A rare interview with Zwift's Director of Racing, Sean Parry, on the current state and future of Zwift Community Elite racing.
Is it ten years already? Zwifters have ridden over 8.72 billion kilometers and collectively climbed 81.56 meters in a decade defining the virtual cycling discipline and creating a community.
The participation statistics for community rides and races are hard to fathom. Over 100 volunteer organizers have supported 4,034,556 community events, and 36,993 Zwift Clubs have organized 475,929 more.
This unique aspect that distinguishes Zwift is the origin of the term “Elite Community,” which is used to describe the upcoming 2024/25 racing season.
“We believe it important that we grow this sport from the ground up and create pathways to the top,” Zwift emphasizes.
As “This Season on Zwift” celebrates ten years of the groundbreaking virtual cycling platform that changed cyclists’ lives worldwide with new roads, a revamped HUD, a garage overhaul, hardware options, and many more upgrades, it’s also a fitting time to reflect on the evolution of online racing.
Competitive riders on the platform have come a long way from the underground rebel days, but the passionate racing community is always looking for new ways to make racing better.
The Zwift Racing Score (ZRS) promises to revolutionize racing for the 300,000 Zwifters that raced last season, with 27,000 of them competing in more than 25 races in 2023/24. The new Community Racing Festival highlights the early release of a well-organized Racing Calendar, which makes planning the racing season easier for community and elite riders.
A reimagined structure for the Zwift World Series featuring a regular season and Championship, a consistent schedule, a defined pathway from community to elite, and new qualification criteria provides increased incentives and promises exciting and competitive elite racing that culminates in the Zwift World Series in March.
While many outlets have keenly covered the various enhancements to Zwift, we seized the opportunity to focus specifically on the competitive elements. The Zommunique’ presented Zwift’s Director of Racing, Sean Parry, with several questions from the community and a few they hadn’t thought to ask in this wide-ranging interview about the current state and future of community elite racing.
With ZRL already started, using the existing A-D category system, and ZRS looking to roll out wider from October, what is the plan for running the following Rounds of ZRL using ZRS?
ZRS is not currently applicable to team racing—in ZRL, teams are categorized into global leagues by WTRL according to their own methodology. We’re hugely excited about this season’s ZRL events.
If ZRS helps give Zwifters a more competitive racing experience, what is Zwift doing to provide them with a fairer racing experience? Are there plans to crack down or create a competitive vs. non-competition mode?
Ensuring that community competition on Zwift is both fun and fair is our primary focus.
We believe the recent update to racing categorization through the introduction of Zwift Racing Score is a huge step forward. The racing score is based on both power and race results, meaning you will always be matched with Zwifters of similar ability, making for fairer and more competitive racing.
For the general racing community, we are also constantly evolving the tools we have in this area—for example, we recently made a smart trainer a requirement for all racing on Zwift, eliminating the most inaccurate hardware.
We also have in game performance flags that trigger when a performance sits outside of the expected norms of human performance. These flags are monitored by an internal team who follow up and take action where issues are identified and we are continually expanding the analytics these flags are based on.
As mentioned, this year, all community members can take part in racing in a fully verified environment should they wish through the Zwift World Series. Whilst we have seen great interest in the upcoming early events, fully verified racing comes with many requirements on riders, and in the grand scheme of things only a small number of Zwifters want to do this.
The community race participation statistics are staggering, with 100+ organizers, 4,034,556 community events organized, and 36,993 Zwift Clubs organizing 475,929 events. Do you have plans to streamline the community organizers to decrease the dilution of events, for example, to contract with a select few?
Community is what Zwift is all about, so we’re proud to have such a fantastic community who dedicate their own free time to hosting events for others to enjoy. No matter where you are, or when you log in, there will always be a race for you.
We work closely with community organizers to support them in event set up, advise them on how they can create the best experience and strategically schedule their events for the most impact, and highlight the best community content when we can. We will continue to assess the balance between events on the public calendar and those that sit behind clubs to ensure we have a balanced calendar with content available to suit all preferences.
Is the zRacing takeover for October & November, with 35 Community Race Organizers hosting the events, a proof-of-concept for this model?
The community racing festival in October/November will provide enhanced visibility for community race organizers, exciting and varied content for racers, and a great opportunity for Zwifters to orient themselves with the rich variety of organizers out there at the beginning of the northern hemisphere indoor racing season. The festival is also a key component of our 10-year celebrations, where we will shine a light on the many communities that make Zwift special.
As part of this we are providing organizers with a range of opportunities to advertise their clubs and the wider set of events that they run throughout the year, as an opportunity to help them to build their communities further. We’re really excited about the potential of the festival and will consider how we utilise this model in the future based on the outcomes.
