed information is not improved (select average power, etc..)
– some information from powermeter (like l-r balance) is lost (not only not displayed, also not written in the fit file)
– dual powermeter recording is long awaited..
For most of us, New Worlds are secondary… we want this game improved for better usability
Can I just check my badges and the drop shop from the companion app already
or not have to toggle “modes” of the companion app by being forced to turn off wifi on my phone?
More to add:
– should be able to create a custom course
– can’t see the course when looking at events on the web
– can’t see the course when looking at events in the program
– can’t save bike/wheel setups as favorites, or set up as defaults, like say, TT bike and disc for TTT events, road bike and wheels for everything else
But mostly, quit introducing bugs and build more roads on watopia.
RGT has better physics. But everything else pales compared to Zwift. I do workouts on Zwift but I mainly like racing. It’s the best way to push yourself beyond your limits.
Zwift is going to need to do something with the graphics eventually. I mean FIFA 23 doesn’t look or play like FIFA 12.
The amount of updates I have to do is insane. You are on point.
Getting from 1 million subscribers to 10 million is ambitious to say the least. This seems to imply, either there’s 9 million people out there on trainers / treadmills not currently using Zwift, or that they’ll do something to get more people onto trainers / treadmills in the first place (which seems like a tall order indeed).
I guess too many woke left wingers working at Zwift are demanding big pay packets to keep pace with the cost of living, rather than look at the root causes i.e. unnecessary US backed wars and government adventures including spending.
Easiest way is to target the consumer and continue to fuel capitalism at the core. But I guess they weren’t complaining when they had easy furlough money and sat at home sipping coffee from the home desk.
Funny how they all fall silent when the public get taken advantaged on.
Hey Jim-
First, let’s keep politics and name-calling out of this.
Second, when you post, I ask people to keep to posting under the same handle. In your case, you’ve posted as two different names today.
Cheers!
I’m canceling if they raise prices. I mean, I’m kind of sick of it as it is. I can only ride the same redundant routes and maps so many times before I die of boredom.
Good to know
The only way to motivate 20$ sub for me is ability to have different user profiles so me and my wife could have independent settings instead of having 2 separate accounts or change settings in the one we share. Considering how basic service is I find it actually hard to motivate current price already.
I thing there is a huge potential improvement for the game and there are still many creature comfort features that are lacking. Biggest recent change was introduction on Scotland. Sure it looks nice but it’s extremely small. It looks more like something that a 3D artist can come up during weekend.
I can assume that a lot of money went into development of Zwift Hub and eventual legal battle with Wahoo. But this was not my decision and it was not something I asked for. So I’m not going to sponsor this.
I think it would be cool if they introduced offline version of the game that you could buy and instead charge sub fee for online service. They could sell bikes and geas as DLC and new maps as expansions. Basically like any other game does today. Instead they try to invest into some questionable areas and now we have to pay for this. All I want is ability to train. If i have people around me it’s fine but you could have bots riding around without any noticeable difference.
So i don’t see what actually needs more money as game is rather stale and you mostly need to cater for server cost. I think that 9.99$ is more fair price that could also attract more users or allow existing ones to keep sub “just in case” during the summer months.
Considering the number of free and paid alternatives I think many people would choose another solution. At least I know that i would not be paying this. Even 15$ is too much for what you are getting. Especially in the current stained economic situation.
Perhaps Wahoo RGT will cleverly capitalize on disgruntled Zwift users who may finally leave Zwift (at least temporarily at first), in-response to their proposed subscription price increase.
Specially since the Zwift platform has essentially plateaued, without any significant improvement for many years – as per many readers’ comments to DCR’s recent blurb on the topic.
Wahoo has to think outside the box, as to how to finally lure and keep those potentially unhappy, disgruntled Zwifters, when the time comes.
In essence – a proverbial gift from heaven for RGT.
Don’t understand the rationale for price increase, but Ray is absolutely right this is the correct way to signal it so no subscribers are unaware. Given the cost of cloud computing, seems Zwift could have several additional worlds active at any time and some type of road to ride between rides – but doesn’t seem to be on the table. Is this a justification to raise pay for the developers and add devs to the staff? Inflation has hit a lot of people hard – but at this scale an increase of ~$5/month is significant
If Zwift would offer a stripped down version for say $5.99 that offers just riding…no races, no group stuff, just courses and workouts, I would subscribe year round. I might even pay $9.99 for that. As it stands, I am paying nearly $20 a month Canadian for something I don’t really need. I can ride for free using my Edge 1040/Tacx combo in “Ride a Course” mode. I also do not follow people, care about Ride Ons, or take part in group activities so really, I am not even sure why I am using Zwift in the first place. A price increase would just confirm my lack of need for it.
