With the new year underway, there are a lot of questions about the state of CrossFit and the direction of the sport.
- Last year closed out with some surprising news for athletes and fans, including the announcement of a new season structure and rumors of a new Games location.
Moving into 2025, there are a host of burning questions we want to answer — here are seven of them.
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Where Will the 2025 CrossFit Games Be Located?
The first year of the CrossFit Games in Fort Worth, TX, went worse than anyone could have expected.
- If CrossFit were to return to the Dickies Arena next year, it would likely remind everyone of Lazar Ðukić’s untimely death. To avoid this, it makes sense for CrossFit to move the Games to a different location in 2025.
While the timeline is tight to relocate an event the size of the Games, some familiar venues like Madison, WI, or Carson, CA, could make things easier.
- With the smaller field sizes already announced for 2025, CrossFit could go back to The Ranch in Aromas, CA, and try to bring back the nostalgia of the good old days.
Of course, we’ve also heard the rumors about Albany, NY. We’ll wait for the official announcement before booking our tickets.
Can CrossFit Fix Its Video Review System?
In 2025, CrossFit will run virtual in-affiliate (read: online) Semifinals to determine who qualifies for the CrossFit Games.
As part of last month’s announcement outlining the season structure, the Games team has added the requirement that Semifinal judges have the CrossFit L1, the 2025 Judges Course, and a new Advanced Judging course.
Having well-trained judges is a good thing.
- It doesn’t, however, remove the requirement to do proper video review to award spots to the CrossFit Games.
In 2024, we saw several athlete’s seasons end after an inconsistent video review during Quarterfinals.
CrossFit made the stakes for video review higher in 2025. Can they rise and meet the challenge?
Will More Elite Athletes Gravitate Toward HYROX?
So far this offseason, CrossFit Games athlete Nick Mathew competed in a HYROX event in Chicago. Tia-Clair Toomey-Orr, Jay Crouch, Maddie Sturt, and James Newbury did one in Melbourne, and Jayson Hopper shared he’ll be at March’s HYROX event in Washington, D.C.
- While HYROX is growing, its prize money is not comparable to CrossFit at this point.
The winners of the HYROX World Championship receive $25,000, which is roughly equivalent to finishing 10th at the CrossFit Games in years past.
Whether it’s just for fun, to supplement their training, to build their fan base, or to get accustomed to a growing sport, adding more HYROX events to their calendar might be beneficial for elite CrossFit athletes.
- While the money isn’t there in HYROX yet, it is another way for athletes to showcase their sponsors.
What Role Will the PFAA Play in the Sport?
The sport of CrossFit is at a crossroads. Support for the PFAA has never been stronger after the loss of Ðukić, but CrossFit pushed the association’s concerns to the side in their announcement of the 2025 season and the creation of their new Athlete and Safety Councils.
With the new season structure, CrossFit’s influence on the sport could also be the lowest it’s ever been.
- CrossFit will only run one in-person event in 2025: the CrossFit Games.
While it appears CrossFit HQ doesn’t want to collaborate with the PFAA, there is plenty of room for the PFAA to help shape the sport’s future.
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- The qualifying events will be independent of CrossFit. The same goes for offseason staples like TYR Wodapalooza, the Rogue Invitational, and the Dubai Fitness Championship, among others.
If the PFAA develops a relationship with the other competition organizers, it can still influence the direction of their support, even if CrossFit isn’t interested in playing nice.
Will There Be a Boycott of the 2025 CrossFit Games Season?
The handling of Ðukić’s death and the investigation afterward has left a portion of the population angry, frustrated, and disappointed at CrossFit’s leadership.
Could 2025 be the year some of the sport’s best skip the Games season and focus on other competitions?
- Rather than spending February through August focused on the Games, athletes could spend May through January focused on Rogue, Dubai, TYR Wodapalooza, the World Fitness Tour, and the growing number of high-level regional events.
Athletes won’t be the only ones looking to spend their time and money elsewhere in 2025.
Companies playing the delicate PR game may not want to tie themselves to a brand that can create negative publicity or chaos.
There will also be fans who won’t attend the Games this year.
