The race has reached the rest day and here are the sums of prize money per team so far in the race. Obviously the big prizes await in Paris. Like putting a price on anything, it can give salient information but it’s also not everything. We can see who is having a good race and who is not and the table above does just tally with the presence of each team in the race.
The money gained comes from many sources, a prize for stage wins and placings, a daily sum for wearing a leaders jersey right, mountains points and even being placed in the intermediate sprint. You can download the full breakdown for each each, see pages 18-54 (PDF).
In additions teams finishing with at least seven riders get an extra bonus in Paris to reward their success but also to cover the extra costs of running a larger support team. But Euskaltel-Euskadi, Lampre-ISD, Garmin-Sharp, Vacansoleil-DCM, Rabobank and Movistar will forfeit this as they are all on six riders or less and several teams will be sending soigneurs, mechanics and others home ahead of the Pyrenees and the journey to Paris.
If Peter Sagan was a team, he’d be third in the rankings.
I know the prize money is shared among the team, but is it only shared among the nine riders entered in the Tour, or do teammates not riding get a share as well? Does the directeur sportif get a cut as well?
Here is SKY’s policy with prize money: http://cyclingtipscontent.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/cav-wigginsBikes.jpg
I guess it’s up to the team.
Yes, the teams have internal policy. A share goes to riders and to the staff too. Often if you finish the race you get a larger bonus/share of the pot, it can be why some teams see riders soldier on. For a race like the Tour there might be special arrangements otherwise prizes are often added up and paid out at the end of the year.
Despite all their hard effort, they are really only riding for peanuts.
Peanuts maybe for some.
I make the same efforts, but I don’t get a dime. 🙂 (Obviously for the same effort I’m much slower)
Until they start selling tickets to stand on the side of the road, that’s all the prize money they’ll be riding for. Not that I want to see that happening…
The real money is in TV rights. Given the route cannot be closed off, even closing off sections for the Tour of Flanders for “VIP” beer tents doesn’t bring that much.
Exactly. That is why broadcasters / media of any sport always have the best seats in the house.
But keep in mind, this is just prize money, not their team salaries. If they do well in the Tour, they’ll command a higher salary next year, as well as possible endorsements. Also, the biggest prize payouts are yet to come (the ones for finishing the Tour).
Man, even if they sold $5 dollar tickets (assuming the same amount of people showed up), wow. You could make it rain something serious.
That would make the sport a lot less accessible to the crowds and they surely would not like it, cycling is a sport for the people in small towns, villages etc. They would not want to pay to see 20 sec of peloton racing by 🙂
Oh I completely agree. But with capitalistic greed, hell even $1. You could pull a Scrooge McDuck with all that loot.
However, as I have seen with other mass events, when the powers that be start charging money, it does keep some of the riff raff out. Given the flaregate and tackgate, maybe less riff raff would be a good thing.
But yeah, charging money would not only be impossible, but highly destructive to the sport.
On a side note…
Inrng,
I am curious to know what do you thing of the article in Le Monde that you pointed in your twitter account?
Antoine Vayer is accusing a lot of people of doping!
He presents numbers without explaining they are extrapolated from estimations and come with a significant margin of error. It’s good work but not always accurate, some of his numbers are off – some too high… some too low! – beware of someone who calls themselves a scientist when they don’t qualify the data used (although perhaps the editors delete this nuance?).
I’d be shot down in flames if I made the same claims with such rough data.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but this is the Team prize money, and does not go to actual riders, correct? In other words, it is up to the Team and team management how this get distributed (such as to the non-TdF riders, support staff etc…).
Sky might be the leading team in terms of position & money earned but their condescending attitude in today’s stage in literally pointing to others to stop chasing a half-formed breakaway seemed to be arrogant & self-serving. Sure they’d like to control the peloton for obvious reasons but they have no right to coerce other riders from their individual objectives. Nicki Sörensen was his own man & for what its worth, came away not the winner but at least with some glory & extra money for his team rather than meekly following the half pace Sky led peloton over the finish line.
They say money talks & the prize money table above indicates Sky is talking the loudest but it doesn’t necessarily mean they have to be meekly listened to. Hopefully teams like BMC, LiquiGas & Lotto start raising their voices in the next few mountain stages.
To play devil’s advocate, none of the riders I follow on twitter thought it was a bad move. To be honest, what’s the difference between EBH telling everyone to chill the eff out and everyone just looking at each other and deciding to let a certain break go? From what I read today, and this was from multiple teams, everyone thought things were gonna be intense the first 30 K, but when things were still intense after 50 K, everyone started to freak out.
And obviously none of the other teams cared, because they would have been doing the chasing. Sky has no reason to reel in a break if the best placed rider in the group is almost an hour down.
You’re definitely right BoboFett3 that it had to end, but deep down I wanted to see at least one day where we weren’t subjected to the formulaic cat & mouse chase down or the peloton just sitting up, chilling & enjoying the scenery.
