Gerry Ryan has long been a benefactor of Australian sport and likes to joke he’s busy spending his children’s inheritance. Sponsoring the Jayco team since its inception in 2012 has cost him tens of millions of dollars. It might be fun but owning a pro cycling team is not lucrative.
So the arrival of Never Say Never and Stoneweg as partners to take over the Israel-Premiertech team looks unusual. They’re financial investors but how do they plan on getting a return? Maybe they don’t and it’s all for fun but that still makes it an interesting project as a World Tour team because if they don’t have pressing commercial imperative there’s space for rebranding and new ways to promote a team.
There’s not much to go on right now. Never Say Never’s website says the legal entity is actually called “INTERNATIONAL COMMERCIALIZATION OF SPORTS RIGHTS SPAIN, S.L” which ought to make things clearer. The company ID number supplied on the site links to a sports travel company, probably a copy-paste error from the website designers rather than an alarm bell as NSN has been around for a bit.
Stoneweg is a Swiss real estate business founded by Spaniard Jaume Sabater, it’s not new to the sport as it joined the IPT team as a sponsor in the summer along with Icona Group with which Stoneweg has merged. Part of the deal sees Stoneweg buy into NSN so in a way the funding is by Stoneweg.
The press release from Never Say Never, a sports marketing and event organiser, has some interesting lines to explore, especially as since it came out on Friday there’s been no carefully-placed interview from the new backers in any newspapers or online outlets over the weekend.
The international sports and entertainment company NSN (Never Say Never) and Stoneweg, a Swiss-Spanish investment platform, have entered into a joint venture in professional road cycling to take over a WorldTour and Development team structure
So it’s a takeover of the structure, this implies ownership is changing. But the team’s press release sent out on Friday says “NSN’s acquisition of the team license” which can mean the same thing but is subtly different too. Sylvan Adams and others appear not to be having a quieter role but stepping away, something stated by newspaper Marca which got the scoop of NSN’s involvement hours before the press release… but we’ll await confirmation.
the team’s current managerial and sporting organization, made up of around 170 people, who are guaranteed to compete over the next three years in UCI WorldTour calendar events such as the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia, and La Vuelta a España
This assumes that the team has a World Tour licence for the next three years. The old IPT team met the sporting criteria. Hopefully NSN isn’t just expecting to be able to buy the team and get the right to start the Tour, as normally the UCI will want to vet the new deal but presumably this has been completed.
NSN and Stoneweg consider cycling a sport with strong global growth prospects in the coming years, one that represents values well aligned with the company. They also welcome the opportunity to strengthen the professional cycling landscape and to support a team committed to developing young talent.
Is this the rationale behind the deal? NSN and especially Stoneweg are financial investors so are they coming in expecting to make a profit? Because to be flippant, the growth story in the sport this decade has been in rider wages which have soared and account for most of the rise in team budgets. There’s not been anything like a corresponding growth in TV audiences or other qualitative metrics. And if there’s a growth story, it’s been in women’s cycling but this isn’t mentioned by NSN.
NSN are financial investors in football. They bought into a Danish football club. Many investors have tried this route: buy an unloved team, spend carefully to get promotion, tap into lucrative TV rights and the returns come. No such path exists in cycling. Another football ploy has been to buy young talent and hope to earn from transfers but this looks hard in cycling with only a nascent transfer market.
As we’ve seen from other teams, the price of a World Tour team these days is north of €20 million a year. Owners don’t have to fund all of this as bike sponsors and others will pay cash as well as supply material for free but it still leaves NSN and Stoneweg liable for maybe three-quarters of more of the team budget.
Some teams and their owners have tried be run as marketing companies providing a service to corporate sponsors. This model goes back to Cyrille Guimard in the 1980s. Car company Renault had owned its cycling team but when it decided to stop sponsorship Guimard hit on the idea of creating a team and then selling the naming rights on to a sponsor, at first supermarket Super U and then DIY store Castorama and this structure caught on.
