Having looked at the team sponsors and what they do the other day, time to reprise a post from February looking at the sponsorship prospects, the topic keeps coming up with several teams facing financial challenges and things have changed since then.
As ever the point here is not to shout “fire” in a crowded place and spread doom. It’s just a look at the issues ahead and how some teams have challenges to solve.
At the end of last year Picnic-PostNL only got a one year licence from the UCI. Teams might get a three year licence but they’re subject to annual review in October so this was an unhelpful public sword of Damocles hanging over the squad. The team has a side-hustle in selling off riders which reached a new level with the sale of Oscar Onley to Ineos, generating millions in revenue. But this probably only backfilled previous losses. Fabio Jakobsen is on the last year of big contract and once this is up the team can reap big savings. But the teams results have been dire which makes asking backers to renew harder.
Bahrain-Victorious is code for Bahrain-Your Name Here and the team has been open about wanting a co-sponsor but so far nobody. One factor is any potential co-sponsor is going to have their brand in lights alongside a repressive state, a juxtaposition that limits the appeal. An extra headwind is the geopolitical tension in the region, the US war on Iran is seeing Bahrain under attack from Tehran and this has already caused delayed wages for the riders.
EF Education First-Easypost has gone public to find a co-sponsor. It’s not clear if Easypost is stopping but the the point is EF is willing to become the junior partner in naming rights if the team can find a new backer. A lot hinges on this because if they can land one then the team can get added financial firepower, right now it can sustain a grand tour GC challenge with Richard Carapaz and in Ben Healy it has as solid chance of a Tour de France stage win too, short of hiring Jonathan Milan or Tadej Pogačar. The unspoken part is if no sponsor is found then will EF continue to shoulder all the costs or is it cutting back?
As said here a few times last year you could see a few dark clouds for Visma-Lease a Bike. The jersey is getting crowded with logos as the team seeks as much revenue as possible, costs have been cut with riders unloaded. Now Visma wants to stand down as the lead sponsor and so far there’s no news of a replacement sponsor. Talks are always going well says the team but there’s a soft deadline in August for this and the harder deadline of October is going to rush up. It ought to be an easy sell but that makes it a bellwether case. The team is part-owned by a billionaire but is Robert van der Wallen willing to be a sugardaddy on the hook to preserve the team’s top-tier status?
Groupama-FDJ have a joint sponsorship agreement that runs until the end of 2027. That sounds like a long time away but now is the time to review this and here comes the problem. The costs of backing the team go up and up thanks to galloping rider wage inflation but the results have gone in the other direction, especially after Thibaut Pinot left. This makes for a difficult conversation with sponsors for this team and others. Harder still, they haven’t won a Tour stage since 2018. The development team is a calling card as it can unearth talent but it’s also a cost to run it.
Lotto-Intermarché is newly formed from the merger and so for now there’s no worry. But is it a sustainable project? Time will tell but Lotto brings a political angle as the Belgian state lottery funding means the team’s funding is a national affair and comes with scrutiny from politicians. Like other teams can the costs of backing the project can keep rising but will politicians support this? Earlier this year it was thinking aloud to suggest Intermarché as a French sponsor will want more French riders and this is now becoming a reality with their interventions in the rider market but this leaves Lotto shopping for an even balance of Flemish and Walloon Belgians and so a structural fault line. Again nothing disastrous but an issue to manage.
At the start of the year one question was if Soudal-Quickstep would keep Soudal as a sponsor given company founder Vic Swerts has been keen to support Remco Evenepoel and now he’s gone would Swerts stay? For now yes and the change instead is Quick-Step is stopping its sponsorship and will replaced by Safety Jogger. Hardly a big name but very much inline with the team’s blue collar work kit image.
NSN? In a sport driven by naming rights, being called Never Say Never is bold. There is a concept of having a cycling team that is not a textile billboard. Instead the strength comes from establishing a visual identity so strong that you don’t have to read “Soudal” on the shorts or “Tudor” on a jersey because you’ve already thought it. However this squad appears to be more like “Never Say Israel” and a rebrand to keep protestors away. It is backed by some wealthy companies and individuals but what they’re getting back isn’t clear. Can they find an outside sponsor?
