If you’re interested in hearing what the future of Zwift looks like from the lips of CEO Eric Min, check out this brand-new quick interview with Bloomberg Quicktake anchor Tim Stenovec.
Some interesting bits of info from the interview:
- Zwift has seen a 263% increase in subscribers since April
- More and more people are coming to the platform in order to feel more connected socially. “Think Fortnite for fitness,” Eric says.
- A big part of Zwift’s latest $450 million investment round is about making Zwift easier to buy, easier to be onboarded, easier to use. Zwift’s investment into hardware is part of that bigger strategy.
- Zwift’s hardware division is focused on developing a smart bike. No ETA given at this time.
- Does Zwift have plans to IPO? “We have those ambitions,” Eric says. But for now Zwift is focused on growth and long-term stability.
- Eric doesn’t see Peloton as a competitor, but as a complementary service.
- Only 25% of Zwift’s customers come from the US, and Europe represents about 50% of their customer base.
- Cheating in Zwift races: “There are things today that are very manual that we need to automate.”
Your Thoughts
What do you think about what Eric had to say? Share below!
If they could get the monthly subscription down to under £10/€10pm, even if it was a 6 month Oct-Mar £59 deal, that would convince me to stick with Zwift over a free (£6pm Premium) option such as RGT.
i’ve really enjoyed Zwift for 3 months, got to L15 with 2 Must Buy Frames & 2 Must Buy Wheelsets in the garage but the gamification motivation has dropped significantly now I’ve no upgrades until L30.
Sure Zwift has many more routes, group events, is slicker…but if I’m just virtually peddling its tempting to do that for free. Get the subs under £9.99 and I doubt I’d think about the cost! Right now Zwift is VFM, but it niggles knowing there’s cheaper/free options…
More roads, please.
I’m pleased that Zwift has done so well as they seem like a nice company. However the more I hear about hardware, IPOs and “Fortnite for fitness” the more I worry that the things that really annoy the established user base (especially sorting out racing) will just get pushed to the back of a long queue
You really have to understand that although there is a vocal and long-standing group of users who think racing is important, the overwhelming and increasing majority of users are not racing. Think about it – the early-adopters (I was one) were mostly already committed cyclists, or they wouldn’t have had a turbo trainer or the will to buy one, and when there were fewer roads to ride on racing was a way to inject a little more interest to the process.
Yes, parts of the interface are infuriating (it’s the only game in the world where you have to quit the entire app to end a session!) but the drive to attract more users by adding more maps, a smart bike which I expect it to be a plug and play setup, and so on is all about making the company and platform sustainable and not a ghost town.
Waiting for seemingly simple bug fixes is so frustrating, i.e. my Withings smart scales is an opt-in connection to the platform but the connection has not worked for at least six months 😢
I bought a smart scale to sync with zwift. It was great until it stopped working. I’m not sure I last updated my weight in game, but tbf, it hasn’t changed more than 1-2 kg.
zwift needs to roll out automatic sandbagging protection in all race categories. It’s an embarrassment to the company to enable embedded unfairness (intentional or not) – which really p*sses off a lot of your user base.
Since Zwift has turned its attention to building a smart bike, but claiming to not be a Peloton competitor (hint: it is). We can only hope that the game gets bought out or licensed out to an actual gaming company to develop and create new content. Imagine a company with actual experience making games taking over Zwift… Imagine a company like Blizzard Entertainment either making a Zwift competitor cycling MMO or developing the Zwift software side of things to make a new Zwift game.
Anyone who has ever played other online games, specifically MMO’s, knows just how bad Zwift is as a game. It would be so easy for an actual gaming company to make something better. That is one of the reasons I understand them wanting to get into the hardware side of things. Because they know and understand just how weak the game actually is. It could be so much better and I think that someone else will end up either making something better or buying it out.
That sounds great, except I want to say not Activision or EA as they have been finding new ways to be terrible for the last few years. Someone like CKPR or Rockstar would be ideal, but not at all likely.
At the same time for the retail price of a AAA game every 4 months, they need to provide a significantly better product for the value. Maybe they shouldn’t try to be so platform agnostic that you can run it on a potato with an exercise bike, but when I hear people talking about poor performance from their 2008 laptop of Gen1 ipad… The world moves on. For the price of a new set of bibs and a jersey you could have a fine zwift machine.
Very well said and I agree.
I wouldn’t call Zwift a Peloton competitor. One company targets the market of cyclists who also like to do that indoors at home; the other company targets the market targets the market of everyone with a decent amount of disposable income who wants to work out at home. That’s one of the main reasons why Zwift is happy to be valued at over a billion now while Peloton’s market cap is almost $32bln.
Zwift wants to be a Peloton competitor in the future which means selling their own hardware and offering premium subscription services but right now they don’t even play in the same ballpark. And frankly, the latter is a very good thing for everyone who likes Zwift for what it is right now. I am not sure if the majority of us would like Zwift if it was the way Eric & investors want it to be.
Agreed – look at Peloton as doing marketing for Zwift, it’s taking people who are interested in fitness but never ride a bike, teaching them to pedal (and suffer), and those people will become more likely to buy bikes and the Zwiftbike in future.
