Too Cool for the Village? A Thought from the Tour Down Under
Every January, Adelaide becomes the centre of the cycling world. The Tour Down Under rolls in, teams arrive from everywhere, athletes, media, brands, retailers, industry people, fans, all converging on one city. It’s a WorldTour event, a massive undertaking, and a significant investment from the South Australian government and the broader cycling industry.
Walking around this year, having conversations across the event, one particular trend kept coming up in my mind. It’s not new, but it feels more pronounced each year, and it’s worth talking about without pointing fingers or throwing stones.
More and more major cycling brands are choosing not to exhibit within the Tour Village itself. Instead, they’re taking over empty shopfronts around the city and turning them into pop-ups. From a brand perspective, it’s easy to see why. It can be cheaper than a large expo stand, it offers total control over the space, there’s less noise, less visual competition, and it creates a sense of exclusivity. A little cooler, a little more curated, a bit “if you know, you know”.
And to be clear, it works. Some of these pop-ups are excellent. They feel intentional, premium, and very on-brand. From a commercial and creative standpoint, it’s a smart move, and nobody can really argue otherwise.
But there’s a quieter question sitting underneath all of this.
The Tour Village isn’t just another trade show. It’s part of the engine that helps fund and justify the event itself. It’s the commercial heartbeat of the race, the place where brands, fans, and the industry physically come together in one shared space.
When brands choose to operate outside that ecosystem, they’re still benefiting from the audience the Tour brings to Adelaide, but they’re not directly contributing to the platform that makes that audience possible in the first place.
That’s where the tension lives.
If enough major brands step away from the Village, it becomes harder to fill, harder to fund, and harder to evolve. Less participation leads to tighter budgets. Tighter budgets mean fewer resources to make the Village compelling. Over time, that risks turning the core of the event into something less vibrant, less engaging, and ultimately less relevant.
Ironically, that only accelerates the very behaviour that caused the problem in the first place.
This isn’t about blame. Brands are doing what brands are meant to do, making commercially sound decisions that serve their business. It’s also not nostalgia, or a call to drag everyone back into the same tent because that’s how it used to be done.
It’s simply an observation that events like the Tour Down Under only thrive when the ecosystem around them thrives too. Global brands, local businesses, organisers, and fans all pulling in roughly the same direction, all invested in a shared centre of gravity.
Pop-ups and Villages don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Cool doesn’t have to mean disconnected. Creativity doesn’t have to come at the expense of contribution.
Maybe the real question isn’t whether brands should come back into the Village, but whether the Village itself needs to evolve. More flexibility in cost and footprint, more collaborative spaces, less transactional selling, more experience and storytelling. If the industry wants brands to stay inside the tent, the tent has to feel worth staying in.
Cycling in Australia is small, passionate, and deeply interconnected. The Tour Down Under is one of the rare moments each year where the global spotlight lands squarely on our industry. Supporting that moment, financially and culturally, matters.
You don’t have to love every aspect of how it’s done. You don’t have to agree on the execution. But recognising the role it plays in sustaining the broader cycling ecosystem feels important.
This isn’t a rant, or a complaint, or a shot across the bow. It’s just a question worth asking, calmly and respectfully, with the long game in mind