Are we slowing losing interest in cycling events?

Cycling Insight has shared search trends into bike shows and sportives over the past eight years.

In this time, there has been a gradual decline in interest for bike shows, it said. The London Bike Show peaked in 2013 for search interest and in 2019 it was 70% lower. This suggests a small extent of fatigue in the format, said Cycling Insight, but other variables such as the London Olympics and the four-year Olympic cycle could be affecting this.

The search term ‘sportives’ peaked in July 2014 and had half the search volume in July 2019. The term typically gets 1,300 searches a month on average, so, during peak summer, it is estimated that around 5,000 were searching for sportives in 2014.

‘Cycling Event’ is more consistent and has around 1,600 monthly searches. But with fewer events likely to occur in 2020, Cycling Insight has said it is seeing a ‘complete erasure’ of current interest and searches in this area.

Despite the decline in ‘sportive’ search interest, popular sportives continue to hold strong search volume, when looking over the past three years with the anomaly of 2020. Ride London averages 9,900 monthly searches to Fred Whitton’s 2,400. The big sportives are fairing well year-on-year and these trends should things normalise over the next 12 months.