How were they chosen? What are you doing to empower the community organizers further this season?
The set of organizers that are part of the festival were carefully considered according to a range of factors, including participation in their existing events on platform, the experiences they create year round and their support for specific groups of racers.
Zwift earned a privileged and coveted position, having so many users who are active racers. With other platforms focusing heavily on racing, how does Zwift plan to retain that racing user base?
Our community organizers are a huge part of what makes Zwift racing special and we are hugely grateful for the time and effort they pour into the platform and their communities. Having a close and collaborative relationship with these organizers is extremely important to us and we’ve spent a lot of time speaking with our community over the summer to understand their needs and priorities. This information is being used to define a community-focused roadmap, with some items already rolling out shortly.
Our mission is to provide Zwifters with great racing content that caters to their wide array of needs and preferences and is available around the clock. We’re extremely excited about the upcoming season where we’ve got a jam-packed calendar of great events, which will let you drop in for a quick race or sign up for the big leagues, from beginner races to the Zwift Games Championships, there’s racing for every level. Importantly you’ll always be able to find a well-populated race, full of real people around the clock and people of like ability to race against.
With the roll-out racing score, you’re going to feel even better matched with opponents each and every time you enter a race and we see this as a game-changer for the racing experience on Zwift.
We see other platforms delivering functionality such as live in game scoring and formats such as elimination. What innovations is Zwift looking to introduce to make progress in its racing offering?
Zwift Racing Score is set to be a game-changer for Zwift racing and is the next major product innovation we’re able todisclose at this time.
We are always working on new features and will announce them when our members can benefit from them most.
On a recent episode of The Fit File podcast, Zwift’s CEO Eric Min stated, “Racing is something that we’re leaning into from a community standpoint more than at the elite level."
Can you describe this philosophy as it relates to the big picture for elite racing? For example, will Zwift continue to devote resources to develop elite-level racing and distinguish itself from the constraints of the UCI?
Eric’s comments reflect that Zwift is a community-first platform. We now have the biggest racing community in cycling, with over 300k Zwifters competing last season, and we truly believe racing on Zwift is the most time-efficient and fun way to get fitter on a bike. Our primary focus is on continuing to open up racing, provide great experiences and events for our community, and to help as many people experience the fun of competition as possible.
Zwift remains committed to Elite-level racing, but for us, Elite racing must be connected to community competition. We want to create a sport from the bottom up—much like any major successful sport, we need a solid community base with pathways to the top of the sport, through which the very best can emerge.
To support this, we have published a full racing calendar ahead of the key racing season for the very first time. It outlines the structure of the Zwift racing calendar—from community to Elite, with the first-ever full, open pathway throughout the season. This season, we are introducing a new elite series, the Zwift World Series, which has been designed very carefully based on a wide array of feedback and learnings and bakes in all of the principles that we see as key factors to developing the sport;
- The creation of a season-long pathway into elite racing with open, democratic access to all events for all Zwift riders, teams and supporting community events.
- Simplified formats for competitors and fans.
- Smaller field sizes and challenging courses to facilitate entertaining racing.
- A regular monthly cadence of racing to create a season-long narrative.
- Enhanced incentives for individual riders and teams within every race across the season.
- A structure which will allow Zwift to highlight talented riders, reward performances and to create heroes.
- A season-long narrative which culminates in the Zwift Games season finale.
- Each round will also have a community race that will take place on the same course.
Building the participation base is not only important to build the numbers of those actually taking part in the sport, but it’s also crucial if we want to build the audience and create a commercially viable broadcast proposition. Our focus remains on growing the grassroots of the sport and connecting our racing community with our own elite events through viewership and participation.
Will you bid for the World Championships when the time comes?
We are in regular contact with the UCI and are waiting to hear more about their plans for the future.
You're going in a different direction for performance verification this season. What are your governance plans? How do these decisions define the future of elite-level competition on the platform?
Structurally, nothing has changed, and this season’s plans represent continuity rather than change. We remain the only platform that has fully independent service provision for both performance verification and governance for all of our elite level races.
We are working with exactly the same team on PV as we have for several years. This year, they are simply operating under a different business name, AthleteAnalytiX. In partnership, we are implementing a number of enhancements to PV this year, including improved data flows and a new analytics portal.
As in previous years, we’ve appointed an independent commissaire who is in charge of rules, regulations, and governance and this individual is already executing this role with respect to the upcoming Zwift World Series.
