In a recent media event, Zwift shared their roadmap for releasing key updates including the new Neokyo map and a redesigned homescreen. But the third bit of news may prove to be the most game-changing of all: Clubs.
Why It Matters
Zwift’s virtual worlds are beautiful and fun, and the workouts and training plans are a great way to build fitness. But what makes Zwift unique is that it brings the global cycling world together. There’s simply no other place where you can log on and hop into an event with hundreds of riders worldwide, at all hours of the day.
But there was no event calendar on Zwift when the game launched in 2014. In fact, events were something the community created and organized for many months before Zwift finally came on board with an in-game calendar in late 2016.
I say all that to say this: events empower Zwift’s social DNA, and a huge portion of the platform’s best events are managed by devoted community members. Zwift knows they benefit greatly by allowing the community to organize events, even if the tools aren’t terribly friendly at this point.
In the past year, 952,951 Meetups have been created, with 3.2 million joins (so around 3 members per Meetup). On top of that, around 50,000 Community events have taken place.
Imagine what would happen if Zwifters were truly empowered to create events and invite their friends/followers!
A Long Time Coming
Let’s get this out of the way early: Zwift’s Clubs feature has been in FutureWorks (beta) for much too long.
Originally released as a limited public feature in March 2020, new capabilities rolled out 6 months later after Zwift created clubs for the active event organizing teams on the platform, making it easier for those teams to modify their events.
While I’m happy to finally see progress being made with Clubs, it feels like Zwift missed a huge opportunity. Had Clubs been useable when the first wave of Covid lockdowns hit, existing Zwift event organizers would have been able to manage their events themselves, and all of those IRL clubs scrambling to find a home for their members would have landed on Zwift and happily created engaging activities.
Instead, loyal event organizers were frustrated by having to deal with Zwift’s overburdened event support staff. And many of those IRL clubs new to the platform were frustrated by the limitations of MeetUps, leaving them hoping for a return to outdoor riding ASAP.
But enough of me whining about what’s already happened. Let’s look to the future of Clubs!
How It Works: Creating a Club
To create a club, you must be a level 20+ rider or level 10+ runner. Creating a club is easy via the Companion app – just plug in:
- Club name
- Country and Language (this will let Zwift suggest your club to Zwifters with similar settings)
- Who can join your club (Anyone can join, Ask to join, Invitation only)
- Club sport (ride, run, or both)
Then you select some branding elements – a club icon, colors, background image, and event image. (All Club settings can be modified after your club is created.) Then click “Create My Club” and you’re done!
How It Works: Inviting Members
You can invite any member you’d like by searching Zwift’s member list then clicking a link to invite the member.
It’s not clear how members will find a club apart from the club’s owner inviting them. Presumably, certain club members can invite other members – perhaps anyone can invite anyone? Club “discovery” tools are slated for a future release – this will allow us to search/browse clubs.
How It Works: Creating An Event
The event creation portion of the Clubs tool is super-important, since events are the heart of what Clubs do. Creating an event via Companion is easy – Zwift has even created event “templates” like “Coffee Rides” and “Hilly Routes” where you can click and quickly create a particular type of event.
Or you can create a custom event, starting by selecting the route.
Then you define basic event parameters: the title, date/time, description, and event groups (categories). You can even name ride leaders and sweepers.
Each event group (A, B, C, D, and E) has its own defined pacing (which you cannot change), as well as route and duration.
Various other settings can also be changed:
- Late join
- Show results screen
- Who can join? (Club members only, or Anyone)
Events will automatically be set so attendees only see event participants in whatever world they’re riding or running.
How It Works: Joining an Event
Joining a Club event works a lot like any other event in Companion. It’s unclear whether events from your Club will be shown in the main events feed in Companion, or if you’ll need to visit your Club’s page in Companion to see those events. Regardless, once you find the event, you simply click to join, like any other Zwift event.
Crucially, event invites aren’t super-restricted with the new Clubs tool. Whereas Meetups only let you invite people who follow you in Zwift, Clubs will let you invite anyone to your event, using a simple sharing link just like any other Zwift event.
Summing It Up
Zwift’s new Clubs tools will make it easy for Zwifters to spin up a new club, invite their friends to join, then host events for club members or open to all of Zwift.
The BIG change here, what’s never been possible before on Zwift, is that anyone can create a full-featured Zwift event and share a link to join it. That’s a big deal.
Timeline
Zwift says the new Clubs features will roll out in a limited fashion before year-end, with a full rollout in early 2022.
Next Developments
Zwift hasn’t committed to a timeline for what comes after the new version of Clubs is launched, but they’ve committed to two top-line items:
- Discovering Clubs: tools to make it easy to find clubs we’re interested in
- Club Workouts: letting event organizers select workouts for events
Your Thoughts
Share below!
I dont see the option on the companion app
The author forgot to write that it is supposed to appear at the end of the year.
I did? See “Timeline” at the bottom.
I really hope they expand the members limit also. Right now 500 is the maximum members you can add to a club, Think if you want to do this for a community like SZR with over 10000 members. So remove the member limits for clubs. And make it easy to join a club via a sharable link like the event links. I will not sit and add 10000 members or even 500 to a club manually.
