Going, Going, Gone
 

It looks like Sram is discontinuing the Omnium crank: https://www.bikeforums.net/singlespe...am-omnium.html

Reportedly Shimano is stopping production of DA track cranks because the equipment broke and they don't feel it's worth the cost to repair it.

3T has discontinued the Scatto.

And Mavic's in receivership, so the whole company may disappear, bringing the IO with it.

Yikes.

And before you guys wonder if it's legit. The guy who posted that in the SSFG forum owns a bike shop in San Diego Portland, OR that caters to track, single speed, and fixed gear riders.

IRL sports aren't looking so good these days. Not just in the near future, but recovering momentum afterwards.

I've even seen it in my apps. Last week was the first week ever that I had $0 in sales. Usage is down to almost nothing, too. I don't have any analytics frameworks in my apps, but Apple gives basic reports on numbers of users who buy, install, uninstall, and/or open the apps.

This may be the beginning of the real rise of eSports.

I hope you’re wrong. I watched a couple of E Races and it so unbelievably boring.

By "eSports", I don't mean virtual bike races. I mean the more popular games.

For those who still think it's a joke or a fringe sport...it's not. It's huge:

https://www.espn.com/esports/

This annual tournament pays A LOT: Dota 2 - The International

Total prize purse: $34,330,068

• FIRST PLACE: $15,620,181
• SECOND PLACE: $4,462,909
• THIRD PLACE: $3,089,706
• FOURTH PLACE: $2,059,804
• etc...
• 13th-16th: $514,951
• 17th and 18th: $85,825

And a team is usually 5 players plus a coach. That's real money.

And that's just one tournament for one game. This doesn't take into account feeder tournaments, sponsors, etc... for the other games that pay.

It's a tough living (high stress, to say the least), but a few individuals are making several million a year...literally.

Well, I'm opening your app every time I train on the bike, whether at home or outside. Great applications, and I only use "dumb" trainers. Thank you Carleton!

The Omnium was a pretty good crank with the caveats - a.) you were buying new and b.) you could live with the bottom bracket.
For the price, you could buy a used track crank that was much better (still true) with and spare yourself the mega Exo.

My guess is other than speccing them on bikes, SRAM probably didn't sell tons of them. Hipsters would rather have 110/130bcd and trackies are already a small market with pretty stiff (free pun) crankset competition (and you lose a big % of that market solely on the fact that a lot of those folks are going to be looking for crank based power)

E-sports are insane, the big teams players are literally rock stars selling out packed stadiums. Unfortunately it is a toxic/predatory community for many... similar to bike racing - sure the real pro's make some money (and in e sports cases... real money) but the vast, vast majority of the (kids for the most part) "pros" are living 5-10+ people deep in some dude's condo that they've signed a contract with to give some crazy % of their "possible" winnings, living very unhealthy lifestyles with 12-16 hour days with very little breaks and as Carleton said...very high stress. Twitch / Streaming has helped, but still... it's not all "getting fat paid to play video games."

(I actually lived in a house where me and 3 friends paid rent/food/gas running bots in Diablo2 and selling high end items in Everquest. The good old days...)

Eh, it might take Japanese Keirin 20-30 more years to die, so the NJS stuff will be available.

was checking stock on DA cranks for a new bike. They are in stock in most sizes and the sizes that are not in stock have dates for restock.

Im less sure of DA not being made but, Shimano is huge and they have a large supply chain so it may take awhile for everything to get to distributors.

Yeah, there are even doping and match fixing scandals...so that's how you know it's a real sport now, hahaha. The players travel on athlete visas to events.

I'm sure what you say about the kids (young adults) being signed to really bad contracts is true. When real money is involved and the talent is young and inexperienced in business, the vultures come out (see: music industry, TV/film industry, modeling industry,)

The stress is unbelievable. It's a grinder of an industry at that level. The fun goes out of it at much lower levels before the first dollar is made. I used to play competitive TF2 in a league for a few seasons. As I got better and moved up to higher divisions it not only felt like work...it was work. I was like, "Nah." I made more money in my day job that I ever would have there. I simply sandbagged in the penultimate division and played for fun. No team meetings. No video reviews. No team drama. Just show up for pregame scrims then an official match and have fun.

I dabbled in TF2 trading, but it wasn't my thing. To be able to pay real bills with it is nuts.