Were you looking forward to the end of season Saudi races next year? They won’t happen now after the UCI has rejected One Cycling’s proposed calendar of events.
In a press release cycling’s governing body said One Cycling was “incompatible with the governance and regulatory framework of the UCI as well as lacking sporting coherence” which is a polite way of saying something quite rude. UCI President David Lappartient went further in quotes from to news agency AFP too.
You’d think that being excluded from the UCI calendar would be the end of One Cycling. Losing this key plank is a material change for investors. Village kermesses are on the UCI calendar, even rigged post-Tour exhibition criteriums are on it. Events central to One Cycling’s won’t be.
Never say never
The project is backed by the Saudi investment fund SURJ and this can take long bets, or even lose sums of money that would deter other investors. SURJ looks like the sports asset buyer of last resort, going where banks or private equity can’t. It probably doesn’t have to show the same kind of returns normal investors expect, just owning sports assets even at inflated prices is a power play. The Saudi kingdom which has spent a reported $5 billion on the Liv golf venture when it probably could have done just the same for less, but it wanted the shock and awe effect.
Or see SURJ buying a stake in DAZN, a sports streaming channel, that has lost billions. They now need content for this channel and especially subscriptions so cycling could slot in here… but who knows, the vagueness of the project is something we’ll come on to.
Despite getting rejected by the UCI, we could see a nuclear option where the project is launched anyway. If One Cycling events are not on the UCI calendar, who needs the UCI anyway? One Cycling events can happen under One Cycling rules. But this sets up a clash with the UCI whose rules (rule 1.2.019) stipulate that events have to be part of the UCI calendar or at least with a member federation.
Lawfare
This rule is obviously restrictive. There is an open case where a Scottish father claims this is disproportionate for a children’s events; but under European law there is precedent for establishing a governing body and all that goes with it, it’s known as “conditional autonomy” and the UCI is shielded from competition law. The legal debate is for another day, the point is if One Cycling tried this then expect wrangling rather than racing. Perhaps One Cycling has the patience and funding for this fight? It would take years though.
Le risque
Where the rules really sting is that UCI rule 1.2.021 says if both riders and teams that willingly take part in unapproved races in the face of a warning they are eligible for a six month suspension; 12 months for a second go. Get suspended by the UCI and a team can say adieu to starting the Tour de France which is held under the UCI rules. Although just imagine the mess of the UCI trying to suspend all those World Tour teams.
Teams are supposed get cash from One Cycling but a reported million Euros or Dollars annual injection into a team budget where the World Tour average is now nudging €32 million is small. Nice, but surely not worth the candle if participation in the Tour de France is at risk. Some team managers might fancy a game of poker here, their sponsors may not.
A project, not yet a plan
Belgian newspaper Het Laaste Nieuws’s Bram Vandencapelle has branded One Cyclig the “Loch Ness Monster”. One Cycling is undefined and at times been mirage onto which people have projected all sorts of things, rather than an actual plan. It could do this, it could do that… but the launch keeps being postponed and there’s nothing crunchy to chew on.
Even Lappartient said he doesn’t know the details. He did say that the teams could be involved in the ownership of races, which is not allowed under UCI rules. And probably for good reasons given the conflicts of interest here. Speaking to AFP (translated) he said “the UCI as such hasn’t really been included. We’re not the attorney for any eventual deals between certain parties“, adding “also we don’t know the business plan, I asked for information but we didn’t get them. They just said to us ‘here’s the calendar’“. The tone is notable for its opposition rather than conciliation. At one point Lappartien even calls it “belliqueuse“, as in belicose.
As tried before?
It all seems like One Cycling has been going in one direction without squaring off the UCI, nor involving ASO, organisers of the Tour de France and other races. as previous attempts at breakaway leagues have found out, this was a mistake. It might work this time because of the money involved, see how golf has been upended. The reported €300 million tag linked to One Cycling is a lot of money but at the same time small, and meant to be spent on cycling rather than Euro-lawyers.