Jayco-Al Ula had a wobble on the final approach to World Tour registration for last year but in the end Jerry Ryan came good and backed the team. But it came close to stopping, this was not an admin bungle. Ryan is another backer confronted with rising costs but diminishing returns and set to exit the sport in the coming years. One sign of the retreat is the team is stopping its collaboration with the Hagens Bermen Axeon development team, and this is significant if the path for picking up talent, especially Australian, is closed.
Uno-X have the same issue as Jayco when it comes to recruiting home talent and only compounded since they only hire Norwegian and Danish riders although according to Daniel Benson’s newsletter, this could extend to Norwegian speakers with Magnus Sheffield. Anyway, how long can a relatively small business sustain a World Tour team?
Have Netcompany-Ineos solved their sponsorship issues? At the start of the year the thinking was Ineos could exit and be replaced by TotalEnergies once the French oil major’s title sponsorship of the French ProTeam ends. Only Ineos is still here but in came Danish IT company Netcompany. The question is what TotalEnergies does next, it’s probably needed if the team is to retain its position in the top tier budgets and a long term committent could help the team rebuild.
XDS-Astana seem to be thriving as a team. But can this sustain the sponsorship? XDS is the Chinese bike company with eyes on mimicking the growth story of Giant, selling everything from kids bikes to World Tour team issue bikes and keen to do this in its own name rather than as an OEM manufacturer. But funding a World Tour team is an expensive way to do this, it can easily cost ten times more. Canyon and Specialized find it more efficient to supply two teams each; there’s only Trek left and now it’s junior partner; Decathlon is a sponsor but to promote wider retail sales. Plus there’s Kazakh political risk, the team can promote the nation and its sovereign wealth fund but is down to three Kazakhs now.
New to the watchlist is Movistar after Bloomberg reported in June that the Spanish telecoms operator is “seeking to either sell its sponsorship contract, which includes naming rights for the Movistar Team and runs through 2029, or to bring on other sponsors to shares costs”. The interesting thing is the news here almost isn’t news, they’ve long been looking for a co-sponsor so seeing this idea floated suggests something is up. One concern for the team has been whether bike brand Canyon would continue given they have plenty of exposure from backing Alpecin but they’ve signed Paula Blasi for the women’s team and she’s such a promising – and already delivering – talent that this ought to entice the company to be a core backer.
Conclusion
There’s more money than ever coming into the sport. It’s boom time and you would not believe how many riders are on million Euro contracts or more; the data isn’t available, but the anecdotes of talented but relatively unremarkable riders on seven figure contracts suggest wages keep soaring. Set against this, this blog post can feel like pointing out the lone cloud in the sky on a summer’s day.
But it’s not poking around for the sake of finding negatives, indeed one team has been put on notice by the UCI and others have gone public about needing to find extra funding. The inexorable rise in costs means many team managers are having to ask sponsors for more only knowing they’re delivering less in terms of results in a sport dominated by some big names. So these are stories to watch and just like that cloud on the horizon, sometimes it billows up into something stormier.
These posts always break my heart.
I feel so sorry for all those struggling to keep teams afloat.
Genuine question. UAE is also in the Middle East (like Bahrain) and is even nearer to where the fighting is and the Straits of Hormuz. Yet no funding issues for them. Are Bahrain just tight and penny-pinching whereas the UAE are happy to fund for the obvious publicity from constant Pogacar wins? Would Bahrain be more generous if they had their own Pog?
The UAE have obviously been through a big economic shock too. Reuters is reporting they – including “TBZ” the prince connected to the team – are willing to pay Iran billions in order to de-escalate the tensions:
via Reuters.
Back to the peloton and having Pogačar does make a difference. It’s common to see backing coming in when there’s a big name rider like this; see Evenepoel at Quick-Step. Decathlon and CMA CGM should be willing to do the same etc
I swear I don’t want to keep banging on about Pog being boring, but the way the Tour is ridden these days absolutely has an impact on the sponsors of smaller teams. When five or fewer teams hoover up all of the wins and thus all of the attention, what does that leave a team like Cofidis or Groupama? This is purely anecdotal, but my experience of the past few Tours has been that many of the teams don’t even seem to be in the race. I’m not suggesting that UAE need to do anything differently, but it does seem like a clear danger for the teams that seemingly can’t make an impact on the race.
