How much do top mountain bikers earn?

The salaries of the highest paid road cyclists is a recurring topic every season and the information about it is quite accurate. But in MTB these data are harder to come by as the protagonists rarely talk about it, and even less often do they give concrete figures.

How much do the highest paid mountain bikers earn?

In a video released by RedBull in 2020, downhill legend Aaron Gwin claimed that in a good year, he could be collecting around $1 million, taking into account all the prize money for winning races and personal sponsorships, on top of his primary contract with the team.  

It doesn't look like Gwin is getting paid that amount now, years after his best DH World Cup results. But that could be the figure around which the salaries of the most elite mountain bikers move, between half a million and a million euros, both in DH and XCO. We'd bet that there would be more than enough fingers on one hand to count the riders in that group.

But if we focus on the top 10 in the UCI rankings, there are several sources that give us a clear idea of how much the world's best XCO cyclists earn.

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On the one hand, Thomas Frischknecht, manager of the SCOTT SRAM team, confirmed that: “The best earn more than 500,000, including personal sponsorship.” No comment was made regarding Nino Schurter's earnings.

In this regard, Carlos Coloma, manager of the BH Coloma Team, recently confirmed on the Bicilab podcast that “a Top 10 cyclist costs between €200,000 and €600,000.”

Abysmal economic differences between MTB and road cycling 

Obviously, these figures seem ridiculous when compared to road cycling. And although they also compete in mountain biking, cyclists such as Van der Poel and current XCO world champion Thomas Pidcock, whose salaries are estimated at $4 million and $7 million respectively, would have to be taken out of the equation. If we were to include them in a ranking of the highest-paid mountain bikers, both would be at the top, far ahead of the rest.

In the cases of Van der Poel and Pidcock, aside from the fact that they are two unique cyclists capable of winning in both disciplines, alternating between them during the same season, their salaries are paid by road teams where media and television coverage is a major attraction for brands and companies outside of cycling that decide to invest large amounts of money to make their names known around the world.

This is not yet the case in mountain biking, where it is basically bicycle manufacturers that fund the budgets of the best teams.

In this regard, and to fully understand the difference in salaries between road cyclists and mountain bikers, it suffices to say that the budgets of the best road teams are between 40 and 60 million euros, while the highest budget for a mountain bike team is estimated at around 4 million.

Does Warner's arrival mark a new era for the mountain bike economy?

Apart from technological innovations, circuit changes, training methods, etc., the biggest change that competitive mountain biking has undergone in recent years has been the arrival of Warner Bros. Discovery at the UCI World Cup.

We have already seen a wave of changes in its first season as a UCI partner, but this could be just the beginning, as it seems that the model they are promoting is to have fewer teams competing, to try to increase the general public's interest in mountain biking, and to maximize the benefits of broadcasting the races.

It remains to be seen whether this change will boost the reach of mountain biking and attract new sponsors, or whether it will simply weed out the less wealthy teams.

What do you think about the salaries of mountain bikers compared to road cyclists? We look forward to reading your comments on our social media channels.