When Warner Bros.-Disney took over the World Cup from Red Bull, it promised expanded coverage and an all-round elevation of mountain biking’s premier race series. A couple years in, WBD says it is delivering.
But are athletes seeing any difference? And does it compare to what other sports get in prize money? Looking at three of 2025 best athletes, downhill and XCO, it’s not even close.
An odd comparison, at first blush
Credit where credit’s due, the impetus for this story, other than the looming 2026 season, is an Instagram post and Wyn Masters’ reply to that post, comparing those figures to decidedly smaller amount Jackson Goldstone earned for his staggeringly successful 2025 season.
In a post likely trolling professional darts, and arguing that triathletes deserve more, 247.Endurance posted the prize money of Luke Littler, a prodigious darts player, or thrower, or whatever they want to be called. Below that, the annual prize money earned by top triathlete (and former Tour de France pretender) Kristian Blummenfelt. The difference was staggering.
While fact checking 247.Endurance’s numbers tempers the difference quite a bit, the most we can find Littler making in prize money in 2025 is £660,000. Converting that to Euro, which will make sense to you soon, still puts Littler in the range of €760,500. Blummenfelt pulled in, by 247.Endurance’s stats, USD 353,500 (or roughly €303,800).
Wyn Masters guessed the Canadian’s prize money, from a season where he won the World Cup and world championships at… €30,000.
That can’t be right, we thought? So we checked the rules and did some math.
Pause. Why darts?
As many pointed out in the 247.Endurance post, comparing tri to darts seemed a lot like rage-baiting. Or at least, click-bait. Either because a tri site comparing those figures implies that, charitably, they think tri is worth more or, uncharitably, they think darts should be worth less.
Why not compare it to hockey? Or football? Or the other football?
So why wade into this debate? Well, Littler is a young star redefining darts. And Jackson Goldstone is a, well, a young star that many – including his rivals – see as redefining downhill mountain biking. And so we’re entirely clear, our argument is not against Littler’s earnings. We think it’s very clear that mountain bikers deserve more.
So we could compare it to what a world juniors hockey player would make if he went on to win the Stanley Cup. But that difference would be so staggering it’d be enough to send even the calmest cycling fans to UCI’s Aigle, Switzerland headquarters with pitchforks and torches.
Breaking down World Cup prize money
After digging into the rules, we determined the potential payout for the perfect season. The payout for Goldstone’s remarkable, historic season. And The perfect season for a cross country athlete, because WBD and UCI do not value them quite the same.
UCI pays out in Euro (though it fines in CHF) so, for easy comparison, we’re converting everything in this story to Euro.
Downhill
For downhill, a perfect elite season would net you €52,500. There’s 3,750 for each World Cup round, and we’re using the 10-round 2025 season as an example. 2026 drops down to nine rounds each for XC and DH. There’s a further €10,000 for winning the overall. And, for downhill, €5,000 for winning world championships.
Goldstone’s 2025 payout
That perfect season is almost certainly theoretical. Unless it’s 2016 and you’re Rachel Atherton. To get closer to Masters’ €30,000 number, let’s look at Goldstone’s downright sensational 2025 season. The Canadian won elite men’s DH world championships. He won five elite men’s DH World Cup rounds. Finished second in another. A fourth place was his last paying result. Outside of those, the Syndicate racer finished 16th, 20th and 25th. Those results added up, in an extremely dramatic fashion, to the elite men’s World Cup overall title.
That means that, strictly on prize money from the UCI*, Goldstone earned just €36,650 for his 2025 season. A season nearly unmatched in the history of men’s downhill racing. Which, again, to compare to darts and triathlon, doesn’t really seem fair.
*The UCI wasn’t the only race organiser paying Goldstone in 2025. More on that below
Vali Höll rides consistency to the bank
While Valentina Höll only won two races in 2025, she managed to bring home more of the UCI’s money than Goldstone. How? Höll won when it mattered and she only finished off the podium twice all season. The Austrian defended her world championships title and, through consistency, won the World Cup overall. The only other times she finished off the World Cup podium were a fifth and, after a flat at Mont-Sainte-Anne, 14th.
That incredible consistency earned Höll 39,000 of the UCI’s Euros.
That prize money drops off fast, though. Gracey Hemstreet finished second overall behind Höll and won three World Cup rounds. A fantastic season for the Canadian that, from the UCI, only netted €21,000 in prize money.