What is the solution? A salary cap? English club rugby introduced one years ago and there was huge controversy when the leading team (Saracens) sidestepped it (well, they cheated). Policing it is incredibly hard. Similarly, the one introduced for F1 looks to have serious loopholes (e.g. some teams have subsidiary companies that could theoretically spend big on developing the car without the team itself paying a penny) – again, policing this seems fraught with challenges. Additionally, some things like driver salary are exempt anyway so the top teams can inevitably lock in the best talent regardless of the salary cap.
On the other hand, the cap in F1 probably saved at least a couple of teams from going out of business (and the whole sport is inexplicably popular and wealthy at the moment, despite years of gimmicky and dull contests). One of the drawbacks of the salary cap for the English premiership rugby teams is that top players are enticed away to other country’s leagues (e.g. France, where there is no cap), which is to the detriment of the national team – obviously this wouldn’t be an issue in WT cycling.
I think it’s worth considering – but although UAE have ridiculous strength in depth (and presumably pay top dollar/euro/shekel), Pogacar seems like he could win without a team and we’d be in the same moaning boat. I bet he’d ride for far less money too!
I’ve heard talk of a budget cap, which I think is a good idea. I heard Gianetti talking about it and disagreeing with it, which reinforced my support. For me it’s not about Pog, who is simply the best of the best. I just don’t want to see riders like McNulty and Wellens crushing breakaways at will.
A budget cap is being looked at with a view to adopting it. But cycling generally works when teams, organisers, riders and the UCI agree. If one of these groups opposes then things stall or fail. Some teams are against the cap, including some medium sized teams. It’s not clear what position the CPA rider union has.
Then if you can agree it in principle, working out all the details gets hard. Can every team budget be audited. What level? What about riders who are paid in part off-the-books like Van der Poel paid by Canyon?
More at https://inrng.com/2024/03/budget-caps/
Top14 has a salary cap of €11 Mio. There are additional credits for international players but that doesn’t impact on the clubs ability to attract overseas players.
A savvy businessman will always look to buy something cheaper then it’s really worth, so Ivan Glasenberg at Q36.5 might splash out in the near future.
I’d never heard of XDS until they sponsored Astana.
If XDS can setup a sales & support organization in USA, I think they could get some decent market share.
I’ve been following US prices on bare framesets, and Specialized, Trek, etc, are absurdly expensive — around $1K more than Giant’s equivalent framesets. If XDS was priced comparable to Giant, it’d be a good start for XDS.
Specialized and Trek are riding a speculative wave which they fostered as it strengthened their dominant position both in sales and, even more important, among suppliers.
I just hope that the wave opens up a tube below which other brands can ride to survive and grant us some tech diversity, or less of an oligopoly.
You can now get xds in the us, less than 5k for the top complete bike. I gather they’re selling quickly.
But I haven’t compared the specs with what Astana are riding.
And I’m not sure about warranty (perhaps that was your point:sorry!)
Warranty, parts, and service support.
I know two guys who had small cracks develop in their Specialized frames, one at the bottom bracket and the other at top of seat tube (IIRC).
Specialized promptly replaced both frames with no hassles or headaches for the owners.
Like INRNG, coming about this from a quisitive way – but I wonder how teams go about identifying potential sponsors? There must be some sort of limitation for teams with a strongly national identity around the pool they can approach and the type of businesses with the pockets deep enough to fund even a middling concern. Groupama-FDJ and TotalEnergies reaching out to the same potential French partners. The Belgian teams, who have previously arm-wrestled over the sources of funding (Soudal stepping across). As an example, looking at the TdF from 20 years ago, there are some familiar faces and types of sponsor (lotteries, phone companies, passion projects from rich enthusiasts) but also others which you wouldn’t seen near a WT or PT team (dairy companies, agricultural tubing) in this day-and-age.
