Zwift racing results and race management: What are the plans? Zwift took Zwiftpower in house in 2020!

Racing
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As per the title, what are the plans for Zwift race / event results management?

Zwiftpower was created by Glen Knight and James Hodges in early 2016, when Zwift racing was in its infancy and there was no in house results system or tool for race management. They used to run the KISS series and did a lot of good stuff, before they no doubt got disillusioned with pace of development and other factors. Zwift then took over the IP in 2018, and fully took over in 2020 when James and Glen stepped back. More details on the back story here: ZwiftPower Transitioning to Zwift: Part 1 | Zwift Insider

Since then I think the only major change has been to the font used, which while exciting at the time, didn’t materially impact or improve how Zwift races and results are managed. Oh and the new CE information and link through to Zwift proper is there now - so that at least proves there is successful connectivity. I have run a Thursday evening race series for the last couple of years, and while it’s not the most intuitive system and interface, it’s all there is for us non WTRL plebs.

I’d reluctantly accept it continuing to be the place for this, if at the very least it captured the correct number of riders who raced - surely the minimum viable product for a race results system? What is the barrier to this?

This was last Thursday’s race: ZwiftPower - Login

  • Zwiftpower said we had 11 finishers in C (3 filtered out for no HRM)
  • The Zwift companion App said 50 started and 40 finished
  • A live stream from the race says 36 started
This was the same race!

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Here are some other threads asking similar:

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Zwift is in a reorganization, when a company is in a reorganization, timelines aren’t in place anymore. At best it take 2 months from now to prioritize projects and are able to give a timeline of a plan. They are now busy to build “lean and agile” teams and prioritizing “must-win” battles

You don’t have to expect any news in the upcoming months.

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But they took it over 4 years ago, there must be some plans / changes in the backlog you would have assumed?

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They have said that the plan is to replace it and shut it off. Where those plans stand today is unknown outside the company, and possibly inside the company as well.

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Yeah, that rings a faint bell. Do you know when and where they said this?

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Yes offcourse, but in a reorganization all existing plans are going into the bin.

So nothing will happen,and nothing will be planned. Currently they are only looking if zwiftpower is coming up to the “must-win” list.

When it is coming upto the list, something will happen this year
When not, it will be only kept alive with low input (or be killed)

In the coming months they will ask internally what will happen if it stays this way or we will kill it. And what will happen if we invest in it.

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Good luck getting an answer to this one when 35% of the staff, including people looking at exactly this type of topic, have been let go.

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Aye I know, doesn’t seem very likely, especially when your 2 year old thread linked above had nothing in it.
I just can’t get over some of the continual poor decision making from the top and basics / quick wins that seem to be ignored.

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I don’t think this was the post I was remembering but fairly close…

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Cheers appreciate that @Paul_Southworth. What a shame Flint has gone - would like to think that the work he was driving won’t get completely canned, but the signs aren’t great.

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Cheers Ian, so stuff was in the works a year or so ago. @James_Zwift are you able to shed any light on current Zwiftpower to Zwift proper plans?

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James isn’t posting here anymore (forum PTSD?)

Anyway he works on events, not engineering

My guess is that the future of ZwiftPower is simply unknown by anyone right now and they’ll need time to figure that out. Whether they’ll share the results of that decision is also unknown.

Personally I don’t see automatic ZwiftPower registration as a privacy problem as much as a product problem. They could choose to ask people to opt in to racing instead of opt in to ZwiftPower. But they want to make racing accessible to people who don’t opt in. I don’t agree but it’s not daft or anything, just a decision I wouldn’t make. Imagine if signing up for a race produced a pop-up authorization to opt in to racing and thereby create a ZwiftPower account in one step.

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tbf they could link it when the signup is made and then the user opts out, how many services do you have to opt-in for using that service? most of them you have to opt-out as you are automatically signed up for it

I understand the opt-in was purely because it was, at the time, an external service but it has been in house now since 2020, I would be more interested to know if Zwift took over ZwiftPower purely because they could or whether they actually had a plan for it, nearly 4 years later I’m guessing it was the former option

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Aye that’s fair - had just linked him as he was replying in the threads linked above.

And yes agree, any opt out / opt in worries would surely go or be much reduced if all was in house in Zwift proper.

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That was a pie in the sky statement anyway.

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TBH now with the layoffs and the lack of development of racing on Zwift and on general software the only alternative i see with zwift is if they buy indievelo and make it his racing platform.Like og zwifters have said they should have started building Zwift 2.0 a long time ago but instead they were focused on hardware that never got released and just fixing bugs.Now what we have is a platform that every release has a bunch of bugs appear and lack of development.

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That plus @shooj not responding to repeated requests for any info/update regarding racing improvements says that it’s all shelved if not binned.

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If v2 of Zwift Racing Score ever sees the light of day after the recent staff layoffs including Flint, plus just like v1 our scores are going to be affected by “random racers” not on zwiftpower, ZwiftHQ needs to create at least a basic zwiftpower account for every “random racer.”

Right now randoms not on zwiftpower can continually change their height/weight without us knowing and make a complete farce of racing, they will simply get pen promoted under the CE system if they exceed zMAP or zFTP thresholds.

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