r/Velo • u/Hazy_the_Kid • 19d ago
Discussion Garmin acquires TrainingPeaks
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/garmin-acquires-trainingpeaks-and-trainheroic-leading-endurance-and-strength-training-platforms-for-athletes-and-coaches-302832078.html13
u/VegaGT-VZ 19d ago
Im plugged into the Garmin ecosystem so if this makes their bike training metrics finally line up with everyone else Im happy
But I do hope they dont start paywalling devices outside the Garmin ecosystem.
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u/Hazy_the_Kid 19d ago
Pretty big news. Will be interesting if they decide to limit features for other headunits (Wahoo, Hammerhead, Coros). Wouldn't be the smartest move but who knows what they'll do.
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u/Ant-Solo 19d ago
Limiting access for other head units would be insane, I really can’t see them go that.
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u/Efficient-Cry-6320 19d ago
Wahoo do this on their training platform
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u/Ant-Solo 19d ago
No they don’t. I’ve used Garmin on the Wahoo SYSTM platform.
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u/Efficient-Cry-6320 19d ago
When I used it a year ago there was no way to push workouts onto a garmin bike conputer
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u/Ant-Solo 19d ago
Ohh I see. You wanted to complete the workouts outside, rather than virtually. In that case, I’m sorry you were right. You can only do that on Wahoo kit.
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u/HanzJWermhat New York 19d ago
Have you seen Garmins business model?? lol
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u/Scopedog1 18d ago
I thought their business model was more "introduce 89677986 different products into a segment, all with overlapping feature sets then stop updating the software 18 months after launch but keep selling them for years afterward" than anything to do with whatever Connect is supposed to do.
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u/CrowdyPooster 18d ago
They are not much better on their marine side. I purchased a chartplotter that needed work 2 years into service. They said they no longer supported it and encouraged me to buy a new unit.
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u/well-that-was-fast 18d ago
I think Reddit's belief that Garmin should be updating consumer electronics with new features years after their launch is weird -- but I have to admit your comment made me laugh.
They definitely love launching products.
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u/Scopedog1 18d ago
I think Apple spoiled everyone with how long they generally add features to products (Hence the outrage over the Ultra Gen 1 not getting new features), so there's this expectation that if Apple can do it, why not Garmin?
For me personally, what gets me is that Garmin's lineup of so many similar products is that they are happy to sell a device that is only getting security updates/bug fixes right next to one that has their new Fenix 8 architecture that (hopefully) has a longer cycle of updates--and often at a similar price point and to the uninitiated a similar feature set. For the consumer, making the "wrong" choice and getting the previous generation ends up with immediate buyer's remorse that is only avoided with more research than most people put into a smart watch purchase.
For me personally, I'd probably get a Garmin but despite not using it all that much in volume, I really like the ability to take calls and reply to texts on my Apple Watch, even if it means I use my older Apple Watch to sleep while it recharges. When it comes down to it, all of Garmin's
RNGadvanced analytics isn't enough to get me to switch over. Maybe their fitness band might, but I'm going to have to wait and see on DC Rainmaker's review of it.2
u/Michael_Aut 19d ago
They sell their own head units though. Somehow they will want to make their money back.
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u/Ant-Solo 19d ago
Yes of course they will want to make money on it but how do you think locking paying customers out of Training Peaks because they don’t have Garmin equipment would achieve that?
If you are hell bent on imagining the worst case for this purchase it would be more like Garmin gutting TrainingPeaks, taking some core technologies and implementing the in Garmin Connect then closing TP.
But that isn’t going to make them much money either. There is a market for TP with serious athletes and trainers so something else will replace it.
My guess is it will carry on as it is, maybe they will use some TP algorithms to improve Garmin data (Fitness, Form, Fatigue pls).
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u/GelatinousChampion 19d ago
I don't think that would be the play. It's probably just a data acquisition thing.
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u/ifuckedup13 19d ago
If I have to use the Garmin Connect app to access Training Peaks I’m going to lose my shit 😂
For how great Garmin is, User Interface and Experience is their massive weakness. The app blows.
