The International Cycling Union (UCI) has agreed an exclusive partnership with the IMG agency to deliver extra exposure for its new Women’s WorldTour.
The 2016 Women’s WorldTour will launch on Saturday with the Strade Bianche in Italy and seeks to introduce a new era for women’s cycling.
The UCI said its partnership with IMG will be activated through the InCycle magazine show, which has generated a global audience of 18.68 million from 1,358 hours of broadcast coverage in 2015.
Throughout the season, 12 shows of 26 minutes will each feature a sequence dedicated to the Women’s WorldTour. This exclusive content will be accessible via incycle.tv and tv.uci.ch, without geo restrictions, and through the broadcasters on all continents to which the magazine is distributed.
In addition, the UCI said all 17 events on the 2016 Women’s WorldTour will benefit from television coverage, either from live broadcast, live streaming or same-day highlights packages.
Replacing the Women Road World Cup, which ran from 1998, the Women’s WorldTour will comprise 35 days of racing, including Spring Classics, stage races held worldwide and monument races attached to men’s WorldTour events. In total, competition days will increase by more than 60 per cent.