I used to occasionally redo rides I had previously done outdoors on my Tacx Neo 2 using my Edge 830. I did that in early December and found that I could no longer mark the ride as virtual in Strava. I routinely used to mark rides as virtual there whenever I redid a ride, but Strava has taken that away for some reason. (Garmin Connect still allows me to mark a ride virtual.) A few days later, because of that, I tried Zwift for the first time, and I’ve been using Zwift regularly since, since we’ve had little snow this year (no xc skiing). So if Strava matters to you, just be aware that you can’t manually mark a ride as virtual there any more if you use your 1040.
Zwift is a great alternative for 15 dollars. Anything higher, is not convenient. Im not a professional cyclist, and if I was, I would be outdoors. This is more for therapy and entertainment, if they are going to make it more expensive, i will just go back to the videos I have of cycling through different places.
I’m curious as to what portion of Zwift’s expenses are related to their advertising and marketing costs. Items like running all those TV ads, being the presenting sponsor of events like the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift and the Paris-Roubaix Femmes, and their exclusive arrangements as the platform for events like the Cycling Esports World Championships. Those costs are likely a significant part of their operating budget and their sponsorships have been growing quite a bit over the past couple of years. I’m not being critical of their efforts (their support of women’s racing is a huge) with the possible exception of seeing the same TV ad every 10 minutes during a 4 hour Tour de France broadcast. But… when companies talk about the need to increase subscription fees due to “rising costs”, their increasing advertising budgets never seem to get a mention as a component of their expenses.
“ But… when companies talk about the need to increase subscription fees due to “rising costs”, their increasing advertising budgets never seem to get a mention as a component of their expenses.”
Good point.
Like it or not, the only reason Zwift is here today at the popularity level they are, is because they spent money on advertising all these years. Be it sponsorship of big events, little events, community resources, etc… all of which takes money, but raises the profile of the company.
People forget that before Zwift there were plenty of other indoor trainer companies. But Zwift brought with it massive VC money, and changed how these companies spend that money. It’s fundamental to why there are “roughly” a million people on Zwift today, yet a tiny fraction of that on TR (which didn’t take investor money).
So while we all ‘hate’ spending money on marketing, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s core to how Zwift attracted most of the people that are complaining about it here – even if you don’t realize it. Sure, being a generally good platform is useful, but it wasn’t what separated Zwift from the rest back then, nor is what separates it today.
And given Zwift’s biggest business challenge today is increasing subscribers, one could argue the best use of their money is actually marketing activities – as much as that sucks to hear.
Indoor training is a niche market within cycling not driven by advertising -couch potatoes don’t watch a commercial and turn into indoor athletes. Cyclists turn into Zwift riders (or any other platform) when they find value in indoor training. Every potential Zwift customer already knows of Zwift, and the fact that Zwift has so heavily spent in advertising is a proof that things are going south 😉
Fair point, Ray. Here’s the $64,000 question: Who is left to tap? Put another way, what’s the largest realistic user base Zwift can seek to capture? I don’t think they are going to steal many folks away from Peloton, as spinning is very different than riding a real bike. Not to mention, as you’ve discussed before, Peloton is plug-and-play and Zwift, is, uh, not. Stealing folks away from System and other competitors is the most obvious way to do that. But increasing prices to match or exceed those competitors is not going to help in that quest. So if at the end of the day there isn’t much more to tap in the way of cycling, those advertising dollars are going to waste. As someone else said, if they opened to rowing they could snag a few hundred thousand new users — but not if they let EXR continue to take advantage of their early lead.
Running Zwift for a few years now. Short-term: 15 or 20 bucks won’t make a difference. Living in the US, the core of my training will always be indoor -If I don’t want to reduce my life expectancy too much… Skydiving is so much safer than road cycling! However, long-term, the worthless opinion of a full-time investor/trader, Zwift is just a walking dead (opposite to indoor training) waiting to be replaced by the next best platform (which is lacking at the moment). Seriously, exactly the same thing since 2018!
I support the opinions here on a different multi tiered approach, but would offer going one step further and have a ‘pay as you go’ tier. In January I signed up to a 60 day free trial with Zwift, but I really only use it 3-4 times per month (weekends when the weather is rubbish) as on other days of the week I: run, swim, weight lift, MTB outdoors, row on a C2 machine and more… (you get my point; I’m not a hard core ‘roadie’) So £5 per ride (and only during the winter months) on subscription simply doesn’t add up for me. But I’d happily pay say £2 per day (of use) on a pay as you go scheme. Zwift would capture far more subscribers that way I’m sure, as they’d tap in to the millions non hardcore road bike riders out there.
Ray, thanks for the update. As always very informative. I have been using Zwift for a 14 months. I mostly ride alone but I enjoy the social aspects. If they increase the price to $19.99 or offer a yearly subscription, I will continue using them.