What we call Lidl-Trek today goes back directly to 2011 and the creation of the Leopard-Trek cycling team. Leopard was branding and the team had support from Luxembourg real estate mogul Flavio Becca. The idea was that with the Schleck brothers, Fabian Cancellara and others this was a premium franchise and that it would be lucrative to sell naming rights. Only Becca was on the hook for the wage bill, corporate sponsors did not show up and two years later Trek bought the licence from a departing Becca.
Today many sponsors from Groupama to EF have taken ownership of their teams. One reason is it can be cheaper to do this direct rather than pay a service company which often has to put value-added-tax on top. For example past accounts show the Belgian state lottery paid the Lotto team about €7 million but the team only got €5.5 to spend as it had to cover VAT.
So if NSN want to sell naming rights and sponsorship they might have to charge tax on top, then add a margin as well if they want a return. Sponsors might prefer to deal direct but the tax charge can vary by jurisdiction. Perhaps it’s business and pleasure, the new owners keen to be involved in a sport for the fun of it.
Finances aside but the team needs an identity and a project. Rather than acquiring a blank canvas NSN has picked up a roster for 2026 that doesn’t look sizzling or too coherent. The team will have a Swiss flag but no Swiss riders, it’ll be based in Spain but has only one Spaniard. Joe Blackmore looks like a prospect and they can take wins here and there but no star power. Teams need an identity so it’ll be interesting to see where this goes, maybe it’ll try and steer away from any local identity and try something else.
Financially a game-changer here could be One Cycling. It was supposed to be launched several times this year but has gone nowhere. But it is more than a concept, it still exists as a project even if its ambitions have scaled back. However if member teams stand to gain a windfall at some point, it’s contingent both on it launching and then meeting the ambitious financial targets.
Conclusion
Under new ownership? NSN and Stoneweg have announced the takeover of the the team and assume it is all good for the World Tour, fingers crossed the UCI approves it all. The semi-Spanish identity ought to mean the team can start the 2026 Tour in Barcelona without incident but this could be conditional on confirming formal change rather anything cosmetic; even if cynically a rebrand will reduce attention.
But it’s what’s comes next that is interesting, to see where the team goes as a project. In the short term is Derek Gee along for the ride? Will Biniam Girmay sign? Longer term what riders does it want to recruit. Will the Tour de Romandie or the Volta a Catalunya be its home race, or will it downplay local links?
Its this that brings more open questions as the project might have a roster but beyond this there’s room to create and experiment. Will it keep NSN as a visual identity while bringing on sponsors, or will it cede to the lucrative value of naming rights and so at some point it becomes a version of Team Shampoo-Laminate Flooring like all the others… except the Rockets? One to watch and the team kit will be on its way to the factory soon given the Tour Down Under is eight weeks away.
Ain’t no need to say it… but, very good piece ^__^
“Team Shampoo-Laminate Flooring”
Love it. Going to think of all teams this way. Maybe a way to refer to them in your annual sponsor/owner overview!? Though some of the classified ad-jersey Italian teams may push the character count.
Any news on if this puts the Canaries back on the Vuelta map, or has it come too late?
Apparently it’s too late for the Canaries. It feels like a rule in Spanish cycling that “the Vuelta will go to the Canaries soon”, much like the French joke of a barber shop with the sign in the window that says “free shave tomorrow”.
Totally so. And let me add that the Team Israel thing was more or less an excuse.
Not because local opposition to what is still happening in Palestine isn’t huge (and ongoing), but because the TDF in Barcelona happening before the Vuelta would grant a decent test of sort… plus, and really, a very high chance that things were going to be set straight well before that. As it looks like now.
May I add that I can understand local authorities in the islands thinking they really don’t need to pay millions in order to get much more promotion (breaking records every year now, and locals very uncomfortable with the excessive pressure of mass tourism now that you feel it even far from the usual playa-pool-buffet-ghettos, and esp. as most money from tourism doesn’t flow around here at all).
