Every July the best cyclists take part in the Tour de France. You can have a few exceptions but they often just prove the rule. But what would it take to change this, could you launch a rival race using big appearance fees and a large prize pot?
Golf has seen this with the Saudi-backed Liv venture paying some star golfers hundreds of millions of dollars to drop the PGA Tour for Liv. What would it take to dethrone the Tour de France?
How much would it take? We won’t keep referring to golf but look at the Liv offer and it’s not a priced to tempt players over in a “this could work for me” kind of way. Instead payments are so vast as to almost render calculation pointless.
Cycling can be cheaper than golf. Top riders earn millions rather than tens or hundreds of millions. The payments needed would have to be bigger than the value of winning the Tour. A Tour win isn’t easy to quantify but the salaries of the likes of Pogačar, Vingegaard and Evenepoel are based off it, the same for others like sprinters and others. Payments would have to compensate for this lost opportunity. For illustration, imagine start fees of €5 million Euros each and a prize pot of €50 million. Priced like this and riders tempted by a Tour win would be swayed, financially, by this offer. But it’s for example, go higher or lower if you want: the sum doesn’t really matter.
Forsaking the Tour de France could have another price if there’s a penalty. Golf – the last mention – has exclusivity where Liv and PGA are separated. Cycling sort of has this, races have to be on the UCI calendar and riders can’t take part in unapproved events. But this could be legally challenged, or the new event just put on the calendar for a tiny fee if the promoters feel they can work within the UCI rulebook.
What cycling lacks in massive earnings for those at the top it can make in other ways. It has a large peloton, 176 starters in a grand tour and these days almost all are on six figure salaries. You can’t just poach five GC stars, four sprinters, three climbers and two breakaway specialists. Our rival event would have to sway a large chunk of the pro peloton. That said teams could simply tell their employees what to do, while they bank the appearance fees for the stars on their books.
So far, so easy: spend millions and things bend your way. Only the problem with this proposal is that what works for a handful of riders may not suit their employers. Some estimates say 70% of a team sponsor’s visibility depends on the Tour, although this varies from team to team. Still the Tour counts for plenty, to paraphrase a line from a team DS in July “at the Tour our sponsors are not watching, they are here”. If a team’s top riders were persuaded to race in a desert in July then some sponsors could get cold feet if they’re funding teams only to find the star riders are skipping the marquee event.
One practicality would be that you can’t hold a race in the desert in summer. The tourism project of Al-Ula hosts the Saudi Tour race in January for good reason as daytime temperatures are typically 40°C in July. Take your pick among more clement latitudes for July but note a Saudi-backed project might have to take place elsewhere.
We can get into all kinds of details. A grand tour format with three weeks’ of racing or would one week suffice? The terrain surely needs mountains, perhaps taller ones in order to symbolise the challenging route? It’d have to be scenic too, a significant share of the TV audience for the Tour de France tunes in to watch the landscape roll by.
Even if all these questions on format were sorted who would watch this upstart race, would audiences follow? This is a very big question… but not one for today. In this post the premise is whether you can prise riders away from the Tour de France’s orbit. If so then you can see what develops over time. But the second order effect of actually having building an audience does matter, viewers are a revenue source and having an audience validates an event too.
It’s hard to know if audiences would follow, one the one hand people want to watch the best stars in the sport so poaching the top talent counts for plenty. Yet while plenty say they want to watch the best riders, how invested are they in the individuals themselves; how many core cycling fans are there compared to those who tune in more passively?
Conclusion
Appearance fees are not new in pro cycling but what would it take to buy the peloton to the point of forsaking the prime event on the calendar? They may no longer be at the prestige event but at some point financial compensation could sway them. You could pay star riders to ride a challenger race in July, it’d require vast sums in cycling terms but tiny for a sovereign wealth fund.
Teams as employers could be instrumental in swaying riders. But this is where a major problem comes as their sponsors crave the publicity available in July, it’s largely why they’re in the sport. That’s before all the other details like the format and whether enough people would watch, here there’s a lot to work out that won’t fit in a 1,000 word blog post.
However what if the Tour continued as usual in July? Instead the upstart event with vast start fees and prize pot was held in February or May and used this route not to displace the Tour in a direct contest but set up to gradually attract interest with the hope of rivalling it over time? Maybe.
Hmm… Are you implying with this post that there are some machinations somewhere behind the scenes, involving sufficiently deep pockets, for some kind of Tour-competitor / breakaway?
Any more details on that?
Interesting :).
Be very difficult though. The Tour has such a status. It’s more than just the riders, it’s the background, the history, the variety. Football teams can just join another league – they don’t need to build new stadiums, and even if they did, stadiums are hardly unique and the pitch is standardised!
I believe this explains the piece (behind a paywall though): https://escapecollective.com/one-cycling-is-coming-and-soon/
It’s partly with recent things to mind but also just a long term thought since One Cycling got off the ground, how much money would it take to try and supplant the Tour? This piece suggests you could buy riders and possibly do it through the teams but this way comes complication as the sponsors want the Tour. Therefore it’s probably best not to try and take on the Tour as past projects have explored.