- Some won’t attend due to CrossFit’s handling of Ðukić’s death. As tickets to the Games sold out last year, it might not be a concern for CrossFit HQ, but this could also easily translate to a smaller viewership online.
The “canary in the coal mine” for CrossFit HQ will likely be Open registration. The 2023 and 2024 Open registration totals recovered to be in the ballpark of the pre-2020 Open.
- Worth remembering: The 2020 Open saw registrations decrease drastically from 2019 as the Open was moved from February/March to September/October. While it was for the 2020 season, the 2020 Open was actually held in 2019, making it the second Open that year.
If Open registrations drop significantly from 2024, it’ll be hard for CrossFit HQ to create momentum for the rest of the season, including the newly created Community Cup and Pairs competitions.
How Will the World Fitness Project Impact the Competitive Landscape?
We got a chance to sit down with Will Moorad and Jackson and Isabella Terry, the founders of the World Fitness Project, and, as a part of that, the World Fitness Tour.
Among other things, we learned that there will be two Tour Events (one in the United States and one in Europe) and a World Fitness Finals. We also learned about the pro-card system, the qualification pathways, and the community and age group divisions.
There’s still a lot to learn about the World Fitness Tour, but depending on the details, it could provide an alternative to the CrossFit Games season for some athletes.
How Will the In-Person Qualifying Events for the CrossFit Games Work?
In the outline for the 2025 season, CrossFit announced that there will be in-person competitions that will award Games tickets to the winners. In an Affiliate Townhall, Dave Castro shared that the competitions will be independent of and receive no support from CrossFit.
Since that time, we’ve learned more about the schedule and the events. Here’s a quick breakdown of what has been officially announced:
- Mayhem Classic – Cookeville, TN, April 5-6: 2 men/2 women qualify
- Wodland Fest – Málaga, Spain, April 25-27: 2 men/2 women qualify
- French Throwdown – Montpellier, France, May 9-11: 2 men/2 women qualify
- Rebel Renegade Games – Vanderbijlpark, South Africa, May 29-June 1: 1 man/1 woman qualify
- Far East Throwdown – Busan, Republic of Korea, May 30-June 1: 1 man/1 woman qualify
- Syndicate Crown – Knoxville, TN, May 30-June 1: 2 men/2 women qualify
- Torian Pro – Brisbane, Australia, May 30-June 1: 2 men/2 women qualify
- The Fittest Experience – Oklahoma City, OK, May TBA: 2 men/2 women qualify
- Cope Sur – Brazil, Date TBA: 2 men/2 women qualify
With the independence from CrossFit, organizers will need to run a profitable competition. To have a profitable competition, you need a community event.
Only The French Throwdown, Torian Pro, and Copa Sur had a community element in 2024.
- The French Throwdown has already announced it will be running May 9-11 and will maintain its community event that it had before becoming a Semifinal in 2024.
We also have a time crunch. Establishing a new competition or moving an existing one with 4-6 months’ notice is going to be a challenge.
Finding a venue, getting equipment, programming workouts, including a qualifier, and all the other tasks to running a competition is significant work in such a short period.
It’s also going to be a leap of faith for organizers to want to fill this role.
CrossFit churned through Semifinals in four years, with the Torian Pro being the only competition to last all four. Competition organizers will want to plan for a long-term, annual event. With CrossFit’s constant change, there’s no guarantee that we won’t be back to Regionals 3.0 in 2027, effectively wiping out competitions during this time frame.
While CrossFit has stated that in-person events will happen between April and June, there is still a chance that they could retroactively award Games tickets — and before you laugh, it’s happened before.
- During the first year of Sanctionals, CrossFit released its rulebook after Mat Fraser and Sam Briggs won the 2018 Dubai Fitness Championship, retroactively awarding them a Games ticket.
More CrossFit Stories
- 2024: A CrossFit Year in Photos
- World Fitness Project Launches “World Fitness Tour” for 2025
- 25% of Top 200 CrossFit Athletes Say ‘No’ to 2025 CrossFit Games Season in Recent Survey
Featured image: Carlos Fleury
