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Yeah, as I was reading you commentary, I was thinking about Zwift, and Zwift is legitimately fantastic. You're on the bike that you're going to ride outside anyway, so the hardware cost is just a Wahoo Kickr or similar (still expensive, but if you're the kind of person that cares about cycling wattage, you probably have some expendable money). The gamifying of the experience got me to train harder on a bike than I ever previously had and I showed up to spring group rides quite a lot stronger than I otherwise would have been.
In retrospect, I think this may have been a Peloton mistake - they probably missed out on the more performance-oriented fitness crowd to a significant extent, which may well be the people that most compulsively stick with the product.
Peloton was aimed at a different and probably much larger segment; it wouldn't make sense for them to pivot and go after the Zwift/TrainerRoad/TrainingPeaks/Sufferfest* set, because that group is smaller and they had no advantage there. Their mistake wasn't the segment they went after, it was in not realizing the obvious -- that the pandemic wasn't a windfall that was going to last.
*excuse me, Wahoo SYSTM. Also to be fair Zwift is aimed at a broader market than the others and likely has more overlap with Peloton.
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