After a long period without a title sponsor outside the industry, the UCI MTB Worldcup has teamed up with the Stuttgart company for three years. The UCI Mountain Bike World Championships are also supported by Mercedes-Benz, which wants to promote its new X series. Many car manufacturers have used the lifestyle sport of mountain biking for advertising videos and campaigns. Motorsport manufacturers also like to enter the bicycle market, most recently it was Husqvarna !
UCI MTB Worldcup takes off with Mercedes-Benz
The popular racing series will be broadcast live on Red Bull TV with a wide reach. Mercedes-Benz will support the UCI MTB World Cup with a fleet of X-class pickups for route construction and V-class transporters for shuttleing the riders. The German car manufacturer's goal is to show more presence in the field of outdoor sports. Tissot (track cycling) and Telenet ( cyclocross ) are also title sponsors of a UCI World Cup series. Anyone who knows the history will also have saved the Grundig Cup as a term - the legendary racing series was a precursor to the World Cup. In the freeride sector, Nissan was important as the title sponsor for the Qashqai event series and in the USA and Canada, manufacturers are always interested in the image of the MTB protagonists.
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It will be interesting to see what else will change in the UCI MTB World Cup in 2018 and where the journey will take us. Sprint races on the day before the actual races have been decided. Exciting duels in XC as well as a crazy DH series will delight us again.
UCI President David Lappartient in full :
“This partnership offers us a great opportunity to accelerate MTB sport, one of our most important disciplines. Our events benefit from the brand’s global reputation and know-how. The fact that a manufacturer of the size of Mercedes-Benz has invested in MTB cycling is proof that our sport is attractive to the larger economic players, so they choose our events to launch their new product lines. We are very pleased about the trust that Mercedes-Benz has placed in our world association, our discipline and our events.”
Source: press release uci.ch