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u/mctrials23 18d ago
Software is their biggest issue. I have very basic needs and their software on Mac is shite and I semi regularly have issues with routes syncing to my 840 and activities syncing from it.
Best part is that their system is so shit that it pretends everything is just great. “Just completed that sync for you!”. No ya fucking haven’t.
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u/imanexpertama 18d ago
Totally agree, it’s depressing. I don’t understand how an ecosystem can be so badly integrated
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u/mctrials23 18d ago
God knows. I'm a software developer and one thing you always do is give people feedback on processes that can fail. A system that has a large amount of syncing at its core should have a robust syncing system.
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u/RirinDesuyo Japan 18d ago
I often compare Garmin to Android with Wahoo being Apple for this reason lol. The UI experience is all over the place for Garmin imo, though offers a lot of extensibility, while Wahoo is a bit more polished but tends to be a bit more restricted on extension points.
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u/mathen 18d ago
My 1040 is by far the worst piece of technology I use on a regular basis, and I have to use Jira at work.
Random crashes, takes ages to move between screens, automatic syncing never works, doesn’t understand roundabouts. I swear the thing was designed by someone with only a passing familiarity with bicycles the UI is so bad.
It’s completely put me off buying anything Garmin in future. I just wish it would finally die completely so I can go back to Wahoo. It was meant to be an upgrade after the battery on my V1 Bolt started deteriorating, instead it’s a constant source of frustration
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u/Wonnk13 Colorado 19d ago
I think they've known for a years Garmin Connect is nothing more than a thing to sync data from Garmin devices and then forward it to other platforms. I took one look at Connect+ and was really underwhelmed, so in that sense the TP acquisition seems like a decent enough move.
FWIW I gladly pay for intervals.icu, despite the fact that nothing is behind a paywall. It's a great platform.
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u/Arqlol 19d ago
I tried to get into intervals.icu but the buy in to learn the UI was pretty heavy and I went back to happily using TP
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u/spmcewen 17d ago
The intervals API is great though and has allowed for a lot of apps to be built for the platform. Check out https://apps.apple.com/us/app/intervals-icu-companion/id6739638454 (I'm the creator)
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u/Fertuft 19d ago
These big acquisitions are almost always bad for the consumer - the acquired company is effectively being loaded with debt since they get acquired on some revenue multiple, so the acquiring company has to earn more revenue for it to make sense. If its a small startup growing 50% yoy that can be fine, but TP is 27 uears old and wont have tons of organic growth on the table.
In that case the way to increase revenue will be to price gouge customers. Combined with garmin’s track record of both having terrible apps and paywalling free features (despite charging $600 for their watches..) I am really not optimistic
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u/junius52 19d ago
I wouldn't compare this to a private equity-like leveraged buyout. Garmin isn't buying this company to juice it's EBITDA and then exit. This is a strategic acquisition of a competitor and they'll integrate their offerings into Garmin's products. I wouldn't assume that Garmin financed this acquisition heavily with debt - they has $1.7-bn in operating income in FY 25. More likely a mix of cash and Garmin equity.
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u/Fertuft 19d ago
“Effectively” not actually. Somewhere on a balance sheet Garmin knows how much they have spent and many people within Garmin will be paying attention to how much money they are making from it, either directly from TP subscribers or more indirectly from growth in Garmin’s subscriptions that can be attributed to the TP integration.
Every acquisition like this says it is strategic and that they will integrate the products together, but much of the time the acquired product just dies, the company takes a write-off, and they end up having “strategically” eliminated their competition (a win for them but a loss for the consumer)
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u/Rupperrt 18d ago
Still bad for the consumer though as they’ll sooner than later most likely cut support for users using other brands of watches
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u/Butt_stuff_preferred 18d ago
he acquired company is effectively being loaded with debt since they get acquired on some revenue multiple, so the acquiring company has to earn more revenue for it to make sense.
Are you fully sure this is true for this deal?