Well, I’d understand, as I said, wasn’t it because they’re paying millions all the same – only, to others.
Surprisingly, cycling isn’t much loved by local institutions. And it’s a shame because they should think about this investment not as much as a way to bring here more tourism but as a prompt to promote cycling among locals, both as a sport and as transport, a bit like what the UK did. It’s sorely needed.
Is there much evidence that sponsoring a cycling race promotes cycling as a means of transport among locals?
I imagine that a locality benefits mainly from tourism, and especially people wanting cycling holidays. The big mountains in the Alps must feel obliged to host the Tour every few years to ensure they remain popular among enthusiasts who want to explore the famous Tour mountains.
Really not much evidence, we should ask Boardman ^___^
What’s known is that infrastructure and physical interventions alone aren’t enough, you need to get to the “psychosocial” level. From a recent comprehensive academic review (research involving BC):
7.2. Summary of solutions to increase the number of people cycling
Cycling is a complex, multi-faceted behaviour, with barriers and facilitators operating at multiple levels for different individuals and sub-groups of the population. Accordingly, in order to address these barriers, multiple solutions will be required. What is clearly evident from this overview of the evidence base is that no single intervention, programme or policy will be sufficient to produce long-lasting, population-wide increases in cycling.
Research has demonstrated that it is essential to target both the “place” through improving cycling infrastructure at the physical environmental level, and also the “person” through individual and social level support. Whilst intervening at the level of the physical environment and improving the infrastructure for cycling is possible and undoubtedly necessary, doing so in isolation is unlikely to be sufficient to prompt behaviour change for many individuals. Thus, what will be needed to best promote cycling has been described as “a coordinated package of complementary infrastructure measures, programs and policies”. It will also require time following introduction of such packages in order for cycling to become normalised and imbedded in a workplace or in society in general.
—
I see the media & social impact of pro sport as part of that, although there’s no scientific evidence in any direction, I think.
Of course, hosting a race once in a while is going to have little to no effect, if anything it must work as a catalyst within a more general programme.
Even what’s probably a very compelling positive factor (my opinion, little to no evidence…) like having a national superstar as was Indurain… brought virtually nobody into everyday cycling as transport in Spain; yet, it generated more sport practice which, on turn, was the lead for normative change, which ultimately made everyday cycling more viable and allowed its growth. We’re speaking of decades-long legitimation processes which won’t be caught by most ordinary research, currently often limited to 1-year scope.
The above also explains why IMHO public policies should dare to have vision, but that’s a different story.
I don’t think that the “cycle race leads to more cycle commuting” link is especially strong, but there must be some sort of small normalising effect for cycle usage.
Anecdotally, I sold a bike 3 days after the Tour of Britain came through here, with the buyer telling me that the race had got him thinking about taking up cycling to get around again.
😉
An international classic indeed:
“Oggi non si fa credito, domani sì”
As on many bar’s azulejos (decorative ceramic tiles): “Hoy no se fía, mañana sí”.
Or with a pinch of Gaber’s irony:
“…la rivoluzione oggi no, domani forse, ma dopodomani sicuramente”
(Worth reading in full context)
“model goes back to Cyrille Guimard in the 1980s”
Are you sure about this? My understanding is that originally cycling teams were owned by the bike brands. But by the 1950s (if not before), teams started to be sponsored by and named after companies which did not make bicycles (Kas started sponsoring in 1958, Flandria in 1957, Faema in 1955). And certainly by the 1960s there were teams who existed to sponsor a particular rider, and there were teams run by ex-pros who wanted to become a team-manager. In either case, they needed to find a sponsor to fund their team.
Nivea was the first brand outside the sport to come and enjoy naming rights but the team’s origins were with the Fuchs bike company which had owned the team. To cut a long story short Fiorenzi Magni did set up a company to run the team with Nivea but it was a structure for Nivea rather than Magni starting with a corporate an entity and then hiring it out to willing sponsors who might come and go as the company stays in place.