Conclusion
The end of One Cycling or just a set back? We don’t have to know the details of the scheme to spot problems ahead. While a statement on cyclingnews.com from One Cycling says “agreeing a new global race calendar in the tight time frame was always going to be challenging” this is surely is not about filing a registration document in time or some other admin to solve?
The project can carry on but the UCI appears fundamentally opposed, with the governing body both complaining that it has not been informed fully about the project while also rejecting the premise of One Cycling events competing with existing races and structural aspects like the involvement of teams in ownership. Lappartient’s comments to AFP make this clear.
While One Cycling is briefing about continuing, it’s either got to change substantially or decide to confront the UCI head-on. We can only imagine what the financial backers are thinking of it all now. It was supposed to be launched this spring, that was pushed back with talk of a July presentation so there might not be long to wait. Which One Cycling will we get?
I always thought 300 million was a rather small budget for such an ambitious project. TV production costs are enormous in this sport (Sporza burns tens of thousands per minute of RVV broadcast, and that’s the level we’ll expect from a real contender to the current system) and you need to attract riders with fees, launch a PR campaign, add the costs for organizing the races themselves….I don’t know how much money globally goes around in pro cycling but it must be several multitudes of that if you add it all up. I honestly wonder if a fully profitable model is even possible at least if we keep thinking of cycling as a sport that goes on in the arena of the public road and visits epic places to entice the riders into epic battles.
JV had some eloquent, but altogether one-sided, views on this as well during his recent interview with The Cycling Podcast.
Yes, it’s a lot of money but also small. ASO’s annual revenue is bigger (although this includes other sports), the 18 World Tour team budgets are €570m so a smaller sum in comparison, but potentially cheap to try and prise control of a lot of the sport too.
I saw earlier projections and they had the scheme going from needing funding to repaying money within just a few years, it was ambitious to think they’d get so much money back but the details on how are vague, it was just an outline.
It was a fantastic episode of TCP, and I enjoyed hearing JV’s perspective. But I keep hearing these arguments about the same racers going against each other over and over, and it sounds awful to me. If you look at the current situation in the sport, and the “big boys” faced each other regularly, you would have 90% of races won by either Pog or MVDP. Maybe an occasional TT would be interesting, but as the Dauphine just showed us, be careful what you wish for. Even oldDave is getting concerned!
I enjoyed it too, but I thought it was very one-sided. The entire cultural aspect of cycling was completely disregarded. I’m not an economist but my gut feeling says that this “cultural capital” often fills the financial gap that JV is (rightly!) concerned about.
For instance, today is Eddy Merckx’ 80th birthday, cause for a week of celebrations in the Belgian media, including a handshake with the king. This is invaluable exposure for the classic version of road cycling. Try competing with that if all you have is a nice but ultimately modest sum of petrodollars?
Now, if somebody could broker a merger of ASO, RCS and FC the sport could enter a new era.
I think you can create a lot of headlines, if not capital, with a race that promises a giant prize pot (“bigger than the Tour de France”) as while insiders know prize money is a side issue compared to salaries, it seems to resonate a lot with the public, a catchy marketing hook (something explored more here).
Be careful what you wish for with an ASO, RCS and FCS merger as it would lead to even more of a monopoly for race organisers.
True. But it’s sort of the logical conclusion, I think, from JV’s ideas and the wider push for an alternative organisation of pro-cycling. The references used are often closed competition schemes like ‘merican pro sports, F1 racing, WCR, motocross maybe. Where things seem to be much more centralised and with simpler competition schemes. However, you can’t conceivably replace, or even compete with, all of the old races (and their organisers and their heritage) and still count on the same audience, this is what empiricism suggests to me at least. So the logical (r)evolutionary step would be to strive for a deep integration of the most important organisers. Yes it’s a monopoly, but isn’t that what many are implicitly vying for? A tight organisation of the race-calendar with a narrative arch throughout the season?