For me, they provide three key benefits: year-round biking, safety and time savings. After a couple of falls, I am more careful when riding outdoors. On top, car drivers are not used to bikes around so I need to go to a dedicated trail, which means getting the bike in the car, going there…. Those benefits more than outweigh the subscription cost.
Having said that, I echo the comments from many that they need to improve the product. That they cannot figure out how to reliably connect with Apple Watch is a joke. Companion app has now started to disconnect in the middle of workouts as well. Improve the chat experience.
And I do not need more worlds. I need more diversity in existing worlds. We are in a virtual world, why can’t they put Paris or London inside Watopia? New York in Makuri Islands? No need to port Richmond over…
It is sad that this type of company seeks to basically rip off its loyal customers.
The incremental costs of adding additional users is fractional compared to the revenue they raise.
With 800k subscribers at $20, the annual income is nearly $16M. Compared to the $15 the increase in income is $4M. Ok with many users only using Zwift in the off season this will drop somewhat.
The cost of creating the site, apps and actual content is high, but once done the administration and costs of say additional courses is not.
As per DC’s take, I can’t see Zwift expanding its user base significantly, it got lucky and benefited from the Covid lockdowns, but to me unless that situation is repeated I just don’t think there are enough people that interested with the added cost of the equipment purchase to get there. At $15 per month I’m not interested enough, even though I have the equipment at $20 its a step too far,, much as the concept is fantastic, I can do structured workouts with my Garmin device without subscription, and I’m happy to stick a video on, or sometimes music.
[Deleted
Just cleaning up the garbage]
hahahahahahahha
If they’re going to raise the price from three AAA console titles per year to four, they really need to start offering AAA console graphic quality for those of us on PCs with graphics cards less than a decade old.
Would love to see Xbox or Playstation sell a Zwift like title at $60 with said graphics and a Bluetooth/ANT+ dongle.
The problem is economies of scale don’t exist here. Those AAA console titles nowadays are developed for hundreds of millions of dollars over many years behind closed doors, and then have revenue in the billions.That’s all because the user base is massively larger than what Zwift has to work with, and their cost/org structure tends to be less complex too.
While I know many people like to compare Zwift as a game to other big name console games, they just aren’t the same type of businesses.
That said, that’s concurrently no excuse for the Zwift approach for seeming to not care about at least minimumal effort of graphic quality for those with high-end systems, or heck, just a $110 Apple TV which can easily do far more than Zwift throws at it.
I started zwitfting with 10 EUR/month bach to 2016.
20 EUR is double and too much.
I will watch to old TdF stages on youtube during indoor training.
They have an income of 16 million dollars a month and that is unsustainable?
WTF…….they created computer graphics (which are not very good) and a simulation engine years ago.
All the initial outlay went years ago and now it’s just maintenance and creating new worlds/routes which are few and far between.
So with an annual income of 192 million dollars and nothing new hardly ever being introduced to the paying consumer they say the costs are unsustainable…….give me a break,we are talking serious greed here not costs
Probably inspired by Groundhog Horwath at Strava, but I’m actually surprised I did not wonder this before: how is Min still in charge? At 600+ million investment volume he surely doesn’t have anything even remotely close to a control majority and if I compare their 600+ product to the 44+ product from 2017/2018 season (see what I did there?), I don’t really see that much difference. Except for some more landscapes that could have been outsourced to professionals in the game industry for little more than a January or two of Zwift revenue I think. Some days I just don’t understand capitalism at all it seem, or that guy is *really* talented in buttering up VC… (likely both)
Min is actually not still in charge. There are two co-CEO’s now. Sounds like Min’s full time job is buttering up the VCs and the other guy is actually in charge of running the place (or maybe that’s over interpreting things). link to zwiftinsider.com
I definitely won’t be paying these loonies a penny more anyway regardless and would look at other value alternative options. I don’t need to “huddle” in a group online or online races. I thank them for what they’ve done in the market till now and bringing people to cycling, however markets also adapt and innovate. Zwift has done neither.
It would be a case to thanks but now it’s a different path for me in any future price hike.
There are alternative value online options if you search properly.
Like someone said the root cause is greed by these founders and VC. People like DC Rainmaker seem to be mesmerized or in awe by such people and therefore blindsided and would likely ‘swallow it whole’ (in terms of the price increase).
The problem is the “community” people refer to is also brainwashed with a cult like mentality and would rally to these people even if the price was $20-25 or more. Just look at the Peloton cult which seems to be surviving still at $44-50 a month.
“People like DC Rainmaker seem to be mesmerized or in awe by such people”
Ignoring the fact that you couldn’t be further from the truth, and one only need to see my past posts about Zwift to see that…
Either way, between this and your previous posts, you kinda just seem angry in general at some of these platforms (or things like diversity)….so…yeah.
