Strava's annual year in sport report is out today (along with similar releases from Garmin, Apple Music Replay, and of course Spotify's Wrapped, because December 3 was apparently designated year-in-review day in the tech marketing group chat). There was a time not long ago when Strava's Year in Sport report was a trove of interesting information on cycling and other outdoor sports – yes, cherrypicked and methodologically questionable, but interesting nonetheless.
Joe Lindsey
But those days are gone, and the breezy skim of the current edition feels like a metaphor for how much the platform has changed. It's also perhaps a bit of a last gasp of marketing gloss for a startup that is still (so far as we know) planning to become a publicly traded company and will soon be forced to be much more forthcoming about much more serious things than what time of day is most popular for workouts.
Amid the mostly fluffy stats and sometimes context-free factoids of the latest Year in Sport report is one data point that is fascinating, and possibly unintentionally revealing – in light of Strava's IPO plans – for what it might say about the path the brand faces after its initial public offering.
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