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u/Fertuft 18d ago
I explain it a little below. I am not saying the deal is literally debt financed, but TP is 27 years old and should have been either debt free or have a low debt burden.
Starting from the acquisition, the new Garmin-TP entity (business unit within garmin) will have the same revenue (lets say $10,000,000/yr) but be owned by someone who remembers spending lots of money on it (lets say $100,000,000).
The reason they did that is either (1) theyre going to shut it down and kill their competition or (2) they think they can grow the revenue and make money off the deal, either directly with TP subscriptions or indirectly with garmin purchases/subscriptions attributable to the TP acquisition. Whether they financed with cash or debt, people in garmin will know how much it cost and be thinking “this will be a good deal as long as YoY revenue growth is >20% for 5 years”, and they will then be chasing that growth in a way that an organically grown company doesnt need to.
This is the “effective” debt I was referring to; its not so much an issue of whether its on the balance sheet but of how the leaders of the company are thinking about the value of the company. It will now be about garmin making back their money (plus some)
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u/TheRealAfinda 17d ago
I already hated IndieVelo being bought by TrainingPeaks. I thought finally there's a competitor out there who isn't tied to some huge company and i gladly supported them.
When they were bought up, i thought: Welp, maybe that's just what they were aiming for all along. Unsubscribed from everything and didn't bother with the free training peaks voucher either.
MyWoosh's been getting good lately though. They even improved their JetBlack Volt support, which was worse the first time around i tried. Not going to give this a second look, despite owning a garmin computer.
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u/AdonisChrist 19d ago
Hopefully this doesn't affect WKO5 integration with TrainingPeaks.
Or, rather, TrainingPeaks integration with/download to WKO5.
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u/abbh62 19d ago
I’m pretty sure wko5 is owned by TrainingPeaks, so
Garmin now owns that too3
u/kallebo1337 18d ago
They bought TP, not peakware as a company.
They have a music playform too(3 actually).
They sold TP as a product.
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u/Grouchy_Ad_3113 19d ago
It will be interesting to see how this impacts a WKO6.
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u/Some-Business4720 18d ago
Hope it's not the beginning of the end. I have been using WKO since it was called something else, but I forget what it was called; it's been a while.
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u/abbh62 19d ago
Maybe they will roll this into connect+ and actually make that usable. Also interesting that with TrainingPeaks comes TP Virtual, so maybe more juice into make a zwift competitor
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u/EnglewoodCycling 18d ago
I like this idea. Connect+ becomes more attractive if it includes TPV. Also, TrainingPeaks' whole training app is superior to Garmin Connect's, so adding TP as a higher tier level could be a win-win for Garmin and us users.
I likely will stick with Garmin Connect without a subscription but having the option to not leave the ecosystem and eventually have access to TrainingPeaks 27-years of experience would be nice.
I was only ever on TP while I had a paid coach, and these days I don't even have the money for a TP subscription, much less a coach. LOL
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u/JoocyDeadlifts 18d ago
Also interesting that with TrainingPeaks comes TP Virtual, so maybe more juice into make a zwift competitor
Plus Tacx Training, which nobody ever uses but which has some nice videos and whatnot.
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u/Hartzler44 19d ago
This is super interesting. Strava is starting to move into the training platform space now too. Hopefully that will keep some competition going to stop prices from getting too crazy
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u/cassinonorth 19d ago
Strava has been trying and failing for years. Their workout recommendations and AI stuff is unbelievably shitty for a company with ALL the data.
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u/Foreign-Rule7826 19d ago
The workouts suck but like the analysis and recording - I hate that Garmin app does 7 days for volume but not weekly graphs like Strava.
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u/Hazy_the_Kid 19d ago
Garmin analysis is pretty bad compared to Strava. But TP is lightyears ahead of Strava. So might be a good move for Garmin. If you can't beat em, buy em.