I think I’m just a bit frustrated & left cold by the Sky team & its methodical, cold blooded superiority. That doesn’t mean they don’t deserve to win because they have easily been the best team given the nature of the course. Its just that the anarchy that gripped the peloton was exciting to watch & seemed beyond Sky’s control & its race plan. Ironically for all of Sky’s methodical, scientific approach it came down to some good old fashion sign language to bring the race under control.
Yeah, it definitely did not make for the most exciting of races. My problem with today though did not necessarily have to do with Sky shutting stuff down, but no one chasing the break back. Sky’s job is to defend Wiggo’s position, and to do that they need to conserve as much energy as possible, and shutting things down definitely did that. My big problem was with the sprinters’ team, Liquigas (Sagan), Lotto (Greipel), Sky (Cav), and Green Edge (Mattew Harley). As said before, I think Sky’s responsibility is to take care of Brad. As for Leaky Gas and Lotto, yeah they have sprinters, but they also have The Shark and VDB respectively. I think the responsibility fell to Green Edge, but obviously they didn’t do anything. It is kind of annoying to have a team come in and say we’re here for stage wins, but then do nothing to get them. It makes me yearn for the days of HTC.
Also, I tend to overlook EBH and Bernie’s actions when I saw tweets by Jens and I think Hansen talking about how hard the day was. Jens said “I just realised today that beyond pain there is a whole new universe of more pain…. ” When Jens said that, you know things were nuts out there.
Sure I read an article yesterday, where Sky said they weren’t willing to do all the work, they might throw a couple of people into the mix if the sprinters teams did (I’m guessing Lotto and Green-Edge) but they didn’t want to, so Sky didn’t (seems to me they didn’t need to).
A stage like today craved for the sprinters teams to step up, but they didn’t, no need for Sky to do all the work when they didn’t need to. You would have thought that Green-Edge are desperate for that win, the other teams with the main sprinters (Liquigas, Lotto, Sky) all have stage wins.
I am disappointed period in liquigas and BMC they need to step it up and stop allowing Skyteam to set the pace, what the heck why dont they just leave the race and give the darn thing to sky and wiggins. I expected more yesterday..much much more
Hey folks, this is just prize money. If for example Jenson Button wins a race for his team he would not get nessacerraly any of the winnings, this will be put back into the kitty to fund the rest of the season. As there are other Tours in progress along side the TDF this also needs to be funded and wages to be paid. Sponsorship is crucial for teams to keep all staff paid plus travel and board during races plus training camps in off season money from these events alone is not enough as it is expensive running a team with the wages top riders get plus as I have already said the huge over heads.
This ties in with something I was thinking about last week. Basically wondering which (if any) teams actually “make” a profit during the Tour. I’m sure it’s hard to aggregate as salaries (riders, staff, etc) are annual and operating expenses, etc, but I wonder if half? or even a quarter of the team are in the black at the end of July. Any thoughts? Or are these just my own idle ones?
I think the running costs for a team are covered by sponsorship deals, like equipment, clothing, cars. and the majority of wages and salaries for riders and staff.
Yes, nobody is riding this to earn money to recover expenses. Teams do get a pot of money if they make it to Paris to cover expenses as well. But Movistar’s prize pot won’t cover their phone bill.
Inrng – is the list printed somewhere, or have you collated these figures yourself? I’ve been keeping my own spreadsheet of the prize money, breaking down into individual, team and nationality. Not huge amounts of money in the grand scheme of things, but the lists are interesting all the same.
There is a link in the text above..
Thanks, I wasn’t paying attention. Wish I had have known about these documents, would have saved me some effort. Oh well… Is there a similar resource for Giro and Vuelta prize money?
Regarding prize money:
– The money gets wired to the teams, but is paid out to riders actually riding. For example, when LL Sanchez won the stage for Rabobank on Sunday, the team was only made up of 4 riders and only they will profit. Not the riders that have left the race earlier. Races’ prize money really only is a bonus, which the riders even have to wait for a long time in general. The money is paid out by the race organizer first to the national union of the organization, subsequently transferred to the national union of the receiving team and finally to the team itself. The unions (especially the French in my experience) try to sit on the money as long as possible, as they can allocate it to a savings account and “earn” interest. Prize money can take up to a year to arrive at the rider…
– Furthermore, the team pay their personnel and other expenses out of sponsorship money and start money. Organizers want attractive riders in their races, so the often pay a bonus if for instance Omega Pharma-Quickstep brings Boonen and this bonus is called start money.
– Finally non-riding personnel gets a cut of the prize money as well. In general there will be a fixed percentage (say 10%) of the prize money that is awarded top personnel.
Regarding race tactics:
– Yesterday was a very predictable stage. Sky ‘s objective was to let a small group of non-threathening riders go and then see whether they themselves could chase easily or whether a sprint team would chase hard. Sky definitely didn’t want to let too big a group to go up the road, as it’s hard to see who is in it and by the time you realize some dangerous rider is in there, the lead may be too big and the group so big that they can hold off a chasing Sky. That small group didn’t get away in the first 50k and the Sky boys got tired controlling the race, so they tried to shut it down with EBH and Bernie. Nobody bothered listening to them, as so many teams are still chasing after stage wins. Nobody bothered that they tried either, though.