Looking at the tiny attendance and viewing figures for FUFA’s current alleged world footay club cup, the lure of Big Prize Money would appear to be limited for the wider public, who can spot a bribe when they see one. More ominous is the obvious strain put on top level athletes by an ever expanding calendar, and the resulting lack of quality performances. Hell, people are actually becoming sympathetic towards millionaire footballers. Expect to see future contracts that limit playing time in many sports.
Steve, great point. Football has “jumped the shark” with the totally unnecessary Nations League and pointless Club WC, and nobody cares about these stupid competitions. Cycling would do well to keep an eye on what the fans actually care about, and tradition and visual impact are huge parts of the draw.
Got the JV podcast stored up to listen to soon but sense we’ve heard it before from him?
Pogačar and MVDP aside, go back 10 years and it would mean Froome, Quintana et al doing one day classics, and so taking the place of other specialists while not being able to offer much sport.
If you have the same riders in the same races then you don’t need as many of them. This would lighten team budgets, an avenue to explore but not something team management wants to say aloud as a benefit of the scheme. But having One + World Tour implies no savings.
Exactly so that we’ve heard it all before from him. And he (and the interviewer) gloss over a lot of pretty fundamental stuff – it’s a fairly shallow conversation where they agree with each other a lot but don’t address much of the hard stuff.
Just as one example – it was yet another case of an American failing to address (or understand?) the difference between a US domestic sport like the NFL, which they always use as their case study, vs an international sport. Yes, the NFL can ‘own all the teams’, can impose a draft system, wage caps etc. But how would you do all this for a sport that’s global?
Americans are always so used to viewing the world thru a domestic prism that they seem to find this stuff impossible to grasp.
More generally, it’s very easy for him to say that longstanding races, teams and other stakeholders around the sport should give up what they have ‘for the greater good’. The pie would not be ‘bigger’ for races that cease to exist. It’s a lot harder than that conversation would suggest.
Indeed. He doesn’t seem to grasp that the word ‘franchise’ is basically an insult in most of Europe. Then again, the current (lack of) system and absence of general long term strategic view has to hurt the sport in some ways. I can agree with that particular element in JV’s analysis.
Maybe all the teams can register in the USA, or better yet, Saudi Arabia.
😉
Tricky, I think that’s being a bit unfair to JV. I think he has a pretty nuanced understanding of the difference between US sport and Europe – he has been running a successful team for years while the American road racing scene has basically disappeared. Where I think he’s missing something, however, is the cultural element that is so important to cycling. This is where Liv golf has fallen short; people don’t want “rock-n-roll” golf, they want the traditional format 90% of the time. Same with cycling. If you stick it in the desert, no matter who shows up and what the prize purse is, it’s not the same as a cobbled Belgian lane or a little path in the Alps or Pyrenees. But even in Europe it’s getting harder and more expensive to put on races, so purely relying on the culture to keep cycling going is somewhat risky.
Hey hey IR, I vaguely remember the Hammer Series being both within but also separate from the UCI races. How similar / different is this to the One Cycling and is this just on a much grander scale? Thanks!
Hammer Series, in part, got nixed by the UCI. They put a moratorium on the use of the word ‘Series’. But I would’ve liked to see it succeed. It was a weird and wonderful experiment that was allowed to bud, and then got nipped in the bud. Maybe it would’ve turned out to be too convoluted and artificial but I always thought it had some promise of becoming a new flavour of traditional road cycling. It also didn’t seem to want to ostentiously compete with the existing order, just offer an alternative that could co-exist. But no, it wasn’t to be.
It didn’t work for me, the locations weren’t so appealing nor was the multi-lap circuit format and the points scoring scheme was complicated; if the idea was to entice new people in it seemed to add more complication. But that’s taste and everyone can like different formats, eg this blog doesn’t get excited about cyclo-cross either.
The Hammer races were on the UCI’s calendar but as lowly 2.1 events.
