I first came across Indoor Cycling in 1997 when I went to Winterthur, SUI, to cover the world championships.

As well as Artistic Cycling, individual and pairs, they also featured Cycleball:



The cycleball final was held at peak viewing time in Europe, such was the interest.

At the time, more Germans held competition licences for indoor cycling than for road racing and MTB.

There was a sole US competitor there who had USA Cycling permission, but had to pay his own way ... I suspect it wouldn't be much different now.