Guimard with Fignon and other backers created a specific company to act as a marketing operation which sponsors could contract and Guimard would get an annual fee out of this.
Ahh. So Peter Post running TI–Raleigh in the 1970s, and then Panasonic from 1984 does not count because Panasonic is a separate legal entity. In this case, when the old sponsor left, the team dispanded and a new team was created. [Similarly for Raas leaving to set up Kwantum–Decosol in 1984, which also does not count since it is a new legal entity.]
Beyond the politics and administration of the new team I’m just pleased to see that the twenty-eight riders currently listed for 2026 are apparently secure. There must have been some sleepless nights for them and the various DS, mécanos, soigneurs… Maybe even riders such as Askey regretted for several weeks leaving their safe berth in their previous teams.
Will Williams have recovered from seemingly endless injuries to contribute again?
Will they try to get returns by boosting cycling coverage in Latin America?
Is there a shortage of coverage? What might be needed is more infrastructure from stronger federations and a pro calendar with some stage races… but that’s beyond one team’s ability. Especially as NSN and Stoneweg are not huge companies either.
I have a feeling all this will turn out to have been insufficient to stop the protests, demonstrations and polite but determined “No!”s from towns and regions – unless the “new” team issues a statement telling clearly, in a straightforward fashion and quite unambiguously that Sylvan Adams is no longer one of the owners and that neither he nor other Israeli businessmen are behind the two companies that now own the team.
https://www.swissinfo.ch/spa/el-tour-confía-en-que-las-protestas-contra-israel-de-la-vuelta-no-se-repitan-en-barcelona/90215786
Andrés Iniesta (the ex football player) and Jaume Sabater are apparently the two main investors respectively behind the two society which formed the joint venture now owning the team.
Iniesta is one of the founders of NSN but there are quite a few of them and I wonder if it’s more his name goes first because he’s famous?
As far as I’ve read, there’s a strong Catalan factor related to the Barcelona Grand Depart.
I hope the protests continue if Adams and other Israelis are involved. Otherwise, it’s just a name change. (Russia are rightly banned from sport; Israel should be.)
The Vuelta protests showed that – as always – action works when it comes to protest. Words will always be ignored.
Strong, Askey, Frigo, Vernon and Hofstetter are the 2026 team’s five top-ranked riders. Decent riders all though hardly likely to strike fear. Maybe Blackmore will find his 2024 form again, yet even then many of his points were scored in races with modest fields (Rwanda, Taiwan, Arctic Race…)
Will the team have the budget for a major refresh in 2027?
Note: updated the post above to be less categoric about Sylvan Adams going, yes Marca report he is out but maybe he is not, we’ll have to wait and see; one source says maybe not.
Also a quick check of the IPT website shows it changed in July to feature Stoneweg so the company was publicly linked as supporting the team from then on; obviously the press release now is more substanial that being one of many suppliers alongside the car wrapping supplier and the bike washing products but shows that it’s been on board already rather than coming in out of the blue.
If Adams is still involved and/or an owner, the protests will continue. Rightly, as J Evans says.
There is no place in cycling for genocidaires. There should be no place for them at all. They should be shunned in every way by all decent people.
In that case, we should also kick the UAE out of World Cycling. It’s a dictatorship with a terrible human rights record, and the sportwashing is downright disgusting.
And why shouldn’t we? Neither Israel nor the UAE are anything more than totalitarian regimes. A world—or at least a cycling world—without those two hell-holes would be better for everyone.
Err…Israel (unlike the UAE) is a democracy, with elections. And large number so local people protesting about the policies of their government. It is fine to disapprove of the policies of their government, but please don’t make the absurd statment that “Israel is a dictatorship” since the truth is that it is the only functioning democracy in the middle-east.
james –
Non-Jewish population of Israel/Palestine:
1947 – 1,324,000
1948 – 156,000
Source: jewishvirtuallibrary DOT org
‘Jewish & Non-Jewish Population of Israel/Palestine
(1517 – Present)’
It’s easy to create a ‘democracy’ that suits you if you remove the population who previously lived there. That removal of a certain ethnic group is, by definition, genocide.