Why would I be angry or question my view on diversity? Haha you’re a joke.
Isn’t that getting personal? Where’s your level of professionalism? As someone hiding behind a camera you’re supposed to soak it up and accept different opinions/impartiality and unbiased views rather than act like a snowflake?
I suggest people to think out of the box and look around rather than accept these increases all around and resolve the issues. There’s more power in the people than they might think, rather than just to bury their heads in the sand and accept whatever these companies or VC throw at them to accept. Not in a revolutionist sense, just in terms of waking up from the Matrix.
Well your recent comments seem to suggest people to suck it up and accept it. You’re part of the status quo.
There’s nothing personal there, I’m simply looking/referencing at your previous comments on the site, when you said last week there were “too many woke left wingers working at Zwift “.
Of course, there are probably other comments you’ve left. Like most troll accounts, you frequently change your username. Sometimes it’s Bart, sometimes it’s Jim, and probably others I’m too lazy to look-up.
> There are two co-CEO’s now.
Ah, retained the founder as a ceremonial head to keep a positive impression, that’s actually quite rational. That new guy, combining actually being a cyclist and being well-networked into the corporate structure of their cloud provider (zwift being as seasonal and event-centric as it is the perfect use case for renting server capacity on demand) seems like an almost perfect match (someone “closer to the metal” would certainly be even better for dealing with Zwift’s cost issues)
I see you did not reply to my post regarding their income……or are you sponsored to promote them and do not want to lose their perks?
“I see you did not reply to my post regarding their income……or are you sponsored to promote them and do not want to lose their perks?”
I don’t typically respond to every comment on the thread. There have been nearly 200 comments on this post thus far.
But anyone who has followed what I write about Zwift that it’s laughable that I’d be sponsored by them. Nobody out there in the media industry has criticized their business more than I have, especially when it comes to their business practices and the astoundingly high number of ways that Zwift burns money.
Zwift is the single most buggy piece of software I use (On Windows PC with companion app on iPhone with Apple Watch. The Watch app is especially bad and randomly drops the connection every few minutes). Increasing the price in the current state will keep me from racing there. Due to time limitations, I’ve been using the free kilometers for the last months and this made me realize even more how much of a joke it is to pay this much money for it. I think in the future I’ll just set my Kickr to ergo mode and watch Youtube.
I have used zwift almost continuously and exclusively for the last 3+ years, totaling about 35k km. Yet, when I think of it, all of my social interactions about riding are on strava (including for all Zwift rides). I am perfectly fine riding with the robopacers snd if someone created group rides with ghost riders and some AI (á la ChatGPT) would spit up dad jokes or reply to the regular banter, I’d be perfectly fine.
Seems pretty dimple to do snd it doesn’t need 20 world, 200 unused bikes in your garage, etc.
What I trying to say is that competitors for Zwift are just behind the corner: If one of those implemented large group rides…..
An awful lot of the money seems to be going to sponsoring races and catering for racing.
Which begs the question is all our subscription money going on this and not development of the platform,with graphics from the 1990’s and only 3 worlds in around 8 years
In every measurable way Zwift is very poor value for money when you look at the graphics and product content compared to income.
I think be ry few are actually bothered about this so called ‘community’ as cycling is pretty much a solitary pastime and always will be for most.
I would rather have 1 server with nothing else on the road if it mean’t far more variety in worlds/roads……..starting to think it’s time to jump to rouvy/sufferfest
Rouvy and Sufferfest are grea, indeed.
Here’s an awesome free, (or for-pay YT channel if you want erg-mode): Biketheworld.com
Spectacular scenery, iconic and other climbs/rides.
Much more eye candy than Zwift’s cartoonish offering – but alas, without the thumbsup social component.
I used to subscribe to Zwift but eventually got tired of it and now use Fulgaz, which is awesome AND a lot cheaper. If Zwift can’t retain me as an avid cyclist, they are not getting to 10M subscribers. Things I didn’t like about it were they didn’t allow enough flexibility. I should be able to ride in whatever world I want. I should be able to ride with a pace partner or beacon that is moving at whatever watts/kg I choose. I should be able to easily ride alone if I want to. Fulgaz shows a cycling computer heads up display that shows you a lot of things you could get on a Garmin or other head unit, like average watts and average HR. Zwift? No. It’s an app for people who want to ride in clubs or groups or race. That’s it. If that’s your jam, great. But there aren’t 10M people who want to do that probably. Some of us just want to explore interesting scenery while riding indoors and want the same information that you are used to getting from your head unit and couldn’t give a crap about fake bikes or wheels or clothing.
Good points…
Start charging for running users, or give a package deal run/ride. Lot’s of missed revenue over the years on the backs of bike riders.