It’s a subject for another day – or a doctorate thesis – but the Tour and some other races are very embedded in socio-cultural history, this is hard to dislodge or replicate and something money can’t buy, at least in the short to medium term.
Be careful for what you wish. The most likely place for such an event, where money is no object is in the Gulf States. This area may well have the money but it lacks history, scenery, tradition, sufficient suitable terrain and much, much more.
The Tour for me. Let decent riders survive on their multi million Euro salaries in Europe.
Part of the Tour’s charm is also the spectators at the roadside, and not just the hardcore supporters avidly reading IR but also the families, schoolkids and tourists there for the ambiance – maybe even something almost edible from Cochonou or a Krys keyring too. All the scenery – if it can be found – can’t compensate for that.
How many riders are on € multi-millions: forty at most? That leaves plenty of decent riders on far less.
What if the Gulf states bought up some of the European races? This way you have the terrain but also a chunk of the sport in a way you don’t get in other sports, eg buy Manchester City or Paris Paris Saint-Germain and you own a club; buy up a big chunk of the cycling calendar and you can end up owning the sport as a whole.
TBH, I would be watching the Tour and probably ignoring the dusty, burning hot Gulf extravaganza, even if the Tour was all pro-conti riders and all the “stars” were at the latter.
I suspect I’m not the only one. I suspect more than a few riders would also choose the heritage and historical significance of the Tour than the latter, even if the latter made them more money.
Would be nice to know what ONE cycling “is” or wants to be.
If it’s a small parallel series of races that does not interfere with WT and teams share revenue maybe it would be okay? Or would even that be the first step in the crumbling of UCI & ASO monopoly.
Indeed, the mystery is part of the interest. Launching could be interesting, then seeing whether it can stand up. We’ve had Velon launching with a fanfare but until now it’s been a loss-maker for the teams who accounts show negative equity when it was supposed to be a revenue generator… but perhaps this turns around soon?
I agree, it would be nice to know what it is, right now it reeks to me of financial doping. From the list of players behind the scheme (Visma, Red Bull, Lidl-Trek, etc) it looks a bit like the long-bruited European Super League in football (now moribund, but Madrid are still pushing for it) — so the big get bigger and the rich richer. ONE might have a bit more credibility if teams like Intermarche, Cofidis, DSM and Pro Teams were behind it as well. The calendar being as congested as it is, with new races (TDU, UAE, Guangxi, etc) tacked on early and late, there is no way a parallel series could be viable. The only real option would be to buy out races but that means coopting ASO and RCS who it seems aren’t interested. The massive Saudi cash infusion might make it sort of possible but would also be hard, given the strong regional allegiance for many races and a history of races growing up organically in the culture. Then again, Man City were the blue collar unglamourous underdogs once.
The only way to counter anything like this is for fans to totally boycott it.
I for one would never watch.
Will cycling finally get a budget cap this year?
More and more sports are doing it. F1 has done it, disproving the notion that it can’t be done internationally.
If not, the sport is only going to get more unequal.
And if the ‘star’ riders decided to opt out of the real races for $$$-backed nonsense, let them.
For the top riders to do this, they would have to know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. If you already have a few million Euros, why would you forsake the real races for a few million Euros more?
And yet, you know that many would – billionaires like Ronaldo and Messi play in inferior football leagues so that they can have even more zeros appearing on a computer screen.
For domestiques, it would make sense, both financially and because you’re unlikely to have any historical victories anyway.
Many who have millions want more. Live in Monaco and soon you want a larger apartment, a sports car. Own a private jet and someone on the apron opposite has a bigger one. And so on. Some people may not think like this but it’s safe to assume plenty will, you can see plenty of evidence all around.
Well Ronaldo and Messi are in the twilight of their careers and probably couldn’t cut it in a major league
There’s that as well; cycling has one or two ageing riders who are still making a very good living from smaller teams too 😉
From the outside some of the Saudi money doesn’t look very shrewd, big sums of money when they could probably spend less to buy the same. But maybe that’s part of the project for them, to look lavish?
Messi could have stayed with Barcelona, if he’d reduced his salary demands (due to the Spanish salary cap).
Ronaldo is apparently looking to leave Saudi Arabia, with top teams interested.
Oops, I see Messi went to PSG for two years between Barcelona and the US (I don’t follow football… and so probably shouldn’t use it as an example!)
How to disrupt the TdF as top dog? I don’t think it can be done.
You would have to join forces. And if Le Tour cannot be purchased outright, I would try the branding sponsorship route. Give the ASO enough money make it the:
“The Gulf Oil State Tour de France”
or similar. Every broadcaster, partner, etc would be required to use the fully branded name
If there were a serious legal challenge, it’s extremely likely that the UCI would lose. Where would this leave things? The UCI would probably have to assume a role similar to FIFA; they could still determine rules for the sport globally, but would no longer have any role in determining if a race is “official” or not. How this would affect the structure of the calendar as a whole, I don’t really know, but it certainly would open the door for a “One Cycling” (or something similar) to organize a race (or series of races). I personally doubt that this could ever compete with the Tour in terms of prestige, though.
