UCI MTB

Mountain Bike World Series

Brief

In 2022, Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) and UCI announced their second major partnership, following on from the success of the UCI Track Champions League. This collaboration aimed to create a new, consolidated mountain bike competition platform that would bring together all major mountain bike events, including the World Cups, while also introducing new events. Leading the project was the Enduro Sports Organisation (ESO), a WBD subsidiary that owned and operated the Enduro World Series (EWS). After the announcement, the ESO team approached SHIFT to assist them in developing the positioning, brand architecture, name, logo, and visual identity for this major partnership. What an exciting brief!

Insight

Using our extensive research and understanding of the mountain biking community, industry, and media landscape, we helped the ESO navigate their way through this complex task. They aimed to respect, unify, and grow the MTB community, covering all disciplines and making it more accessible. It was clear that our new name and identity needed to signal an exciting new era in MTB whilst also being easy to understand and work for organisers, broadcasters and host locations.

Solution

In partnership with ESO Sports and the UCI, we developed the overarching brand name, "UCI Mountain Bike World Series," and established a brand hierarchy that included sub-branding elements for Gravity and Endurance and for each sporting format. This ensured that everything fitted together in one clear and harmonious system, whilst also allowing for future growth of race formats. At the core was the creation of a new font, logo, unique colours, a graphic system and icons.

Experience

The new identity powers everything within the Mountain Bike World Series brand world, including the website, press releases, on-location at races and broadcast content. A unique colour scheme has been utilised to distinguish between Endurance and Gravity, the two major racing formats. These colours are featured on screen, course markers, and winners jerseys. The identity has given the new series a fresh and impactful appearance, representing change while embracing the sport's history and heritage.

Results

Time will tell if this new identity will help the UCI Mountain Bike World Series team achieve its goals to unify and grow the sport, but we are incredibly humbled and proud to have played a small part in this significant step forward in the world of MTB.