Each January, a surprisingly diverse range of riders gather for the annual Tour Down Under (TDU) in Adelaide.
The event, which is ultimately owned and underwritten by the South Australian government, has a multi-million dollar budget, bigger than any other annual cycling event in Australia. Under the tightly controlled UCI World Tour system, every World Tour team must take part. The TDU has both Men’s and Women’s World Tour Events. Plus, being the opening race of the new season, it’s also the first chance to see teams in action in their new team kit, riding new team bikes and equipment, so there’s plenty of global media attention.
Related:
- Stats with Latz Special | Cycling Industry CEOs talk Prices, Boom, Bust, and What’s Next
- Stats With Latz | New e-MTB Drive Systems Star at Eurobike 2024
- Stats with Latz | The Changing Face of Bicycle Retail in Australia
Why road cycling attracts so much more money and media than its mountain bike cousin is a good question, though some events like Crankworx Cairns and Hardline Maydena are making up some ground locally, there is still a long way to go. Probably, having a hundred-year head start has something to do with it…
On average, each World Tour men’s team has a $50 million per year annual budget, over $800 million in total. They all have their own media and public relations people to maximise their return on significant investments.
Think of the TDU as a big honey pot to which more and more activities are drawn. Everything from product launches to street parties, car park races, a major gravel race and even a cross-country mountain bike race.
Victoria Square, the largest of five city squares, located in the geographic heart of the City of Adelaide is completely taken over by the Tour Village. This year, it included about 30 exhibiting companies along with food stalls, live entertainment and, of course, a bar!
The surrounding city venues host a range of ‘pop up’ exhibitions, product launches, and corporate events such as the annual general meeting of Bicycle Industries Australia (BIA) and fundraisers.
The industry puts on a brave face
If you visited all of the bike company exhibits, as I did, your first impression would be that everything’s rosy again in the Australian bicycle industry. There were some lovely displays with plenty of bling. But there were also some significant players missing.
Talking with the CEOs and owners of the various exhibitors, there was some cautious optimism, but several predicted that it would still be up to a year before stock levels were down and sales levels were up to solid pre-Covid levels. For analogue bikes, 2023/24 was a record low financial year for imports. It was the second of two consecutive financial years of low imports as the wholesaler/importers were getting rid of their excess stock from two all-time record breaking boom years during covid.
Almost as though a switch has been flicked, 2024/25 is looking like we’re getting at least a bit closer to “normal” import levels, but they’re still 205,000 units down from the last pre-covid year, 2019 for the first five months that we have data, July to November, and down about 30-35% on average pre-covid years.
Total Imports for July to November:
- 2023/24 | 379,023
- 2024/25 | 500,699
In summary, the increase for the financial year to date compared to last year is 121,676 units, which is up approximately 32%.
Meanwhile, e-Bike imports are up slightly in volume but down slightly in average unit cost.
| Year | Volume | Value | Unit Cost (FOB*) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023/24 | 88,741 | $73,667,000 AUD | $830 AUD |
| 2024/25 | 97,799 | $76,145,000 AUD | $778 AUD |
*FOB means Free on Board, which is the price the importer pays to the factory, before shipping costs and taxes. By the time you add these costs, plus wholesale and retail margins, the retail price would be close to double or more.
RADL GRVL Buffalo Bicycle Bash!
I’m going to focus upon just one of the TDU festival events that’s close to my heart because I’ve had the good fortune to have been associated for many years with the charity that it raised funds for.
RADL GRVL is a global gravel racing series co-founded by former USA pro racer Amy Charity, veteran Formula One Grand Prix driver Valtteri Bottas and his partner Tiffany Cromwell. They have partnered with World Bicycle Relief, a global charity founded 20 years ago that has so far designed, built and distributed about 850,000 Buffalo Bicycles.
Most of these high quality, bullet proof steel Buffalo Bicycles, designed to carry 100 kgs on their cargo racks across the rough dirt tracks of rural Africa, are donated to teenage girls living several kilometres or more from their nearest school. In these areas, there are no school buses, no cars and few bicycles. The only option is usually to walk for hours every day – a vulnerable, exhausting choice.
Their lives are transformed through this simple gift, resulting in more years at school, lower rates of early pregnancy, AIDS and a range of other positive outcomes. Often, they carry smaller brothers and sisters to school on the rear rack. Outside school hours, their parents might use the bike to take their farm produce to market and other activities that lead to economic empowerment.
The evening event raised over $150,000 AUD which approximates to 700 more families’ lives changed through the power of 700 new bicycles. Most of this impressive total came from Quad Lock, an Australian phone case company recently sold to the rack company Thule for an astonishing half-billion dollar price.
Quad Lock has been a major sponsor of World Bicycle Relief since the company’s very early, much more financially modest years. At the fundraising night they announced that they’d kick off donations with $100,000 AUD plus match all other donations that were made on the night.
It was nice to see at least some of the TDU related expenditure going to such a worthy cause.
Photos: SHOTBYSCOTT1 / World Bicycle Relief, Chris Auld Photography / Tour Down Under, Phil Latz
Editorial Guidelines
At Flow Mountain Bike, we’re committed to delivering engaging and trustworthy content, from product reviews to destination showcases, news, interviews, and features. While many of the brands and destinations we cover may advertise with us, our editorial team operates independently, ensuring our content is guided by expertise and passion—not commercial influence. Sponsored content is always clearly disclosed, and we remain dedicated to providing honest and unbiased coverage across everything we publish. For more details, see our Transparency Report.