/Martin SZR Manager
I can see spam issues occurring with an unlimited group size.
I question how many of those members are true members? Sure it is good to have a lot of members, however I do prefer quality over quantity. It’s a bit like the Events on Zwift, I’d rather have fewer quality events and more events that are poorly run.
That was supposed to read “than more events that are poorly run”, not “and…”
And if it will be possible upload, into an event, in addition to the workout, a musical audio track, the Zwift’s Clubs feature will also be perfect for organizing fitness-type rides.
I imagine that unfortunately there are likely licensing issues involved in such a feature, as this is a paid service.
What is really missing are an option to create customed workouts for a team (or a group, or a club).
Will smaller clubs have a chance to design unique Zwift team kits in any of upcoming updates?
I know it’s something they want to do. But it’s not on a firm roadmap that I know of.
This feature would really be something!
Apparently it was mentioned that soon you will be able to select a basic kit from a set of templates? Also is there any news on racing? I guess in a simple format it could work easily, but integration with Zwift Power is probably out of the question
What about club races?
I wish ALL routes for ALL areas were available EVERY DAY!!!
Yep! I think that’s the reason there are so many meetups created. It’s the only way of test riding a route before an event if it’s not a “guest world” and A LOT of riders do it..
I’m excited for this – and to see how it really works out. It will make a massive difference to race teams and social clubs alike. Bravo.
I dont see this function on the companion app
Not released yet – see “Timeline” at the bottom of the article.
It’s there now 👍
Great news. Hopefully it will include the ability to host your own races. We currently do this for our club (Sexy Walrus Triathlon) but the admin involved is absurd, mainly due to the issue in Meet-Ups of the blue holographic finish line being in a different place for each rider. There are work arounds for this, which we use, but they are really clumsy. Hopefully this update will make it so we can host a race just like a normal Zwift race, which would be peachy. Real peachy.
It would be good to have an option to do recurring events – leaders and sweepers might change and that could be an issue – or just make them optional.
This looks really exciting. Our tri club, the last couple of years, has hosted weekly club rides during the winter as events in Zwift – with some effort. This expanded clubs feature will make that very easy to do.
It would be nice, though, to have a higher members limite.
It is for now still unclear to me why the categories should be defined the way they are. What stops a ride leader from saying “A-cat rides at pace 3.5+, B-cat is a Sub-3 ride. Choose your preferred pace group”. They could just leave the cat description blank IMO, especially since apparently there is no race functionality yet anyway? And even there custom cats would be a game changer. People that willingly neglect the custom boundaries just don’t get invited next week, simple no?
There are ways to configure your rides/races to do this. It is not widely publicized, it can be done however.
Hope this means we could easily create more TT events, that don’t just use Tempus Fugit and Bologna with the exception of a few regular events, would be great to use a wide range of routes with custom finishes if not custom start points too.
Great step forward .. when it gets here! Is there a chance it will go the way of segments..
A million useless clubs? The entry level of organisers at ride level 20 is a governor or sorts.
Look forward to it!
I tend to agree. There will be a lot of dirty data.
If/when this new feature is implemented won’t it simply flood the events calendar when searching for events? Events take time and effort to manage, hopefully having just anyone organising them won’t dilute the value of long running Zwift events.
You’ll only see events on the calendar if you’ve joined the club. So I don’t think it’ll flood our calendars, except with events we’d be interested in.
The feature i most want is not apparent on the screenshots. I want true no drop rides, ie with “keep everyone together”. I was really hoping that would be available with clubs. Surely it can’t be too diffucult to provide that choice. I love zwift (level 30) but it really doesn’t cater well for weaker or disabled riders. Meetups and group workouts let me ride with others but in most other circumstances i get dropped very early. Even Dan Diesel is far too fast for me. ZA recovery rides are ridden in solitude. Nearly every time a new feature is… Read more »
They could certainly make the rubber-band effect available for group rides, but I think it doesn’t really make sense except in your 1 in 100000 case. I don’t want to be harsh or something and I applaud you for living actively even when you are disabled, but when 1.5 W/kg is too high of a tempo for you, you really are a complete outlier of a person. It’s like you wanted to go running with people, but could only sustain normal walking tempo. PS: I wouldn’t mind weight and height doping in your case at all. Perhaps it would help… Read more »
Rubber banded group rides are great when you want to do a group ride but everyone wants to load custom workouts. I lead such a ride with TriDot every Saturday. Extremely useful.
Curious if this will also open up the capability of user-created custom kits; surely each of these new clubs are going to want their jersey in game! (yes, some clubs have them now – AHDR, Dutch Diesel, DIRT, etc – but iirc those are more or less hand-done in-house by Zwift for them)
I don’t see the option to create the club. Is there any option to opt-in?
Tks
It’s “early 2022” now. Any update on when we can expect to see this feature implemented?
I second the need for “keep everyone together” mode. If the number of participants showing up for a Club Ride is low (<10), segregation by Group A-E won't be very useful. Be interesting to know what % of the last 2 years of Meetups used "Keep everyone Together"
Why is it I can only join 3 clubs?? I ride with more than 3 clubs, I shouldn’t have to chose between my clubs!
I like to see the limited go up along with the options to have the same color kits on. I have been try to get a time on zwift to have our two clubs together