It’s very open. Some teams use marketing agencies, I think Ineos got Total this way; Ag2r hired an agency to land Citroen. Sometimes there can be personal connections or network effects, eg CMA CGM came on board because they know Decathlon. As you say the sport has probably outgrown some of the smaller companies before. We’re seeing bigger names like Lidl and Decathlon coming in, and buying ownership too, but Safety Jogger is hardly blue chip.
In the women’s side FDJ-Suez is an interesting project. FDJ might feel obliged as a national project but Suez is a multinational looking for marketing and the team has France’s version of Visa, CB. Plus they’ve re-signed Demi Vollering and squared some of the tax issues French teams face with this.
Perhaps this was answered at some point, what do Picnic PostNL need to do to meet their license review? No points review, just show they have secured funding for the next one or two years? And if they fail to do so, or only come up with a portion of the funds, what happens next?
It’s not been answered as it’s not public but I think it’s all about stabilising the finances. Selling Oscar Onley has helped and I cut out a reference from the post earlier this spring where PostNL is said to be keen to continue but Dutch media are today reporting this is more and more likely and the personal finance company Raisin which sponsored the team in the Giro could become more involved.
I had read that Quickstep had renewed until 2030. BUT….Quick-Step has renewed its sponsorship of the Soudal cycling team through 2030, but will step down as the primary title sponsor after 24 years. Starting in 2027, the team will rebrand as Soudal Safety Jogger, with the Quick-Step brand remaining as a smaller sponsor prominently featured on the race kit.
I have a soft spot for smaller teams and I imagine not just wage inflation but technical and training advances have put a real squeeze on even midsize teams. But hasn’t this sponsorship problem been around for ages? Does anyone remember the sponsorship travails of small to midsize teams 10, 20, 50 years ago? Whatever happened to Inoxpran, Vitalicio Seguros, Jolly Club 88, Atala? Except for the big teams everyone has always seemed to be a year or two from extinction — and even big teams are not immune (where are Peugeot, Renault, etc now?) Is it really so different now?
Good point and budgets have tended to go up and up. I think it’s just proving difficult now because of the rate of inflation in team budgets. Ask a sponsor for €10 million today and you need €12, then €15 million from them very soon, or at least this has been the way this decade. It is making things more brittle.
But we see things move. Sky/Ineos are no longer the dominant team, Decathlon are growing. Red Bull was tiny NetApp not long ago.
But it’s not all money, Uno-X are a different example but show how a coherent project can deliver; XDS-Astana did this last year. Having a big budget is good but there’s more, teams need a project, a purpose and an identity. Ineos for example seem short here.
I wonder why it’s becoming so much harder for teams to secure sponsors (I’m assuming it’s harder than in the pre-aughts when I started following cycling). I imagine it’s some combination of (1) changes in the ways companies advertise, (2) rising budgets, (3) doping scandals, (4) more diverse nationalities of riders making it harder to use teams to target specific regional markets (this one feels like a stretch) (5) and macroeconomic conditions (inflation, consolidation of $ in the tech industry, etc). Anything else to add? Most of these are pretty hard to change. I honestly have zero ideas about whether there might be different models for making teams more sustainable other than praying for more billionaires developing an interest in cycling or team budget caps, which would cost the top riders quite a lot of money.
To be clear, I’d really like more nationality diversity in the peloton and think that building an audience in new markets is the best way to open up more opportunities for sponsors in the long run.
The main difficulty is rising costs from wage inflation but fewer results. A handful of teams are taking a lot of the wins so the other teams have to go to sponsors to ask for more just to be able to deliver less. But still they deliver something, it can be a good proposition and depends on the sponsor.
In US team sports, scarcity and high barriers to entry have driven massive asset appreciation for team owners, many of whom became billionaires purely through their franchises. Part of this team value is tied to the quality of their stadiums, which local cities naively fund without demanding equity or warrants in return.
This contrast was not lost on cycling team managers. It’s exactly why initiatives like Velon popped up in an attempt to build a more stable franchise model (which has found a bit of footing with the current three-year UCI license cycles). Jonathan Vaughters has done a great job describing this uphill battle, and a well-known blogger out of Boulder has shared plenty of sharp opinions on the matter as well.