One Cycling is vague but the outlines are lot bigger, not just a few extra races but to have events with bigger prizes to make headlines (imagine a race with a bigger payout than the Tour de France… even if we know prize money in pro cycling is small, it’s the salaries that are big but all the same many don’t know this so the headlines will go big) as well as extra races it’ll be a series spread across the season and with more funding, and the idea is to sell the broadcast rights for the bundle. It seems more towards a breakaway league but in parallel, ie to participate in the Tour in July but have other One races elsewhere.
The public may nont know that prize-money does not matter. But the races, teams and the riders absolutely know this. And they are the people that ultimately matter on this issue.
Has golf been upended? Liv have created a bunch of wealthy B Listers but I don’t think anyone gets excited about their tournaments.
They promote it in Australia with a bunch of beery spectators.
They still hit balls with sticks across carefully manicured grass-covered terrain, but it has seen many of the top players move to the Liv camp and take part in their tournaments. It’s seen the Saudi’s effectively try to grab control of the sport.
This is only my impression but apart from Brooks Koepka I think the players are mainly second tier ir past it … and Koepka seems to have dropped off the pace.
As cycling is a European sport I think golf is American. Not sure that these things can be manufactured.
@Cadence 66 +1.
=67
Whilst the One Cycling ogre has probably been put on the back burner for a little while it won’t be long until it or something similar comes back. It seems that no sport can be left alone to be a sport, someone has to be making a sh1t load of money from it. JV, as an American, seems to be incapable of comprehending that something isn’t there to make those involved in it wealthy. He presumably doesn’t understand that the role of a team in a sport is to take part in that sport, not to profit from their association with that sport. I suppose cyclings saving grace and the reason it might continue as it is for a little longer than some sports is that it is a largely (entirely) European sport, and that two of its most important races are in countries that are pretty famous for being resistant to cultural change.
The UCI are a governing body, not promoters – so the UCI World Tour should be run, promoted by a separate company. They do the whole lot; choose the calendar, sell TV rights, etc
That is how most motorsport series are run – by Promoters on behalf of the governing body – and even both the MTB & CX World Cups are run like this.
The ‘fly in the ointment’ is ASO, RCS, Flanders Classics……but a proper Promoter should be able to persuade/ force them – it works in motorsport, and that is a bigger sport than pro cycling.
About time ASO were brought to heel, they’re not the saviours the cycling world thinks they are – in fact, they’re holding the sport back.
It’s not 1995, but 2025
I can’t imagine anything much worse than what you’re advocating here! Does it being 2025 mean that we have to muck up the existing system in favour of a motorsport model? I can’t help but think you have some sort of stake in One cycling…
I’m not sure that F1 is the model to follow. It has certainly served up big profits but has made the sport sterile and more or less a closed shop.
It used to be that plucky new entrants could try and qualify for Grand Prix. There was a mix of engine types and chassis designs. But that has all gone over the years. A fixed roster of teams, of homogenous design. I no longer see much appeal. And we forget the team that is now Red Bull started off as Stewart GP – a team run in lower formula by Paul Stewart that made a successful leap into F1 with the backing of his dad’s sponsor, Ford.
We see the same in cycling all the time. The team that is now, um, Red Bull can trace it’s roots back to NetApp and Endura. That would be gone in the franchise like model advocated by some.
The counter point is that “franchise F1” does seem to be more popular than ever. So what do I know?
Brunnchen – this is an excellent point, and something that Vaughters said that makes a lot of sense. Cycling is very poorly promoted, and the internal competition between organizers is not very helpful. I don’t know what a motorsport model is (I know almost nothing about races with engines), but I do think it would help if one entity was tasked with selling tv rights at the very least. The current system is absurd, and perversely makes it more difficult to follow the sport.
