The Zwift Racing Landscape, Part 1b: Racing Population Demographics

Racing against others on the Zwift virtual cycling platform is a fascinatingly unique combination of video games, esports, exercise, and not a small amount of pain.  In part one of checking out the Zwift racing landscape heading into 2022, we took a look at some numbers around the total racing population, how it split between countries and categories, and what the most popular events are.  

Before we dive deeper into the ranking algorithm and look at how well the ZwiftPower Race Ranking numbers can be used to stack rank the entire racing population, there were a lot of questions around additional demographic stats of Zwift riders.  In the below charts, I break down the ranked racing population by gender, age, and weight class – split out by race ranking (which is roughly tied to categories).

As quick context, I wanted to further illustrate that we actually only have good data for a small portion of all Zwifters – those that both compete in races, have registered a ZwiftPower account, and scored points in at least one race in the last 90 days.  These riders are naturally going to be biased toward stronger riders – those who care more about race outcomes and are interested in weeding out cheaters/sandbaggers.  

We can use the below demographics (and stats from the initial article) as rough approximations for the overall Zwift population (especially for things likely not impacted by rider strength, like country), but most stats related to power output will likely change significantly as the scope expands.  In the above bubbles, I estimated the total population and average power output via some random sampling just to get a sense of how much it varies vs. the population we have good data on.

With that said, let’s take a look at the data we do have:

Gender gets less male-dominated as you move through the categories, but overall the population of ranked women is just quite small: ~6.5k total women who have a ranked result on ZwiftPower in the last 90 days (out of ~80k total riders).

When looking at these next charts with Age & Weight data, it’s worth remembering that most (65%) ranked racers have a ranking between 500-600 (the last bar).

Interestingly, in a situation that might be unique in competitive sports, and definitely in esports, most ranked racers on Zwift are solidly middle-aged (40-49) (34%) with another 28% aged 30-39 (especially as you move toward the higher categories).  50-59-year-olds make up the 3rd largest segment with 22% of the total population.  There is a chunk of 20-29-year-olds at the top end of the ranked population. while the overall population of U23s and 60+ riders is fairly small (~5k total).

Weight classes are fairly stable across ranks, except for the most competitive ranks where lighter riders (60-69kg) are overrepresented.

As a frequent Zwift racer, I’m always curious about who the humans are on the other side of the avatars, in as much pain as I am.  Based on the above stats, it’s probably no surprise that the team with the most riders on ZwiftPower is DIRT (e.g. Dads Inside Riding Trainers).

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