I seem to remember Vaughters saying his current sponsors are happy to continue funding a small world tour team. But they are willing to step aside if a big sponsor comes in which could allow the team to compete with the big-budget teams. If that is true, then their situation may not be too bad.
Is there a minimum roster of teams needed to make a race valid. The funding position look precarious. Presumably it will resolve somehow (much smaller budgets maybe). Having followed the sport for many decades it always reads as very precarious. If we were left with the big budget teams only would the spectacle be as good would the surviving teams field a larger rider roster to fill out the peloton. If the tour wanted to be leaner and greener could logistics be pooled to reduce the truck count. I was watching a Jumbo video where they walked round their fleet, quite crazy how many vehicles they have (including a freezer van just for staples)
On sponsorship tangent I’m always surprised by brands that aren’t there but feel like they should be. Bosch is a very profitable company and one of the leading manufacturers of EV motors, the synergy seems great. Lime bikes is another and many of the big logistics groups use pedal delivery in cities. The value seems good compared to putting a small logo on an F1 car as well
I am a little surprised that more motorhome manufacturers aren’t active in cycling. While Jayco from Australia is involved, as far as I know, their products are not available in Europe. The routes of the Tour and many other races are lined with motorhomes, suggesting that a company in this sector could effectively reach it’s target audience through sponsorship.
It’s happened before with the Adria team. A team though is expensive*. Watching French coverage at the moment they have ads for camping cars so trying to reach the audience this way; before Thomas Voeckler used to be an “ambassador” for one brand.
* Not in the market but have a look how much camping cars cost and it’s eye-watering for what you think at first glance is a van fitted with a plastic kitchen. Obviously more to it for the money but with the possible revenues maybe they could be a sponsor?
Adria belongs to the French Trigano Group, which reportedly generates annual revenue of more than 3 billion euros. The German Erwin Hymer Group—part of the US-based THOR Group—generates revenue of 3 billion dollars, while the Knaus Tabbert Group posts figures of around 1 billion euros. However, the entire industry is facing problems similar to those seen in the bicycle sector: after years of a boom, the market is showing signs of saturation.
I read tabout Midea, a Chinese OEM manufacturer of home appliances, that wants to start selling under its own brand. It is a huge company, €50 billion in income last year, and they are the new shirt sponsor for FC Barcelona. https://www.football-espana.net/2025/09/02/barcelona-announce-new-e60m-shirt-sponsorship-agreement
Their fist push in Europe is with mobile air conditioners, a huge growth market in Europe. I was thinking: “Sponsor a cycling team! They bring mobile aircos with them anyway, so they are great brand ambassadors. Set up fan areas cooled with Midea aircos and with Midea fridges in them.” But China is football mad and not so much a cycling country, so I wonder if the CEO and/or market director even thought about it.
The other side of the discussion, is that there are plenty of Pro-teams looking to be promoted to the world tour. And many of these teams seem to have a lot of money behind them.
People like Vaughters and Plugge might not like it, but their has always been old teams not continuing, and new teams arriving. Fundementally, the teams are replaceable.
The evidence shows that enabling teams to develop equity value is a better solution for the sustainability of sports. The value could be accretive to both ASO and teams. The UCI president is to weak. The majority of cycling aficionados lack business strategy acumen, let alone venturing into journals to follow unknown thought leaders.
Thought should always be situated. While some analysis apply to the USA context pretty much as well as to the European one (example, this fine explanation of a fundamental difference between ball teams and cycling ones 😉 : “Part of this team value is tied to the quality of their stadiums, which local cities naively fund without demanding equity or warrants in return.”), instead other theoretical strategies need to be checked against different variables (speculative finance has a different role and weight in USA or Europe).
That said, I think that both points above are actually interesting, but my take is the political facet of it all: teams’ power is clearly on the up in this specific historical moment, so while it’s evident that they want to take the most advantage of it, it’s quite as obvious that both organisers and the UCI have their doubts and will react accordingly. Especially organisers know that if the UCI was at war again with the teams, the nuclear button (now not exclusively at Aigle anymore, but…) would damage greatly their business. The current truce requires a subtle balance between involved parties.