ROUVY and IRONMAN Partner Up with ROUVY Acquiring FulGaz

Triathlon Forum
1

Originally published at: ROUVY and IRONMAN Partner Up with ROUVY Acquiring FulGaz - Slowtwitch News

With over 1,500 routes and a riding experience that uses course footage and augmented reality to create a realistic cycling experience, the ROUVY indoor training platform has been growing dramatically over the last few years. Today the Czech-based company and IRONMAN have announced a five-year partnership that sees ROUVY acquire FulGaz from IRONMAN and become “the Official Digital Sports Platform of the global IRONMAN and IRONMAN 70.3 Triathlon Series.” IRONMAN had previously purchased FulGaz in 2021.

ROUVY has enjoyed lots of growth over the last few years and sees the deal as a way to expand its triathlon user base.

FulGaz

The first question that came to mind for us here at Slowtwitch when we got wind of the news was what will happen to FulGaz now? IRONMAN had acquired FulGaz at the tail end of the COVID pandemic as it looked to grow and move “into the connected fitness space,” then CEO Andrew Messick said at the time. The idea was to “integrate this versatile platform into our portfolio of digital offerings.”

At the time of that announcement, ROUVY and IRONMAN still had a running contract, but that deal expired at the end of 2021.

With today’s news, ROUVY and IRONMAN are back working together. What does that mean for FulGaz users? We asked that question of ROUVY CEO Petr Samek in an interview yesterday.

“For now, nothing is changing for them,” Samek said. “We have a big plan for the community – we feel that we’ll be able to make the FulGaz community happy and part of the ROUVY family.”

Samek admitted that it makes no sense to keep both platforms running. While the eventual goal will be to migrate FulGaz users over to the ROUVY platform, he says they want to ensure that features FulGaz users are enjoying will continue to be available to them.

“We will send surveys to understand the needs of the users and the biggest benefits of the (FulGaz) platform,” Samek continued. “We will identify the missing content we need to migrate into ROUVY. We want to ensure the migration is as smooth as possible.”

The goal will be to have the “migration” completed by “the next indoor season,” Samek said – presumably referring to winter in the Northern Hemisphere.

IRONMAN and IRONMAN 70.3 Courses

Samek points out that since its last deal with IRONMAN, the ROUVY platform has vastly updated its technology including more personalized content and workout prescriptions. While there are a number of IRONMAN courses already available on the platform, the plan is to digitize all of the IRONMAN courses as soon as possible – as many as two or three a week thanks to ROUVY’s ability to use GoPro footage and race coverage to create courses. (In the next few months users will be able to generate their own courses using the ROUVY course creator, Samek said.)

“We believe the combination of training efficiency and realism of IRONMAN courses will benefit all triathletes,” Samek said. “It’s a huge commitment for us, but we have a team and knowledge that is unique.”

According to today’s release, in addition to the IRONMAN and 70.3 courses, “ROUVY will feature the top 20 most popular FulGaz routes, with plans to add more in the coming months.”

ROUVY comes on board as the naming partner for transition areas at IRONMAN races, which means the company will be onsite at events to provide “an enhanced experience to athletes,” including a 30-day free trial to racers.

“Most of our community are cyclists,” Samek continued. “Through the IRONMAN community we’ll be able to offer workouts and efficient training in combination with realistic footage to triathletes.”

Samek is very clear, though, that the ultimate goal of the platform is to better prepare you for being outdoors.

“Our goal is not to keep you indoors,” he said. “Our mission is to get you ready for being outdoors. We are trying to help you improve your fitness level to keep you motivated.”

2

Love Rouvy already, this just makes it better. Just need virtual gears now and we’re all set :grin:

3 Likes
3

For training on the IM courses, I found FulGaz extremely buggy and unfinished in a lot of ways. For instance - if you put it in erg mode, the video would progress at the speed of filming, rather than by how hard you’re mashing the pedals. Fine if you were following a cyclist of equal measure, but some of the courses were done via car. Strava would show how far the video progressed as your GPS track, but then you’d then get your .fit file emailed to you was probably virtual kms based on your watts. Lots of unfinished parts like this.

Looking forward to trying out Rouvy this way.

One question - Fulgaz used to have a free promo code if you signed up for an IM race. Any idea if Rouvy will continue this trend?

1 Like
4

Pretty sure they have offered 2 week trials in the past.

5

rouvy was partnered with ironman during covid so most the courses on there. pretty accurate. when ironman left, they had to rename all the course and they were hard to find. Good they are back, and hopefully they leave the naming as is

6

I have yet to have a .fit file emailed to me. Agree with the bugginess.

7

Have been using Rouvy a little over a year and very rarely does that happen to me.

When I’ve gone slow enough up climbs the video will slow down to the point where you easily see each separate frame, which is the opposite of your problem.

The only times I’ve experienced your problem are when I’m flying down a hill faster than the car / moto / camera, and at a certain point it just speeds the video up to catch back up. I’ve never gotten out of sync and been out of sync the rest of the ride.

Can’t speak on the promo code, but happy to answer other questions. Tried Zwift in the past and TP Virtual in the past few weeks, but to me there’s nothing that comes close in terms of making indoor riding as real as possible.

