Movistar have landed the co-sponsor they’ve been looking for with EPS. Its parent company Quantum Pacific is now on-board – pun intended – as an investor too.
Movistar is the oldest team around, visit the team website at the foot of the website is the copyright claim 1980-2025. The team has been around so long to have several highs and lows, winning the Tour de France in 1988 with Pedro Delgado as Reynolds, the five wins with Miguel Indurain as Banesto.
It became Caisse d’Epargne between 2007 and 2010 and while Alejandro Valverde was winning plenty he was also being pursued by police and anti-doping authorities to the point where the French bank sponsoring the team wanted out.
In came Movistar and more good years thanks to Nairo Quintana winning the Giro, Vuelta and being a Tour de France contender. Recently yhe women’s team, founded in 2017 has done better, in part thanks to the often invincible Annemiek van Vleuten and with Cat Ferguson they look set for more success.
The men’s team has been overtaken, the days of being imposing contenders for the overall in a grand tour reduced to Enric Mas and his valiant attempts at the Vuelta. The budget is not public but not long ago team owner Eusebio Unzué said it was €18 million which puts it at the tail end of the World Tour.
The team has been openly searching for a co-sponsor. At the team presentation in Madrid the Movistar company boss said he supported this because if it meant calling the team Movistar-New Sponsor and this diluted the prominence of Movistar, if it brought in extra sponsorship then they could compete on a higher level and so Movistar’s brand would be more visible.
The new sponsor is Eastern Pacific Shipping (EPS), a Singapore-based company that is part of Quantum Pacific, a holding company that mainly owns shipping, chemicals and logistics companies but also part-owns Atlético de Madrid football climb when Wanda – remember them? – sold out. Quantum operates around the world but has a focus on Asia and Eastern Pacific Shipping does what its name suggests, shipping LPG gas around Asia, as well as cars, chemicals and other goods. Its selling point of late has been a push towards sustainability with carbon capture systems on board and even ordering sail-assisted vessels, like the CGI image above suggests.
An investment, not a takeover
Your blogger heard about the takeover talks months ago and the small surprise today is that Quantum is “only” buying 43% of Abarca Sports, the entity behind the Movistar team. It’s an investment that leaves the Unzué family in charge, even if it feels like a parting deal from Eusebio Unzué now aged 68.
Equity in cycling teams is not worth much intrinsically but if a billionaire wants in then there are few entry points so the Unzués will presumably have done a good deal. This means the team doesn’t just have a co-sponsor on a typical term of two years, it’s got a new partner so there’s a longer term backing for the team.
Investors, hobbyists, or both?
Quantum belongs to Israeli billionaire Idan Ofer, who is not just a billionaire but possibly Israel’s richest man, if not his brother Eyal tops the list; anecdotal but worth noting as he’s several brackets higher than Sylvan Adams, the Israel-PremierTech team owner. Quantum’s subsidiary EPS is run by Frenchman Cyril Ducau, pictured above with the blue Quantum jersey. Both are cycling enthusiasts and EPS has been using cycling locally as a means of corporate communications.
With added sponsorship now Movistar-EPS as it will probably be called can start shopping. You’ll remember they came close to signing Carlos Rodriguez only for Ineos to work the small print of his contract and retain him, and paying Movistar. You’d think they can look at UAE to see if any riders fall lose like Juan Ayuso or João Almeida; XDS-Astana’s Harald Tejada could be a fit too for Movistar but with a new sponsor having Spanish or Colombian riders is now less of a priority. But that’s all speculative.
One thing they really need is to invest in the team itself in order to better support their riders. You might remember Matteo Jorgenson saying he had to pay for his own training camps and hire a nutritionist. Or a small detail from last year’s Tour de France where the team just couldn’t afford to post many helpers along the course of each stage to hand up bidons and gels while rivals were able to supply their riders with plenty.
Conclusion
The team goes on and with a new co-sponsor that will take them out of the doldrums and supply whole new line of maritime metaphors. Crucially it’s now got a new investor in the team. We can imagine the team looking to make new signings soon but investing in performance could be the wisest first step as this will make it easier to bring new riders across.
If the team’s future is safe for now, it’ll be interesting to see where it goes. How much influence will Quantum and EPS have, given they’re both run by keen cyclists? This is not a straightforward sponsorship deal based on marketing metrics.
Plain sailing to TDF victory from here on out.
As I had noticed some time ago, part of the move from the Spanish State to explicitly get back control on the once public Telefónica (Movistar) meant former president Álvarez-Pallete off. He had strong ties with the team, you might remember him be called “Presi” in the Movistar TV show when he personally showed up at races, the team trying to reward him with some notable performance on the day. I guess that he secured a long contract for the team little before the news he was going went public precisely as he knew he was soon out. The new investment is probably also related to the fact that the former team structures feel that their long term source of income might come to an end or otherwise lose prominence once the current contract is over for good.
