RAGBRAI is stable even as Gannett cancels other events, organizers say

RAGBRAI leadership says the event is financially stable, despite a drop in registrations and its parent company recently cancelling another major cycling event.

Why it matters: There's nothing else quite like it. RAGBRAI, which kicks off next week, is the world's longest-running multi-day bike ride. It attracts thousands of cyclists to experience a week of the best of what Iowa has to offer.

Context: Since 2019, RAGBRAI has been operated by Ventures Endurance, an events arm of Gannett, the country's largest newspaper company , which owns USA Today and the Des Moines Register.

Driving the news: Earlier this year, Ventures Endurance announced that it would cancel Ride the Rockies — a multi-day event through Colorado — due to low attendance after nearly 40 years.

• Sabra Nagel, the ride's director, was also laid off, Colorado Public Radio reported.
• The company's obstacle course race series, Rugged Maniac , was also canceled without explanation this year, as was Providence Marathon in Rhode Island , which organizers blamed partly on a bridge closure.

By the numbers: RAGBRAI's attendance this year is down about 40% from last year's 50th-anniversary ride. In 2023, 30,000 people registered for the full week, but some days saw upwards of 50,000 riders.

• This year, around 18,000 people are registered, similar to 2022 totals.

Yes, but: Anne Lawrie, RAGBRAI's cycling director, tells Axios the event remains on solid footing. "We anticipated our numbers would go down," she says.

• In 2019, there were about 10,000 registered weeklong riders, as well as several thousand-day riders.

Threat level: The cancellation of the Colorado ride "should give RAGBRAI fans some concern," wrote Dieter Drake, who ran the Iowa event from 2019-2022, in the public Facebook group "Save RAGBRAI."

• "These were formerly profitable events that have apparently been mismanaged to obscurity. Believing that RAGBRAI is somehow immune from this trend is unwise," Drake commented in his April post .
• Drake declined to speak with Axios, but the group's "about" page reads: "Save America's Greatest Bike Ride from the corporate giants threatening to destroy it forever."

What they're saying: Lawrie says she doesn't expect RAGBRAI to meet the same fate as Ride the Rockies, even if this year's attendance is lower.

• "Frankly, it's a much healthier spot for us to be in and for the towns to be in."

Bill Plock, the 2022 Ride the Rockies director, told Axios that current RAGBRAI leadership has a difficult job of trying to maintain similar attendance to last year and it's unfair to compare the two.

• "Being owned by a large company with shareholder expectations is hard because they're going to compare it to last year, right?" Plock says.

The big picture: The Colorado ride used to average 2,000+ riders, but by the time Plock joined it had dropped to 1,200, he tells Axios.

• Cycling events across the country have struggled after COVID given rising operating costs as well as an aging cycling demographic, Plock says.
• There's also been a drop in cycling interest across the board since a 2020 peak. He pointed to a recent national sales slump for Shimano and bike shops.

The intrigue: RAGBRAI attendance could also be affected by this year's route, Plock points out. Last year's anniversary ride took the popular central Iowa route, including Des Moines.

• This year's ride travels through southern Iowa — a notoriously hilly landscape — and will be RAGBRAI's hilliest to date.
• "Historically the southern route has been the least-attended," Plock says.

Reality check: Ultimately it's hard to pin down RAGBRAI's actual attendance numbers beyond the company's own estimates.

• Sgt. Alex Dinkla, PIO for Iowa State Patrol, which helps control traffic for the ride, tells Axios, "It's a mystery."