Also, being a democracy isn’t the defence you appear to think it is. If the majority of a country’s people vote for a racist, fascist (again, by definition) government, and then a majority continue to support the government when they deliberately kill tens of thousands of children, it says a lot about that country. (It also says a lot about the people who still support that country and laud its democracy.)
Israel is NOT a democracy. Almost half of the people who live under Israeli control, the ~6.5M Palestinians (Muslim, Christian, Samaritan, Druze) do NOT have the same rights as the ~7.3M Jewish Israelis. They do not have the right of return. They are not permitted to buy land from the JNF. Their villages and towns often receive second-class (or worse) access to municipal services.
Worse, 4.4M people – who must PAY TAXES to Israel – get NO VOTE. Many of them are subject to BRUTAL Israeli oppression, from both the military directly and the state-backed “settlers” (i.e., vicious fascist thugs). Their land is stolen, day after day, piece by piece, and the Israeli legal system gives them no recourse.
It is utterly laughable to say that a state that maintains nearly half the populace in its bailiwick to varying degrees of second-or-worse class status, including excluding nearly 1/3 of them from voting, is in any way “democratic”. Only the ignorant or deranged could claim it is a democracy.
@james
A democracy isn’t defined by “elections”. There are heaps of factors which make mere “elections” not that relevant (happening in many oppressive regimes… hey, by the way, ya know that Putin won elections in 2024 whereas Ukraine and Israel are “postponing” expected elections on different levels? Which frankly doesn’t make of Russia more of a democracy, although it indeed says enough about the other couple of countries, especially Israel, given their very different conditions).
Israel currently has a shocking level of internal repression which makes it nearly impossible to consider it a proper democracy unless your judgement is guided by geopolitical interests (normally the key factor which ahem “helps” people to see clearly how democratic are the “good” countries and why the rest are “dictatorships” or “totalitarian” etc.)
Let me add about “functioning democracies” that when Egypt had started to have one, a military coupe approved by “Western democracies” prevented them from trying. Lebanon is another country facing a terrible crisis also thanks to their good neighbours and “friend countries”, but at least they started voting again and when people protest, well, politicians do resign. Not that bad, if you care about democracy! Turkey is currently a (terrible) candidate… which, sadly enough, Israel can’t easily “beat” anymore in a direct comparison. Even Iran despite suffering military attacks from the usual suspects has been holding elections. Analysts highlighted the low percentage of voters, and rightly so!… but few cared about it when the same figures were registred, say, in a series of key regional elections in Italy this week 😉
Will be closing the comments as there are better places to argue over the definition of a democracy and the Israel-Palestine conflict, especially with readers now bringing up religion. These comments rarely calm down, they tend to double down.
One of the backers of the UAE team – he effectively controls Colnago too – is the country’s security chief so there are direct links to UAE’s internal and foreign policies. Similarly search online for “UAE and Wagner” and results aren’t tickers for Parsifal in an Abu Dhabi concert hall.
Meanwhile the sport is governed by the UCI which is part of the IOC and so constitutionally bound to include the likes of North Korea rather than rate nations and sponsors. It can see naive but if you tried to have an Olympics of nice countries it would be a small games and presumably dwarfed by a newly-created Earth Games backed by China and others.
A breakaway cycling league could try this but right now the only option seems to be a Saudi-financed one so backed by a regime that’s arguably more repressive than UAE.
Unfortunately, you’re right, Mr. Ring. Using cycling for sportwashing is utterly disgusting, but with the IOC in charge, it’s nearly impossible to stop. 🙁
We’ll see if the protests continue if Adams and others remain owners or significant sponsors of the team. Because it won’t have the same visibility nor be the same project, you might have to be a cycling insider to spot this. But if people feel they’ve been duped this can amplify the frustration.