Cross country
For cross country, the 2025 payout was, potentially, significantly higher. The payout for each individual World Cup round is the same, as is the overall. world championships, though, offer €8,000 for the winner. Plus, XC athletes can double, or even trip dip. There’s another €5,000 for XCC (short track) and XCM (marathon) national championships. Each XCC World Cup win adds another €1,750 payout. Plus a full €10,000 for the XCC overall. There’s another €5,000 for XCM world championships.
If you add that all together, the perfect 10-round cross country season (XCO and XCC) would pay out €88,000. Or, if you add an XCM world championship title, €93,000.
Before you say that’s somehow more unreasonable than sweeping a downhill season (as Rachel Atherton did a decade ago), Pauline Ferrand-Prevot managed to sweep the XCO, XCC and XCM world championship titles in 2022, all within three weeks. By the end of that fall, she’d add a gravel world championship title to that list. (We don’t know what the payout for that was, off-hand).
Even if sweeping both series and XCM worlds would be, uh, a lot, it means cross country athletes have a far bigger pool of prize money and far more race opportunities to split amongst themselves than the gravity crowd do.
In fact, in 2025, Christopher Blevins won both the XCC and XCO World Cup overall titles. He also finished second at XCC world championships. That earned the U.S. racer €45,900 in prize money (23,650 from XCO and 22,250 from XCC). That’s five XCC World Cup wins, three XCO World Cup wins, and one second place in each over the season, plus his worlds silver.
While we’re here, Jenny Rissveds nearly matched Blevins total with a similarly staggering season. Rissveds won XCO world championships, then finished second in XCC world championships as well as in XCO and XCC World Cup overall standings. She also won four XCO World Cups and another four in XCC, plus two other podiums in each. All of that adds up to €40,650.
Some other comparisons, while we’re here
At this point it should be pretty clear that the UCI is quite stingy, when it comes to paying its mountain bike stars. That’s compared to other sports, but also to other race organisers.
As we hinted above, Goldstone’s prize money wasn’t limited to UCI events in 2025. Both Goldstone and Asa Vermette won Red Bull Hardline events in 2025. The Canadian in Tasmania and the U.S. junior (elite for 2026) in Wales. We don’t have 2025 numbers, but in 2024 Red Bull paid out GBP 12,000 (around €13,000, to keep this consistent) for a Hardline win.
That brings Goldstone’s total to €49,650, with a single Hardline win making up 28 per cent of the total winnings.
For Vermette, the difference is staggering. His Hardline Wales win is significantly more than he would have made racing World Cups in the junior category last year, even if he’d had the perfect season. Even his second place at Hardline Maydena would dwarf his maximum potential World Cup winning as a junior.
Winning every junior World Cup and junior world championships nets you … €3,250?!? Junior payout is shockingly and embarrassingly bad. Especially when you consider the top riders, like Vermette, are capable of taking it to an elite field as he did in Wales.
Rosa Zierl actually came close to that perfect season. The Austrian won junior women’s downhill world championships and was the top-ranked in the junior women’s World Cup. That included four wins (plus worlds) and four more podiums. In fact, the only times Zierl finished off the podium, she was fifth. What was her reward? The UCI thought that effort was worth a whopping €2,740.
Basically the only way to make money from the UCI racing as a junior (and under-23 isn’t much better) is by being on the winning XCR (team relay) squad at world championships and hoping your national federation splits the prize money more evenly than UCI would. The payout for that event, in which many nations struggle to convince their top athletes to participate, is somehow €15,000.
Stingy with payouts, liberal with fines
While the UCI is quite reticent to give away money, it is more than happy to take it from riders. The fee for littering outside the “littering zone” for example is CHF 250 (around €268) for your first offence. That is more than a World Cup win in junior DH, U23 XCC and more than finishing second in an U23 XCO. A second offence is CHF 500, and you get disqualified from the race.
Back to that comparison…
Now, I know what you’re thinking. But these riders aren’t only making money from winning races. Goldstone and Vermette are earning money from sponsorship and team salaries on top of that.
First, mountain biker’s are not paid much. Some are making money, like Loic Bruni. But estimates have put even his total income closer to just one million. For one of the best riders of all time. A lot for mountain biking but not a lot for nearly any other pro sport. And he is, by far and away, the exception. Second, all those dart throwers and triathletes are sponsored, too. All those patches on dart guys jacket? He didn’t put them there for fun.
So what’s the point of all this?
What’s the point of all this comparisson? To show that you should put your kids in darts instead of letting them ride mountain bikes (where they might hurt their throwing fingers)? No.
If WBD is going to run around trumpeting how much they’ve grown the sport and what amazing viewership they’ve brought to World Cup, it’s time they start passing some of that revenue on to the riders.