Editor's note: When asked to clarify the governance changes for the 2024/25 season, Zwift responded: "We have set independence governance with Isaac LeBlanc as the commissaire for the Zwift World Series. Isaac is working alongside AthleteAnalytiX to confirm official race results. The role is essentially exactly the same as the one that Dr. George Gilbert had previously, with Zwift contracting his services for the series." Zwift didn’t elaborate further.
The first Zwift World Series qualifier is the day before the UCI Cycling Esports World Championship Semi-finals, forcing many athletes to make a difficult choice. Do you envision coordinating the race schedule in the future to favor the athletes and the quality of the fields?
Zwift’s main racing season has always run from September. The current season kicks off in September and runs through to March with the season-ending Zwift Games.
Conflict with the semi-finals is unfortunate, but we released all of the details for our regular season to riders earlier than ever before this year, and this meant that the planning process for the calendar was set and finalized well in advance of the semi-finals dates being announced.
The structure of the ZWS means that many of the world’s top riders will not need to qualify for Elite Race 1 as they have been awarded Series Passes.
Avoiding this conflict in the future will be better for all.
Do you have plans to improve real-time monitoring functionality? If so, what steps will you take to prevent riders from impacting the result during a race?
We are always looking for ways to improve our systems, but we need to ensure that any live detection systems are 100% dependable at the scale required for the size of the community.
What did you learn from the Zwift Games that you will implement for this year's edition?
We were blown away by the success of the inaugural Zwift Games in 2024, at both the Community and the Elite levels. Naturally, there were a lot of learnings that we will take forward to improve the second edition.
At an elite level, we gathered structured feedback from over 200 individuals last season and this feedback has been a major input into the holistic season design for this year. Whilst we will be revealing the details for Zwift Games in the coming months, you can expect enhanced incentives for riders, an adjusted format for the races, smaller field sizes, and, as you will already note—the primary route to qualify for Zwift Games 2025 will be through performance during Zwift World Series, making this a true season ending Championship.
At the community level, there will be plenty of exciting reasons to race and these will be announced in due course.
Are there any new broadcasting features we should be excited about? What is the plan for the broadcast of the community-level competition?
For elite racing, we have made a number of enhancements to our broadcast production over the last year, with new graphics, a second screen data dashboard, material for fans, updated in-game production tools, studio production, expert analysis and content focused on the competitors themselves.
This approach resonated with the audience well during Zwift Games and will continue for Elite racing this season. We are also re-doubling our efforts to inject fun and the personalities of our riders into the broadcast to create personalities, heroes and rider fandom – something that having a set of consistent Series Pass riders in Zwift World Series will allow us to do even better than before.
For the Zwift World Series we’ll be running two types of broadcast—the ZWS Elite events and Zwift Games will be fully produced by Zwift with second screen data and studio presentation. The ZWS open qualifiers will have Zwift Gameplay production, supported by Nathan Guerra and Dave Towle, anchoring the production remotely. Both will feature on Zwift Live.
At the community level, Zwift will stream racing on Zwift Live every Tuesday, with a rotating roster of events, including the Zwift Racing League and a wider range of community events, featuring all categories of riders.
Special thanks to Sean Parry for his insight into the exciting 2024/25 Zwift Community Elite Racing Season. We can’t wait to see what the next decade holds for the racing community and look forward to our next opportunity to learn more!
Semi-retired after more than 20 years as the owner and director of a private Orthopedic Physical Therapy practice, Chris now enjoys the freedom to dedicate himself to his passions—virtual cycling and writing.
Driven to give back to the sport that has enriched his life with countless experiences and relationships, he founded a non-profit organization, TheDIRTDadFund. In the summer of 2022, he rode 3,900 miles from San Francisco to his “Gain Cave” on Long Island, New York, raising support for his charity.
His passion for cycling shines through in his writing, which has been featured in prominent publications like Cycling Weekly, Cycling News, road.cc, Zwift Insider, Endurance.biz, and Bicycling. In 2024, he was on-site in Abu Dhabi, covering the first live, in-person UCI Cycling Esports World Championship.
His contributions to cycling esports have not gone unnoticed, with his work cited in multiple research papers exploring this evolving discipline. He sits alongside esteemed esports scientists as a member of the Virtual Sports Research Network and contributes to groundbreaking research exploring the new frontier of virtual physical sport. Chris co-hosts The Virtual Velo Podcast, too.
Good interview but a shame that all the answers were pretty uninspiring from Zwift. Hard to believe that they have no contrition about still not displaying points in points races and that racing score won’t work in team events, when their flagship ZRL series has points races in a team format. Enjoyed the “ We are always working on new features and will announce them when our members can benefit from them most” comment when they often announce things coming this season that then don’t even happen at all!