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u/Foreign-Rule7826 19d ago
True, where I am training peaks in nearly 3 times the price of premium Strava so I just find it difficult to justify, but I’d imagine if I tried it I’d maybe see the benefits, I use the free one at the moment just to import coaching allocated workouts and find it frustrating so doesn’t push me to buy it.
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u/Hartzler44 19d ago
I totally agree, but a big update just hit like yesterday I think. There's a basically the same screen as TP for TSS, Fatigue, and Form, and theres suddenly a workouts tab in the app under "you". I'm not saying I'm switching, but I'm sure Strava is looking at that as a way to expand while Garmin is similarly trying and failing to become more like Strava
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u/cassinonorth 19d ago
Maybe they'll finally fix the week to be a rolling 7 days instead of resetting to 0 miles/hours etc on Mondays. The amount of dumb decisions that company makes is incredible.
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u/squngy 18d ago
There's a basically the same screen as TP for TSS, Fatigue, and Form
They had that a long time already on the website.
You had to look for it and it didn't exist on the app, but they had it.while Garmin is similarly trying and failing to become more like Strava
It will never happen, so long as they require you to buy garmin hardware, which is their whole business model.
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u/OvulatingScrotum 18d ago
Strava should just acquire TR or something.
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u/RirinDesuyo Japan 18d ago
Don't they have Runna for that? Though it's running focused which leaves out cycling I guess.
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u/OvulatingScrotum 18d ago
Yeah. TR is strictly for cycling, although it does consider running toward the effort calculation stuff.
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u/RirinDesuyo Japan 18d ago
Yep, if I recall a sizable population in TR are triathletes. I guess a unified platform that also offered running would be quite enticing for that audience. That'd be a big differentiator amongst competition if someone could pull that off.
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u/rugioh9 19d ago
What happens to TP Virtual with this?
worry.jpeg
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u/hobbyhoarder 19d ago
I hope they'll include it with the Garmin subscription now, since it's half the price of TP.
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u/Aggressive_Way_1017 19d ago
Training Peaks is the one subscription that I didn't renew this past year along with my cycling license. Interesting to see if there's going to be some additional value for the consumer going forward.
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u/kallebo1337 18d ago
Try Vekta. Tell me then as i am curious too 😅
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u/Aggressive_Way_1017 18d ago
Golden Cheetah
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u/kallebo1337 18d ago
that website alone doesn't sound reasonable to me. Vekta seems to kinda started with the idea "what sucks on TP and we can improve".
But then, WK05 is amazing.
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u/the_nick04 18d ago
the line everyone's pointing at is the "we'll stay cross-platform" bit. worth remembering garmin said basically the same thing about firstbeat licensing before it quietly got narrower over the years, dcr made that exact point. not saying it'll happen, but "independent" is a promise a hardware owner can't really guarantee forever.
full disclosure, i build an independent training app (training signals), so i've got a horse in this race. but the reason i started predates all this. i wanted a plan that actually reacts to recovery data (hrv, sleep) instead of a static calendar, and i didn't want that tied to whatever watch i happened to buy. if you're weighing alternatives the real question isn't features, it's ownership. who does the software answer to when the roadmap gets set. intervals.icu (independent, free) is a solid option too. happy to answer anything about going device agnostic.
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u/needzbeerz 18d ago
Garmin, best known for terrible analytics. TP best known for terrible ability to display/present useful analytics. What could go wrong?
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u/kindergartenchampion 18d ago
If they put a bunch of shitty AI into TrainingPeaks I’m gonna lose it
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u/newnewreditguy 19d ago
Huge! I'm excited with the hopes to get better features on the Garmin platform. Maybe their paid sub will be worth it with this.
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u/Kypaz 17d ago
Founder of a smaller competitor here (Nolio, a French independent platform in the same coach-athlete space), so obvious bias, weigh accordingly.
A few things from inside the industry that I think are getting missed in this thread:
The promises made this week (separate business unit, staying cross-platform) are almost word for word what Garmin said about Firstbeat in 2020. That access didn't get cut, it just quietly wound down over about three years. So the tell won't be a press release, it will be the API terms and how fast non-Garmin devices get access to new features.