– Nobody bothered that Sorensen tried to go even after the truce was signed, as they figured it would be a chasse patat (fruitless chase) anyway. Nice to see the brilliant move by Saxo/Tinkoff after that, only surprise yesterday imho.
– Finally, how can you be disappointed that Orica-GreenEdge didn’t chase yesterday? Goss is in physical problems and they clearly set out to be in the break of the day instead of going for a bunch sprint. O/G riders were trying to make the break fiercely but missed out and then decided they had done all they could. Remember this is a stage race where they have to conserve energy to survive the upcoming mountain stages to even get to Paris and certainly not a one day race where you can race all out as it doesn’t matter whether the tank is still empty the following day.
Informative points all round, thanks.
Note the move by Saxo was done by Omega – Quickstep the other day when Pineau was trying to get across.
The above figures are worrying, as it seems that the money is very little.. How do teams get by? If only one rider needs 3m salary, how does a team make that money?
Note the big money awaits in Paris. More on the prizes can be found at http://inrng.com/tour/#Prizes
The real prize is getting the jersey and its corporate logos on TV.
Don’t think it’s the money behind Cavendish not having spoken to Sean Yates for two weeks now, but then again it might be… How much longer before they need to deal with the Froome and Cavendish disharmony? None of the English cycling journo’s have bothered to notice, let alone report on it. Wiggo was heard shouting at the hotel “well you’d better get Froome to play the game right. Fix it!”
I bet Paris can’t come soon enough for Sky management.
@inrng that is a nice story for a future blog…
So that’s why theres been a couple of separate stories in the last few days where Wiggo has been seen to be praising Cav and Froome’s work…
Well, technically, if Peter Sagan was a team he would be 2nd in the rankings, since Liquigas would stop being up there without him.
In fairness, what support have Liquigas offered Sagan? I’ve seen Daniel Oss lead him out a few times, but he’s seemed to fend for himself much of the time. To great effect.
I’m just saying that if Peter Sagan constituted a team in itself, Liquigas would be behind Euskaltel. The man is a monster.
Well aparently Sagan is going to be doing even better if he finishes following a bet with his boss… Vroom Vroom
Typical NFL player makes more per game…
Someone’s pocketing lots of cash for themselves….
I know it’s a bit of a stretch but I’ve been waiting for a relevant post to ask this question. Presumably the prize money is actually awarded/paid to the team management company of the riders which then distributes the money as it sees fit (as specified in the contracts it has with its riders). Assuming that’s true, if USADA is successful in forcing Armstrong to pay back the money he won, how much does he pay back and who gets the money. I.e., if the prize was $1million for winning but he only got $250k and the other $750 went to the team, other riders, support staff, etc. does he pay back the $250k or the $1million? Presumably trying to clawback the money from the soigneurs from 10 years ago would be problematic. It would also be difficult to redistribute the money to the teams that should have won. But over a period of seven+ years there are some folks who are out hundreds of thousands of dollars (and teams out millions) that they would have won if they were bumped up a placing every year Lance won.
Did Alberto and/or Riis Cycling pay back the money from their wins and did it go to the Schlecks/Scarponi (and all the other teams that just got bumped up a placing)? If the teams got the money did Leopard and Lampre pay their riders and soigneurs?
I wouldn’t know how they would claw back the money and re-allocate it. In fact, it is not uncommon for grand tour winners to not take their share of the prize money at all. Let’s assume Sky takes a grand total of 800.000 euro home with the 8 riders remaining in the TdF. When the money finally arrives, taxes have been deducted and also 2% that goed to the anti-doping agencies, I think they lose some 7% there. Then the personnel gets their share, another 10% or so. The 7 support riders will then divide some 670.000 euro amongst themselves, together with some bonus from the team for winning the tour probably. To make things easy, let’s say each of them walks away with 100k in euros. Don’t think Wiggo is left out in the cold though, his salary for next year will get a bump much higher than 100k…
I recently read an article that LA never got his part of the TdF prize money either, but instead he had some insurance company pay him around 1M USD for each of his wins. Don’t remember the precise (con)text though… He would probably have a harder time trying to avoid paying back that money than trying to avoid pating back prize money to the UCI.
Inner Ring, I’d be interested to see a post on riders’ salaries (differences between riders’ packages, and what a rider needs to do to get a better contract), and also a comparative post on how €€ rewards in cycling compare with other world-class sports. For example, its said that parents of boys in France who have sporting talents have generally stopped encouraging their kids to become cyclists and turn them instead to football or tennis, where the potential rewards of success are much higher €€ while the risks, training and intensity required to succeed is far less than in cycling.
Convicts of the road.
Pathetic old school managment of the sport.