The challenge is that the promotors do need a lot of local knowledge and connections because the races are run on the public domain of several local authorities at a time. This is of course the USP that FC, RCS and ASO have, the decades long relations with small time potentates (one of them actually running the UCI these days). These mayors and council members etc may be swayed by petrodollars but it’ll take quite a lot of them and some MVDP level maneuvering as well, and even then it still might make them wildly unpopular with their electorate!
Hence my conclusion that in order to make something substantial move a stronger integration of the promotors might be the only way, as the most obvious alternatives are either a status-quo or a very confrontational approach that is doomed to fail unless it has truly limitless financial fire power.
This is probably why some of One Cycling’s plans seem to involve holding races on motor racing circuits, there’s no need for road closures, just to book the track for a day/weekend etc, plus you can ticket spectators too.
That is exactly why they want to run on motor-racing circuits. There is no chance that local/national government would agree to close the roads, at public cost, so that a bunch of arabs/Plugge can make money.
Many people like watching cycling so they can look at the landscape, or learn about the small towns on the route. The audience for watching 6 hours of racing on a motor circuit will be extremely small.
Force them … ?
Paul Hayward wrote in the Guardian at the weekend the following relating to possible rugby changes: ‘Rugby union has perpetually dreamt of striking gold while confronting the awkward reality that its profile can only expand so far.’
I think cycling is in a very similar situation and whilst evolution will always be needed,complete revolution is unlikely to benefit many beyond lining the pockets of a few in the short term.
I hope this goes through… the UCI can’t make a bike race in Saudi (or anywhere) illegal. It’s already been proven with gravel races starting up and the UCI begging to be involved.
The UCI has tried to do this. But be careful what we wish for as if the UCI rulebook is binned, then who says the Tour de France has to invite every World Tour team? It could just select those it likes or invent a different qualification system. Either way it provides visions of arbitration hearings and appeals at the Court of Arbitration for Sport as much as desert races.
You can really only race in Arabia in January and February. Money won’t enable people to race when it is 50 C.
Flooring CEOs wishing they could be paid as tech CEOs…..
You’d think they, especially Vaughters, have learned from past attempts and that its worth getting the ASO on side to begin with?
Trying to find out about this it seems part of the idea is rather than confront or beat ASO, the idea is to go around them, eg put on races that won’t clash with the Tour so that the race goes on… but also to try and tackle it other ways.
But the problem comes if teams want to do their own thing outside the UCI rules, then ASO could as well. It might decide to invite the teams it wants rather than be obliged to host the 18 World Tour + 3 automatic UCI points qualifiers etc. Or it could invite the 10 best UCI teams and issue 10 wildcards etc etc.
For me the most interesting points in the TCP convo were around the fact there has never been a plan for cycling, it is organic; that we can be swayed by what is happening ‘now’ when we see a dominant rider, forgetting the Cav-Contador-Cancellara era was one of shared greatness; and that maybe some races should have restrictions on the number of riders/make provisions for races with a set number of neo-pros.
Elsewhere in these comments I’ve wondered about the clamour for growth when it seems cycling is the best shape it has been in for a long while. A little evolution of an organically grown sport with a cast of many characters and stories might be all that’s needed.
I suppose motor racing circuit desert crits can be a part of organic growth but I’m not sure it can replace anything on the existing calendar.
I’m not sure i get the need for the points / promotion part of cycling and therefore the need for some kind of series. JV’s case was eloquent in that it might make a simpler narrative for newcomers but i’m not convinced cycling will ever be a global behemoth sport, i don’t see the need for it to be either. I’m a fan of test cricket and don’t feel it’s a lesser sport for being more niche, the T20 precedent of IPL is one that I think cycling could learn from alongside learning from the mistakes of world test championship. I would argue that the shorter races (one week and stage) would benefit from greater publicity as they are easier to follow for newcomers (one day races very much so). The one point JV was correct on was overlapping races, i’d like to watch more cycling but not by doubling up highlights of different races on the same day.
