For decades, cycling has measured success much like every other professional sport: bigger broadcasts mean bigger audiences, bigger audiences attract bigger sponsors and, ultimately, a healthier sport.
The Tour de France draws millions of television viewers. Paris-Roubaix lines its cobbled sectors with spectators six deep. In track cycling and cyclocross, fans even pay to get through the gates.
Gravel has never looked like that.
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At Unbound, the discipline’s biggest race, thousands travel across states (and increasingly continents) to be there. Yet remarkably few come simply to spectate. Most are racing, supporting a friend or family member, working for a brand, volunteering at an aid station or imagining themselves riding the same roads one day – should the entry lottery be in their favour. The line between participant and fan is almost impossible to separate.
And yet the professional side of gravel is growing quickly. Riders can make a legitimate living from the discipline, marquee events require entry lotteries, and organisers are increasingly looking to invest in livestreams and race coverage.
That evolution will be on display again this weekend in Lincoln, Nebraska, at (the unofficial but original) Gravel Worlds. The event will livestream its elite racing as professionals tackle roughly 150 miles of Nebraska gravel. Uniquely, the cameras will continue running till the very last amateur crosses the line, too.
Because in many ways, gravel has more in common with a marathon running event than the Tour de France. No one judges the health of a marathon by television ratings. The world’s biggest marathons are successful because hundreds of thousands of people want to take part year after year after year. Broadcasts exist, but participation is the engine.
Could the same be true for gravel?
For Gravel Worlds co-founder Jason Strohbehn, the hierarchy is clear.
“The success of gravel revolves around the success of the 99%, not the pros. Our event is fully lifted by the 99%. Because of the 99%, we’re able to get sponsors that want to cover the pro race.”
In road cycling, the professional race is the product, and spectators are the audience. In gravel, the participants are the audience, the customer base and much of the economic engine all at once.
Do people really want to watch a 200-mile race live?
(Image credit: Dan Hughes / Gravel Worlds)
The numbers suggest they do.
In 2025, the Life Time Grand Prix generated 3.6 million YouTube views, more than 145,000 event attendees and 25.2 million social media impressions.
Livestreams of Unbound, Leadville and Big Sugar averaged almost 200,000 views in their first 96 hours online, while Unbound alone attracted more than 337,000. Peak concurrent viewership across the broadcasts reached 17,242.
Those figures may not rival the Tour de France, but they are substantial for a discipline whose professional ecosystem barely existed a few years ago.
Gravel Worlds has seen a similar appetite. The event began investing seriously in livestreaming two years ago and, according to Stover, has yet to spend money promoting those broadcasts. Viewers have come largely through riders and followers sharing the streams themselves.
“Literally people, before the stream starts or as it starts, are sharing it on their social media and [that’s how we’re] getting views,” he says. “For me, that means there are a lot of people very interested, very organically.”
Last year’s broadcast reached viewers in 51 countries. South Africa made the event’s top-ten markets, something Stover suspects has everything to do with South African off-road powerhouse Matt Beers.
But while gravel’s audience may be sizeable, it does not resemble a conventional sports fanbase, and shouldn’t be treated as such. Unlike the Tour de France viewers, gravel watchers are past, current or future participants of the event they’re watching.
(Image credit: Life Time)
Julie Dunkle is a good example. The 59-year-old from Encinitas, California, didn’t discover gravel by watching it or reading about it. She raced first.
“I got into gravel through racing and riding first, and the content followed naturally,” she says. “Once I started racing in 2023, I wanted to better understand the scene – the key athletes, the big events, the tactics – so I began consuming more gravel content.”
Participation changed what watching meant.
“Being a participant makes the viewing experience more engaging because you understand how hard the courses are, what the terrain feels like, and what the race dynamics actually mean,” she says.
Her entry point was social media and podcasts rather than television. Today she also watches livestreams of the biggest races and follows particular riders, drawn more to personalities and racing styles than team allegiances.
“I tend to follow riders with strong personalities or interesting racing styles, not just results.”
Oregonian Tucker White, 34, followed a similar path. He was introduced to gravel by his father and took part in gravel grinder events long before paying much attention to professional racing.
When he did start to consume content, it was the gear side of things that drew him in.
“As a tech and product nerd I am always keeping a keen eye to what is going on in the pro racing ranks when it comes to innovation,” he says. “Because gravel has historically been significantly less regulated than road, it is always interesting to see how different riders and teams may approach the same event from a different perspective when it comes to bike setup, or how that setup varies by parcours, weather, sponsor obligations, and so on”
Now fully sucked into gravel, White says he tries “to watch or follow as many races as I can, the big ones being Lifetime Grand Prix, Gravel Earth Series and gravel world champs. It’ll be interesting to see how things continue to change with more race teams investing in gravel.”
Dunkle and White may be just two individuals, but their paths are strikingly similar. Neither began as a spectator who later decided to try gravel. They rode first. Riding gave them a reason to care about the athletes, tactics, technology and stories surrounding it.
The fan emerged from the participant. And both want more coverage.
Dunkle would like stronger season-long narratives, better live data, more pre- and post-race analysis and more consistent coverage of the women’s field. White wants races that are easier to find and commentators capable of explaining what viewers are seeing.
Gravel’s participatory audience is not an argument against investing in media, but rather, an argument for thinking differently about who that media is for and what they’re looking for.
(Image credit: Life Times)
Gravel Worlds has made accessibility central to its coverage, distributing it free through YouTube and social media. A partnership with the active lifestyle media company Outside also put the race on the cycling website Velo without a paywall, and onto platforms including Roku and Samsung TV.
But the most revealing part of its broadcast may have little to do with the professional race at all.
Sofia Gibson, the Assistant Lead Promoter and Outreach Coordinator at Gravel Worlds, says one priority when introducing live coverage was making sure it served the rest of the field, too.
“We really care about the 99% of participants,” she says. That is why Gravel Worlds also created a finish-line livestream: friends and family can estimate when their rider will arrive, tune in and watch them cross the line. Thousands do.
It is a small detail, but perhaps the clearest illustration of what makes gravel fandom different. The professional race creates stories, heroes and spectacle. But the heart of gravel still sits much deeper in the field.
That may be where gravel’s media opportunity lies: not in building a vast audience of viewers at home, but in serving the participants who already sustain the sport.
The Tour de France needs spectators. Gravel needs participants. Increasingly, when it comes to gravel, they can be the same people.
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