Good news. I hope they can improve their performance. Decathlon and now XDS-Astana have shown it is possible to make big steps in a short time in that area and Movistar already has the A-brand bicycle sponsor in Canyon. That would also make them more attractive for riders to sign to, so they can hopefully pry away Ayuso and/or Torres away from UAE. (I bet this will start the “Ayuso/Matxin not happy with Pogacar dominance” rumor mill right away.)
Ayuso still got a long way to go to show he can compete with Pogacar!
Was wondering how Pablo Castrillo was fairing so far this year, 7th at UAE and 11th at Paris Nice. No stand out results as yet. Interested to see how good he can be seeing as he’s 24 and only six months younger than Matteo Jorgenson.
I guess Movistar were never going to keep hold of Jorgenson but as far as I can see Jorgenson is now in the very highest league of pro riders – Pogacar, MVDP, Vingegaard, Evenepoel, Roglic, WVA are really the only riders I can see who are clearly better, he’s vying with Almeida, Ayuso, Philipsen, Pedersen currently to be the best of the rest. What a shame for Movistar they lost him.
The thing about Ayuso, is that he is probably the most attractive GC cyclist outside the “big four” GC riders (Pog, Vingegaard, Evenepoel, Roglic). And given his age, there is room for improvement. If I wanted to hire a GC rider to lead my team, he is exactly who I would be trying to get. The fact he is Spanish makes him even more attractive to Movistar.
He’s fluent in English too which makes him marketable well beyond Spain too. A lot riding on the Giro 😉
Absolutely agree John.
Ayuso and Cian Uijtdebroeks felt like they were the coming forces a few years ago but both seem to have had strange seasons last year and till now… Cian’s dropped off completely while Ayuso is looking good but getting beaten by Roglic the other day (despite being a good result still overall) felt like a step back from his recent wins considering how much stronger we know both Pog/Vin are than Rog these days.
@oldDAVE
A step back, sure, after… winning what’s probably the most important short stage race *less than one mont* before? Rather a bad day in Barcelona.
Not the strongest field at this Ti-Ad but outside the very top dogs it’s not clear what a strong field in GC might be. Barring the locals, Gee, Hindley and especially Pidcock are decent riders who tried to put up a good fight, to no use.
And he had won in commanding style two 1.Pro Classics like Laigueglia and Drome.
I think that PCS (which rewards placing, which I don’t agree with, ok) as him as the 3rd absolute top scorer this season.
Comparing him to Cian even by far is just crazy. The latter has been having health issues of diverse nature and must seriously steer to get his career back on track. Ayuso even in a “mediocre” 2024 season, being 21 yo, won Itzulia and was runner-up at Tirreno, plus being straight among the best in the Galibier TDF stage (which was probably what derailed the rest of his season because of the internal conflicts with the DSs and some teammates, which ultimately led to him losing the GT he had prepared to fight for).
I think that Cian has barely one top-5 as his best 2024 result… at O Gran Camiño
-____-
Comparing the two really means not getting the level of Ayuso and even worse not understanding the personal challenge Cian needs to face in this phase.
Murky waters. Another questionable sponsor for pro cycling
Why are they considered questionable? Is there something dubious about them that’s not described here? Or, is it because they’re neither a familiar name nor a past sponsor resurfacing at a new team?
Pretty much anyone who chooses to be associated with and support an apartheid ethno-state whose existence is predicated on theft by genocide, and which continues to engage in theft by genocide – indeed, celebrates it – would be seen as somewhat morally suspect. At least, seen as such by any decent, civilised person.
Copy, thanks.
I wondered if the financial stability of the company was the part in question.
Movistar took some finding a partner, and I wondered if they would eventually catch a small fish but it looks like they’ve caught a larger one.
They looked for sponsorship in Saudi Arabia but that seems to have gone nowhere. There was talk of Spanish oil company Repsol and in particular its solar panel retail arm but nothing. It’s surprising that a marquee team couldn’t find another company but it’s not easy, a lot of companies want their branding to be exclusive so combining two names is not easy.
Your smartphone and internet browser that you’re writing your clueless comments with supports the only democracy in the Middle East. I suggest you join the protest and throw it out the window.
I’d rather not re-litigate Israel and Palestine in the comments section of a cycling blog because any exchange is unlikely to change minds.
Easier to close the comments.
You mean this person you refer to is writing on a smartphone made in Jordan and through a browser developed in Lebanon? Each in its own very different way, but this two countries are currently what looks closer (matter of degrees, of course) to a democracy of sort in that area. You wouldn’t call a democracy a place where a constant state of emergency is artificially maintained (through genocide, indeed, but that’s a separate question) in order to keep power and avoid elections as well as a proper trial in court for the leading figure, who’s been constantly twisting law to alter the democratic balance of power… would you? Oh, maybe you would, maybe you’re that sort of person which intends democracy as a bunch of whitey guys, a place with a lot of English-speaking people who buy expensive smartphones.
Request ignored so comments closing.
I hope none of this detracts from their dedication to the Team competitions!