I can follow a logic that in order to compete at one of the grand tours you must also have completed a certain number of UCI race days prior to it.That should be mutually beneficial to the grand tours as fans get more opportunities to see riders who they then want to follow across the season which supports them in turn.
Talking of cricket, I’m old enough to remember Kerry Packer’s WSC and the big fight over TV rights.
If you don’t know about it, it is very similar to what is going on now in pro-cycling and is worth a read about what happened.
It seems to me that One Cycling is driven by team owners who do not really understand how races happen. They believe the races make money, or could if they were “marketed better”.
An important point is that races run on public roads and depend on being susidized by local/national government. The race organisers do not pay the full cost of closing and policing these roads. The government wants some things in return, and treats the races as a form of advertising for their region. One thing it demands is that the races on free-to-air television, as far as possible (and certainly in their local market). And it also wants a tight control on costs, limiting the amount of money given to the teams.
The race organisers understand this very well. They spend most of their time liaising with government. They know the teams are always replaceable, and have been regularly replaced for the last 80 years.
Vaughters said: “Broadcasters want the race on pay-per-view to make money”.
Actually, this is a mis-understanding. The Tour is coming off free-to-air in Britain because nobody is willing to show the race, except Eurosport/TNT. And ASO, who own the broadcast rights, know that they need to race on free-to-air to satisfy their stakeholders.
It’s not the case in Britain but in several countries its a legal obligation to show the Tour (and other races, depending on the country, eg in Belgium a lot of races must be free, the Giro is on the Italian list etc) on free-to-air TV. It makes broadcast deals a bit more complicated.
Sounds like we might get the “nuclear option” from One Cycling according to this piece in cyclingnews https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/pro-cycling-is-on-a-precipice-right-now-one-cycling-vows-to-push-on-with-their-plans-to-shake-up-the-sport-despite-uci-refusal/
…but it’s from someone close to the project so you’d expect them to respond like this. The question is whether all the other teams would tag along given the risks.
I really don’t get this idea of “if you don’t get bigger you die”, and anyway cycling is getting bigger, for the best or for the worst. I still don’t know which precipice we are talking about.
I wonder if it’s projection, it reads like the person speaking to CN is anxious about forfeiting a launch/announcement bonus and so wants to go ahead but that’s total conjecture. It doesn’t sound like they want to win around people.
The big test is whether adherents to One Cycling will act as one here and see this through, some teams and their sponsors probably have second thoughts.
I don’t really understand why they don’t start out small, sponsor something like the Tour of Slovakia or the Tour of Poland, and then continue on from there. If they were to provide some support for genuine grass roots races that are struggling, they could build up good will, support a part of the sport that really needs it, and put themselves in a much better position in the long term. Instead they want to do a brute force, hostile takeover of the whole sport, which only reinforces the suspicions people have about their whole project. I will not be surprised at all if I wake up tomorrow and read that the Saudis have purchased Flanders Classics (or the Giro, or the Vuelta).
It’s a big project that wants impact, the Saudis will want to both disrupt things and have a degree of control for their money.
There is talk that they could purchase RCS Sport and Flanders Classics, or roll them into the organisation but it’s vague/gossip/speculation so make of it what you will.
And there we have it. Saudi Arabia are clearly all in on sports being a big part of their post-oil economy, so they must get return on investment. And Visma, EF, Lidl etc really think they’ll have more than a token say in anything?
So do we know what exactly the OneCycling’s goals or intentions are? There’s a lot of talk about money but do they want just TV rights or take over the UCI and run the whole shop? Now it just seems that they want a few circuit races with big prize money and the same guys racing each other over and over again. How many top riders are up for that in November say or in February?
Is this all because UAE are all over cycling now, and the Saudis want some of it, or just blatant sportswashing?
If there’s enough cash, riders will attend.
But fans won’t watch.
Casual fans watch the TdF. More full-on fans know that there is no reason to watch.
I’m glad the UCI have told them where to stick their meaningless, garbage races, and their sportswashing blood money.