That’s how many sports work – and I’m reminded of the European courts forcing the FiA to give up its organising/ promoting of their many motorsport series back in the late 90s – as it was a conflict of interest.
Governing bodies govern, make the rules, etc. Completely separate companies run the sport, promote, sell TV rights, organise the calendar….
This is what the UCI should do with the World Tour; ONE company runs it, decides everything, sells the rights, calendar slots. Race organisers then decide whether it’s for them to sign up to the World Tour…..
ASO don’t want to sign up??? Then their races will be ‘outside’ UCI, and no rider can ride in other UCI races, including Worlds, etc
And Formula 1 ended up being largely owned by one man, Bernie Ecclestone, so that went well.
In football, the big clubs dominate more and more.
Golf, as far as I can tell, seems a mess.
If you let money dominate sports – without the sorts of controls that you see in US sports with the draft system (the commies that they are) – a few big powerful groups will dominate.
That is what ONE Cycling want. This is a small number of people who want to make a lot of money. Nothing more. And they’ll link up with anyone to do this.
Golf is a good lesson of what can happen.
Football is different from cycling because there is a lot of money to be made from it. If you look at English football, club ownership is dominated by US companies. Cycling is not worth a lot of money (and never will be), so those firms aren’t interested. But if sportswashing is your aim, and your funds are pretty much limitless, you don’t care about profit.
Cycling is particularly vulnerable because, for example, in football, the power is with the clubs – and you can’t own all of those. However, in cycling, the power is largely with the race organisers. Let’s say Saudi decides to buy the RCS and Flanders Classics races: I’m pretty confident that there is an amount of money that would be accepted.
But with ONE Cycling, they might not even need to do that. All they need is to get the big teams with the big riders to do their races. I’m sure the TdF would survive this – it makes money – but would other historic races? And even if the races survive, are the best riders there? Or are they at the Saudi Tour?
Liv should (and probably will) die.
if the top riders decided not to race the TDF then it would diminish the spectacle for me, but not by much.
Much more important is the location, climbs I have been lucky enough to ride and the enormous history of the event.
I would tune in to watch second level riders race round France rather than the top stars race round the desert.
I agree with you. what i fear is that TV broadcast will follow top stars in the desert
It happens in football, doesn’t it? Look at the big money (as in Gulf money, Radcliffe money, etc.) in most of the big teams in the big leagues in Europe and the States. Also, the World Cup has been and will be held on the Arabian Peninsula and they were even able to change the date.
The only advantage I can see for cycling is the deep connection of the Tour de France as the greatest asset cycling has for a mass audience with French history and landscape, which you can’t change and replace with anything.
Another thought:
They managed to bring the Dakar Rally to South America. So, if ASO were bought by someone else who wanted to take the race somewhere else under the same label, I could see a Tour de France Desert Edition (or anywhere else) happening given there is enough altitude. And I can imagine that even that could be achieved by engineers building roads wherever the money allows, or charter flights to take the riders.
I think it’s a wonderful idea to allow uncontrolled capitalism (freedom) to sell as much of our sport and culture as possible to despotic, bigoted tyrants.
And then when humanity weans itself off its oil addiction and they have nothing, so will we.
Three weeks GT are the product of a century of european roads, newspapers, fans, public administration and political propaganda, but would that be the format for a new project that aims to maximize commercial revenues?
What about a sort of big-summer-indoor-happening with cyclocross and track events?
They could hire a bunch of CX stars (MVdP, WVA, Pidcock, Nys), with some other spring riders (Pedersen, Merlier, …) and some specialist (Iserbyt, Vanthourenhout, Sweeck, …).
Same for the track, mixing specialist and riders from road cycling.
That would be all within UCI, skip the extreme weather, and be $$$ attractive for riders not involved in the fight for maillot jaune, but would leave the Tour as a contest for GC riders and climbers.
(1)…in the recent weeks some voices from Uci (don’t remember if Lappartient?) were talking about points from other disciplines to be added to the Uci team ranking.
(2)…and MVdP came out yesterday with “TdF is not my favourite race”.
Any take over benefits to teams, riders and races will surely be limited, thanks to cycling’s complicated structure and culture. The gains will be marginal, and thinly spread. Just as they are anyway. Why reach for just that bit more from A N Oilstate, when there still riches (with fewer risks) to be had with the status quo – and the cache of being aligned with the history of the sport.
More interesting is the ongoing convergence of race ownership – ASO, RCS and Flanders Classics are already doing the work of the monopoliser. Could a big cash investment into one of these orgs be the real route to a take over. Could race fees and exclusivity clauses mean teams/riders commit to only riding Flanders owned races all year – the “Alula Flanders Classic World Series”, perhaps?
(I don’t think any of this is particularly likely, btw – but an interesting thought experiment. Let’s see what happens)
https://www.sportspro.com/news/saudi-arabia-surj-sports-investment-euroleague-cycling-danny-townsend-december-2024/
‘… spending €250 million to establish a new cycling league.’