If you’ve been following Zwift for any length of time, then you know getting an Esport World Championships has been on Zwift’s radar for quite a while now.
Today, at a press conference from Zwift’s Draft House at the UCI Road Cycling World Championships in Harrogate, UCI President, David Lappartient and Zwift Esport CEO Craig Edmondson delivered the news that Zwift and UCI will host the first ever UCI Cycling Esports World Championships in 2020.
Earlier this year, we marked our ambition to develop an esports platform, but I think it’s much more than that. We are looking to establish a new cycling discipline. This partnership is a significant leap in that journey as we move further towards our ambition of delivering competition at the highest level in sport. We are at the very beginning of a long and exciting road here at Zwift as we look to establish a new and innovative discipline for cycling.
Eric Min, Zwift CEO and Co-Founder.
Zwift first embarked on its esports journey in January this year with the launch of the KISS Super League, the first esports league to feature professional athletes. The launch followed a $120 million Series B funding round led by Highland Europe, Causeway, True and Novator with a view to developing an esports platform.
According to Zwift, they plan on creating an equal number of races for men and women,
As part of this agreement, Zwift is expected to establish a certification program to ensure trainers and hardware used are reliable enough to be used in these events. Also, a program to verify and validate
No details have been released yet on
There will be a maximum of 15 National Championships organized in select countries either on-site or remotely on-line and act as qualification events.
After 2020, UCI will launch a bidding process to determine the provider of these events beyond 2020.