You could see with music festivals how people tracked the money behind relatively mute corporate names and Chinese box structures.
But in this case it might be difficult even for insiders to spot it… if Adams really keeps a very low profile. Besides, if the team is not really promoting or “normalising” Israel, protesting against it would be scaling up to a different level of boikot (the same as seen on the above named music festivals, or more extreme even… because no entity is really making money with a cycling team ^___^).
It’s “Boycott”.
It’s from the surname of an English land agent in Ireland, Charles Boycott, who was shunned by everyone around in retaliation for him working for the landlords who were evicting poor tenant farmers in the Land War in Ireland in the wake of the Great Hunger (i.e. famine) in Ireland in the 19th Century.
To Boycott someone is to repeat what was done to Charles Boycott.
If it was just about getting a world tour team on the cheap they should have got Jayco. If your willing to take on the considerable team debt i imagine 1$ would be enough.
There appeared to be no suggestion the Israel sponsor was looking to back out so perhaps this is a way to back out without actually doing so.
Looking at the first paragraph i thought you were going to say Gerry had offloaded the team.
It had a reasonable chance of shutting down last month but it was probably cheaper to keep going then to pay out all the contracts. I would be amazed if Jayco makes it to 2026 under the current ownership.
makes it to 2027 i meant. times go to fast as you get older.
Classic cycling story. Nebulous, possibly sketchy entity gets into the sport because…um…we’re not sure. It seems like there is more to the story than we know at this juncture. From what I understand about NSN, I can’t understand why they would want to get involved in the pro peloton. There certainly doesn’t appear to be a big pot o’ gold at the end of the rainbow.
This is definitely a case where “following the money” could be fascinating—if only a financial journalist worth his salt would take it on.
Having turned off the comments here I was going to reply along the lines of “someone could get a scoop by going to Denia” as the gossip was Sylvan Adams is at the IPT team camp and already riding their 2026 Scott bike. So reopening comments to reply belatedly.
Escape Collective have now published this so Marca’s idea of Adams “disappearing” from the team may not be true. But there’s a range of hypotheses here, from Adams showing up to ride with what is still his team until 1 January… or that he’s still a benefactor of the team for 2026 and beyond.
What’s odd is that days later there’s no news on the team, no project or plan. You’d have thought NSN and Stoneweg would be explaining their plans but nothing. So maybe some version of the latter hypothesis looks more likely?
Comments closing again.
Stoneweg & it’s other partner in the SWI Group have interests in Ferrari Formula 1 racing –
https://scuderiafans.com/charles-leclerc-and-frederic-vasseur-join-forces-in-business-with-swi-group/
Interesting that they seem to be going down the OneCycling path, “enhance the group’s positioning in areas that combine audience engagement with new financial models” and “initiatives involving sports technology, immersive content, and innovative fan economy models—an area gaining traction in the age of digital interactivity and engagement.”
Forgot to post – Stoneweg CEO might have been born Spanish (like his interesting father), but is now a Swiss citizen.
Visionary thinking or word salad – you be the judge!
Yep! ^___^
Talking about local identity, just a couple of days after the announcement of NSM as new sponsor, the team extended contracts for 2026 with the three israeli riders in their roster: Itamar Einhorn, Oded Kogut and Nadav Raisberg.
The largest groups now are: 5 britons, 3 canadians, 3 aussies and 3 israelis.
There is a – slight or not, depending, I suppose, on how one wishes to view this – possibility that those contracts were signed earlier, perhaps in October, but not made public then.
It certainly appears to be the fashion among the pro teams that new signings and extensions are announced over a period of time, probably to get a nice steady flow of publicity.
Don’t know for these deals but as you say this often happens and it’s happening a lot this year. I know of some riders who re-signed in the summer have seen their deals announced recently.
In fact normally a team has to renew a rider by 30 September so announcements now are de facto deals done months ago. Also any team that did leave their riders out in the cold, perhaps with a reduced offer, and then gets them to sign in late November would be pretty harsh.