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.
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!
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.
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.