I am still playing PCM2022 and I have very weird experiences with promotion/degradation:
With Team BEAT Cycling Club I am now in 2025 in the Continental Pro Series, playing at Extreme level.
My almost final results in season 2025 as per October 2025 come down to:
Individual Continental ranking of BEAT riders: 1. Stan van Tricht, 7. Loe van Belle
Teams Continental: 1. BEAT 6334 points, 2. Drone Hopper Androni 3791 points etc.
Teams World Tour: place 10: BEAT
In other words the team is ready for promotion, even more so than in season 2024.
However, in the team ranking for 2026 BEAT is at place 35 and will thus even relegate to Continental!! In the transfer period I lost Van Belle who demanded a huge salary. And no sponsor approached us with a much higher budget than BEAT can offer.
Overall this is of course quite ridiculous.
My question:
Was the promotion/relegation system changed/improved in the 2023 and 2024 versions of the game?
Not sure how it works on the newer versions of PCM, but promotion/relegation used to rely on the skill/average of the riders on your team and not the ranking/points scored. I can't remember if the game takes all riders into consideration or if it's just top 3/top 5 though.
It's at least the Top 5 riders, possibly even a little bit more than that.
The system remains in place in the newer editions, however if you manage to at least stay at Pro Conti level, being in the top two of all PCT teams in terms of points will guarantee you any WT wildcards you apply for, so you can functionally be a WT team even if your team strength is only barely keeping you in PCT.
I hope my example very clearly shows that this system is grossly defective.
cio93 you are right, this season we got wildcards for just about all WT races so functionally we were a WT team and I could kind of live with this.
But after this season after again having been overwhelmingly the strongest team in the ProSeries and then being "rewarded" with relegation is completely ridiculous.
I am very surprised that they havent improved the system.
There is still an indirect link between results and team division: Good results will improve sponsor satisfaction. More satisfaction would lead to more budget. And more budget will allow high wages for talented riders. Therefore good results will be always mandatory to keep a good team although the ranking is not taken into consideration for promotion/relegation.
