Will crowd funding fix the gender balance?

Lanterne_Rogue

Couple of thoughts - firstly, if you're not paying then you're the product. £20 subscription aside, cycling sells the audience to sponsors.

Secondly there's an assumption that this is a zero sum game and that putting money into women's cycling automatically takes money out of the men's race. Has there actually been an example yet of anyone doing that, other than people using the possibility of it as an excuse not to do anything? In any event, it's entirely plausible that investing in professional women's cycling leads to a growth in the overall audience and increased sponsorship for everybody. Telling half your potential audience that you're not really interested them is a pretty poor way of marketing yourself...

Incidentally that last point applies also to racial diversity too. On a purely commercial basis the lack of diversity limits the market. Imagine what happens once an Indian rider starts kicking arse?

ddraver

Everyone talks about Chickens and Eggs but what this does do is show that there is a significant group of people willing to watch women's cycling who, quite literally, have money to give away. That does tilt the balance a little bit (depending on who is chicken and who egg...)

Lanterne_Rogue

Also, I cannot get past the double standard applied to "quality" - not necessarily here, but certainly elsewhere, where people are capable of holding two things to be true:

a) that cycling was more entertaining in the old days when Eddy Mercx could just cycle off on a massive attack and hold off the entire peloton, and simultaneously...

b) women's cycling is boring because Van Vleuten can just cycle off on a massive attack and hold off the entire peloton

elbowloh

ddraver said:

Everyone talks about Chickens and Eggs but what this does do is show that there is a significant group of people willing to watch women's cycling who, quite literally, have money to give away. That does tilt the balance a little bit (depending on who is chicken and who egg...)

And maybe more women would watch cycling, if they would watch women racing rather than men

RichN95.

Lanterne_Rogue said:

Also, I cannot get past the double standard applied to "quality" - not necessarily here, but certainly elsewhere, where people are capable of holding two things to be true:

a) that cycling was more entertaining in the old days when Eddy Mercx could just cycle off on a massive attack and hold off the entire peloton, and simultaneously...

b) women's cycling is boring because Van Vleuten can just cycle off on a massive attack and hold off the entire peloton

a) is only true because we didn't watch it. We read about in two minutes.

blazing_saddles

In the short term I agree with No to a Doc in so much that currently the only real way to generate enough interest to make women's cycling viable as a fully professional sport is to piggyback on men's cycling.
In the slightly longer term that approach has to then filter to grass roots, stimulate interest and encourage more participants to take up the sport and compete.
More then go on to swell the professional rider pool, which in turn adds to the depth of talent etc.

It's kind of obvious I know, but if reforms at grass routes level don't happen and race organisers don't see growing returns, then the piggybacking of men's events will eventually cease.