I don’t understand the hardware push. The ecosystem seems to be providing very capable solutions. The Wahoo Bike is outstanding. The trainers out there are outstanding. There is a lot more margin in software. I would use the funds they recently brought in to hire serious gaming talent. The biggest risk for Zwift is not a lack of compelling hardware in the ecosystem. Their real risk is the platform is based on a dated technology / gaming platform and its increasingly restless user base. If a heavily funded outfit like Apple (moving more into fitness), Microsoft, Google (already acquired Fitbit), or Sony moved into this space it could spell serious trouble for Zwift. 3 years ago Zwift was way ahead of any other offering. In the last 3 years I am not sure I recall anything compelling being released other than some additional routes and a few bits here and there. We are now at a place where there are sufficient routes where adding another only brings minimal incremental value.
As a long-time user (from the beta days) who rides a lot and does not race, I disagree that “there are sufficient routes where adding another only brings minimal incremental value.” In fact, this is what bugs me the most: give us more roads. Unfortunately, Zwift seems more focused on adding new users than adding value for existing users.
I agree. More tarmac please! Presumably Zwift know what proportion of its user base race, and these people will be concerned with weight cheats and other tricks. I rarely race. I don’t really care if others input false weights; what I do want are some new roads to ride. It’s great when these come out, like France earlier in the year, but these expansions are rare events. Perhaps we underestimate the work involved, but that is what I want.
I can see their thinking around hardware. At the moment getting started on Zwift can seem a little bit daunting to the casual cyclist – what trainer to get?, how do I connect my bike? What’s ANT+? If they sell the complete package in one box which just works when you turn it on then this will appeal to more users. For them to grow they either expand the user base or milk the current one for more cash
The reason for the hardware push is relatively simple:
right now they make $15/month from the subscription model. If somebody stays with Zwift for two years, they generate a total revenue of $360 from that user.
If they make a bike for $1500 and sell it for $2k, which is probably the absolute lowest they would go, there’s probably a 25% = $500 margin on the bike alone. More realistically, they would probably target the >40% margin that Peloton gets and sell that bike for $2500. That bike is also going to come with a premium subscription, maybe in the $30-40/month neighborhood. Maybe they force customers to take that one over the “base” model, maybe they don’t. That means over a 2 year period, they’ll make somewhere between $1k-2k from a bike customer.
Now that’s obviously not all profit because they have to spend a bunch on marketing. Pre-pandemic, Peloton spend over $1k in customer acquisition cost. But still, hardware is a very key part of Zwift’s ability to make money long term. Even with a million subscribers, the current business model would generate less than $200mil/year in revenue.
More blah blah blah from the same mouth. He’s not listening to his customers and only telling lies.
Eric Min is a Wall Street guy – not some messiah of connected fitness. He’s not passionate about cycling- he’s passionate about the money to be made from cycling. When you look to things through this lens, it starts making more sense.
Zwift will continue to make decisions based on the whims of their leadership and mandates of their investors- the voice of the customer will continue to be lost and ignored. It’s already happening.
Eventually a competitor to Zwift will rise and understand that the community is the product and deliver a more compelling experience.
Eric Min comparing Zwift to the “Fortnite of fitness and cycling” is very telling. Fortnite is the tic-tak-toe of online competitive games. It takes little to no skill level to play, as it’s like saying rolling dice takes skill to play. The graphics are also poor in order to allow it to run on old outdated phones and devices, as it looks like a cartoon.
It just proves the point that Zwift cares more about being popular, than it does about being an actual good competitive game.
People who take their cycling seriously need to start looking for an alternative.
Zwift needs to focus on fundementals. The menu and on-scree gauges and map are in need of im0rovements. It’s hard to join an event from the main screen. I can’t save a ride and a start a new one without reopening Zwift. Graphics need improvements and performance is horrid when there are lots of riders on-screen.(Thanksgiving ride with Eric Min therewere3000 riders and my frame rate was literally 0-1 per second for the first 5 min of ride until everyone spaced out. My PC is high end and many others were complaining too.) Finally, more robust crash support with ability to resume a ride. Oh, and grace period to join an event late. (I was literally 30 seconds late getting Zwift launched after going to great lengths to make myself available at the required time and was stranded at the home screen unable to join and try to catch the pack. I was even willing to do the entire ride without any drafting.)
Promo events are great but often hard to find it available at a time that works for me. Needs more routes too.
I’d put all that feedback above rowing support or Zwift branded hardware. And at this point I’d accept none of those things if price were reduced. I’m on the fence due to the cost and alternatives available.
I’ve been zwifting for north of 5 years and looking back, nothing has really changed. We do have more routes and blah, blah..but as racing and rides go nothing groundbreaking has changed at all. Which makes me think the future doesn’t seem to look to bright either..
So… not enough funding from Zwift?
The mobile version of the site just started showing ads.
Mobile version of the site has had ads for (literally) years! Zwift provides a bit of funding to the site, but not enough for it to be ad-free, by any stretch.