Cycling’s innovative Hammer Series could be heading to Britain in the future as it looks to expand its global reach.

The series, with an emphasis on competition between teams rather than individuals, is effectively cycling’s equivalent of Twenty20 cricket, packing the action into three short races — a climb, a sprint and a chase — to crown an overall winner over the course of a weekend.

It was devised by Velon, a company which is jointly owned by 10 WorldTour cycling teams.

Following a successful debut in Limburg, Belgium last year, there will be three race weekends in 2018 and an announcement on the third venue this week will see the series go well outside the European heartlands of cycling and move into Asia.

Velon’s chief executive Graham Bartlett said the goal is to expand to up to 10 race weekends a season, with a possible British event on their radar.

“It would be a fantastic experience to have one of the races in Britain,” Bartlett said. “We’ve had discussions and we would love to bring it here.”

Last June a cumulative audience which Velon say totalled 3.2 million watched Team Sky win the first title in Limburg.

This year, the series will head to Stavanger, Norway in the last weekend of May before returning to Limburg a week later. The location of the third event will be announced tomorrow.

The Hammer Series is one of a number of moves Velon has made to appeal to new fans, the most noticeable being the live data which has become a big part of the broadcasts of most of the top races.

All of the 10 teams who are shareholders in Velon, plus a growing number of partners, share live data on riders’ performance to help put fans “in the arena.”

“We believe Velon is the only company in the world showing live performance data of the athletes in action,” Bartlett said.

“If you watched Tirreno-Adriatico, you could see Chris Froome’s power data, his heart rate, his cadence and you can see how he performs.

“These guys are amazing athletes and we can show you just how amazing the athletes are.”

For now, Velon has not made any moves to expand into women’s cycling, despite the fact a number of its shareholders field their own women’s teams.

Bartlett said the door is open but the group will only expand into women’s cycling once the resources are there to do it properly.

“If you’re going to do it, you’ve got to do it right,” he said. “It has to be just as good as the men’s event. Otherwise why are you doing it? It will require investment. Many of our partners want us to do it but we have got to be able to do it in the right way or it would not be a good thing to do.

“There have been discussions but it is still early days.”