8

I’ve been on Rouvy for over a year now and happy with it. Rouvy doesn’t seem to have the same issues as FulGaz that you mentioned.

For those who did encounter issues using Rouvy, just run it on Apple TV. It just works. Ditch the high end PC, laptop, tablet, phone, or what have you.

1 Like
9

I’m interested in Ironman’s failed FulGaz push. What tools did they use besides promoting it on their signage at events? I know they did signups in the merch tent occasionally.

But I’m really surprised IM couldn’t make a big dent into their sustained subscriber base. I understand and agree with the reasons listed here why it was hard to do (everyone using trainingpeaks/road/zwift), but IM has direct access to the triclubs and coaching network.

Did IM have a product manager who essentially acted as a sales rep for Fulgaz to the clubs and teams? I’d think that IM should have tasked someone with getting those triclub managers on the phone, and played some promotional games with discounted race entries to get people to signup for a year long Fulgaz package.

The whole 30 day free trial thing is just the wrong product to offer a triathlete. Likely case, they sign up with 3 different emails and scout/train the one or two courses they plan to race for IM and then defect the app altogether.

It feels like IM had the perfect synergy between the race course, and the tri clubs, but they just missed a few key closers to get people on board. I remember during covid they launched that virtual Ironman stuff and you got account credits on the Ironman store for your workouts, etc. then bailed on that too. Fulgaz was just a remnant of that strategy obviously, but it’s a shame they couldn’t make it work. Or maybe they just didn’t want additional staff/management to take on essentially a new business.

Or the other route I’m surprised Ironman isn’t going is getting some kind of partnership/sponsorship directly with Zwift and run some virtual races on there.

It’s an interesting case study of the biggest, most capable elephant in the room somehow not being able to pull it altogether. It’s also a cautionary tale for those of us (self included) who think Ironman is in a position to do so much to help “grow the sport” that Ironman fails at everything other than putting on races.

1 Like
10

To me, IM’s Fulgaz strategy post-pandemic seemed to be very much around “here’s a bonus perk - sign up for our race and we’ll let you virtually train on the course.” My own experience around it was very much for the consecutive 1 month free trials I got via race sign ups. Fine as a strategy if you’re trying to increase customer retention for the races, but not so much if you’re trying to grow the platform on its own merits.

But I never got the sense that they actively maintained the product, even to the point of adding in new IM courses - there would be notices that they were going to add the Lahti WC course (different than the usual 70.3) “coming soon”, but they never did or at least didn’t before the actual race itself.

11

I have been on Rouvy for several years and find the program the best for my needs. Tried Fulgaz-way to much glitching. Have Zwifted was ok but missing something. Loved the old Rouvy where I could add my local routes with/without video and ride those using Google Maps essentially. Even allowed to adjust the grade %,etc- sounds like this might be coming back. While the courses aren’t perfect they are significantly better than the other options I have tried. Let’s go Rouvy and IM-get those courses out there.

12

Just tested Rouvy. I actually liked it and plan to use it to train for my races. If anyone is interested in a Group or Duo membership feel free to DM me.

13

For those who did encounter issues using Rouvy, just run it on Apple TV. It just works. Ditch the high end PC, laptop, tablet, phone, or what have you.

I tried Rouvy about a year ago, but was never able to get it work with my ATV. I couldn’t get past the login screen, it would never allow me to enter my password. No problem logging in with my Mac or phone…

14

I have been on Rouvy since the pandemic when Rouvy was partnered with IM and when IM ditched Rouvy for Fulgaz. I love all the routes on Rouvy from around the world and like riding on routes I have been on and new ones, and the best part if I can ride against myself and download other riders of my “watts per kilo range” and have my own custom group rides or race. From time to time, I get a friend to join and we get to ride with each other on our custom “group rides”.

Two nights ago, I rode in Gatineau Park in Ottawa and then rode the first 20km of the 70.3 Tremblant course (both courses I know by heart). I find rouvy courses gives me more speed than I deserve in real like (seems like I can do do a 7 percent grade as fast as 5.5-6percent grade in real line based in the gears on my bike and cadence). That’s fine, I know that if I ride on Rouvy I will be slightly slower on the same course in real life.

Last night I saw they have the 70.3 Marbella course on that, and I rode for an hour from T1 on it…it literally had 560m of climbing in the first 40 min out of T1 !!!

2 Likes
15

Opposite for ne, seems harder on rouvy, although they also recently changed the algorithm to add braking, which zwift doesnt have. Now you cant bomb down a 90* turn at 70km/h (although depends what mode you use, i think just ride is more liberal iirc)

1 Like
16

Rode the first 3/4 of Musselman as this is my A race for the year. Also did it with virtual shifting in Rouvy using the QZ app for the first time which I liked as I’m never as happy with how noisy I find my mechanical shifting alignment on the trainer.

17

Are you using the zwift clicker, or just manually setting gears on your phone using the QZ app?

18

I used the QZ app for my first ride but ordered a Bluetooth volume control and that will act the same as the Zwift click