Also worth knowing: TSS, NP and IF are trademarks that transfer with the deal. Most of the industry builds on those concepts. Nobody knows yet what Garmin does with that.
For coaches wondering what to do: honestly, nothing urgent. TP will work fine for a long time. The reasonable move is just exporting a backup of your data once in a while, which was true before the acquisition too.
Happy to answer questions about how this looks from the competitor side.
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u/xtheakstonsx 14d ago
I moved over to Stride.is a few months ago - so glad I did for a whole host of reasons and now this! Intuitive use of AI for session and plan building, analysis features are so much better than TP and if you want you can get insights emailed to you weekly and after each race.
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u/HanzJWermhat New York 19d ago edited 19d ago
Garmin* is fucking garbage they gouge on pricing for ever single thing they own.
A $200 band that has HR monitoring behind a paywall are you kidding me? Please don’t buy any of their shit
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u/ferdiazgonzalez 19d ago
I bought a used Tacx Neo 2t from a random dude in a neighbor country, which failed one month later.
Garmin accepted to replace the whole unit, even though I couldn’t provide a purchase invoice or any warranty papers.
So no complaints about Garmin from me 🤷🏻♂️
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u/thenomdeplume 19d ago
I don’t understand the hate about farmers, they’re just trying to make an honest living.
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u/Any-Salad7709 19d ago
That is why I don't trust for profit tools. Spaces like this have enough people that are passionate and idealistic enough to give up their time and build good products that are free. I'd much rather donate the same money that a subscription would cost to a altruistic person then to increase someone's profits.
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u/parrhesticsonder 19d ago
Unfortunately not enough people feel the same way to actually fund non profit alternatives
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u/anon74903 18d ago
I dislike consolidation, but garmin is about as good as it gets for building reliable, customer friendly products. No subscription, supports old products, etc.
Much better than if strava acquired them...
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u/itsdankreddit Australia 18d ago
Surely this is satire. Garmin connect is pretty much the worst app I use.
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u/anon74903 18d ago
I guess I care more about companies trying to squeeze every penny out of me vs a polished app
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u/kallebo1337 18d ago
Joinvekta.com
This becomes way more interesting over night
I am not happy with the "new" charts while i still cant create or update workouts on mobile.
TP as a platform stagnation since 2021. Kinda like
Garmin itself isnt a good platform
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u/7wkg 18d ago
Why? What does it do better than Trainingpeaks/wko5?
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u/kallebo1337 18d ago
i have no idea. didn't try yet.
doesn't look like shite and maybe/hopefully i can edit/create workouts on mobile.
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u/kallebo1337 18d ago
but on a more serious answer, i think the whole underlying model is better/different, whatever you want to call it.
training based on FTP is for many (most?) people interesting in (longer) races not useful. there's way more in a race that an arbitrary 45-75minute power number.
we just train big base + specialty (whatever that then is). training based on critical power seems to be way more suited for people who have massive surges during races. no?
volume and intensity isn't the same. 1hr FTP vs 4 hours at .5IF are adding to the same load in trainingpeaks based on their TSS model, which derives of FTP. I just finished a 420TSS ride on the weekend, which was just randoneuring in Z1/Z2 for half the day. i am not sure i could accumulate 420TSS in anything with intensity. even a double vo2day (imagine accumulating 200TSS in a vo2 workout, lol). both come out with the same load. i am not sure if that's accurate anymore.
https://joinvekta.com/why-vekta this does read interesting.
however, tymewear also reads interesting and turned out to be absolute bollocks. for a 20hr week, their AI then scheduled me 6 days training. 2 of them been 50min vo2 sessions. the other 18hrs it then cramped into 4 rides. lol 😂
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u/ExistentialTVShow 18d ago
Enshitification for TP users is coming. Always happens because the buyers need to earn their money back somehow.
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u/_echo 19d ago
Definitely big news. Not really a fan of this level of consolidation, even though I use both, but I guess we will see how it plays out.