Popular Australian Founded Website Sold – Again…

CyclingTips was founded in Melbourne by Wade Wallace. It was a classic ‘bootstraps home business start up’ which became one of the most popular cycling websites not just in Australia but globally.

It was later bought by another Melbourne based business, BikeExchange. In 2019 BikeExchange sold it to Canadian based global mountain bike site Pinkbike. The sale made sense because CyclingTips is primarily road cycling focused meaning that Pinkbike now had road and mtb covered.

Now it’s been sold again, along with Pinkbike to the rapidly expanding Outside group, owned by USA based Robin Thurston.

Pinkbike generates more than 700 million annual pageviews, making it by far the largest mountain bike website on the planet; it will be the second-largest traffic source for Outside behind only Outside Online. Its marketplace for mountain bikers, also generates millions of pageviews and is a key revenue source. CyclingTips is a fast-growing site devoted to road and gravel cycling and competition. And TrailForks is one of the leading mountain bike trail apps, with more than 300,000 mountain biking and hiking routes and 6 million users.

Amongst its cycling related properties, in addition to Pinkbike and CyclingTips, Outside now owns mapping database brand Trailforks, road race magazines Peloton and VeloNews, Triathlete, Roll Massif, industry magazine Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, book publisher VeloPress and market events VeloSwap.

These are amongst over 40 media properties covering healthy living, outdoor activities, endurance sports and industry media.

Adding Pinkbike, CyclingTips, and Trailforks gives Outside+ more critical mass, making membership purchases more desirable for enthusiasts and providing more readership for advertisers inside and outside the industry, Thurston said.

“As a lifelong cyclist, I’m a huge fan of these brands, which are perfect complements to our own cycling titles—VeloNews, Peloton, Beta, and Bicycle Retailer—and to our recent acquisition of Gaia GPS, the dominant mobile mapping app for hikers, backpackers, and overlanders. The marriage of these businesses creates a truly comprehensive resource for all types of cyclists and outdoor adventurers.”

Outside is headquartered in Boulder, with offices in Carbondale and Denver, Colorado; Easthampton, Massachusetts; Frankfurt, Germany; Melbourne, Australia; New York City; Ojai, San Diego, and San Francisco, California; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Squamish, British Columbia; and Toronto, Ontario.

With these latest acquisitions, it is quite possibly the world’s largest cycling related media business.

Some of this information was first published in Bicycle Retailer & Industry News.