The simple answer is €218,000, about US$305,000. But before you rush out the door for a training session, note this is the average salary in the bunch and averages ignore detail. Simply put a few riders earn millions whilst most collect more modest pay.
The video above is an advert from Škoda, a car brand belonging to the Volkswagen group. Once infamous held up as examples of why the Soviet Union was doomed Škoda is a modern European manufacturing success story.
Earlier today saw a small press release from Tour de France organisers ASO that French clothing company Le Coq Sportif is to provide the leaders jerseys in all ASO races from 2012 onwards, meaning the yellow jersey will no longer be provided by Nike.
I put the news of this deal out on Twitter as it’s interesting (to me at least) for several reasons:
Component maker SRAM has announced it is going to float on a US stock exchange, that its current owners are selling the business and new shareholders will be able to buy a slice of the company.
When a company does this it has to give comprehensive information in a prospectus so that investors can get a picture of what they might be buying in to. This document runs to hundreds of hundreds of pages and it’s mostly a dull read. But here are some snippets worth sharing:
Like any industry, the bicycle sector is a broad one and international, with sophisticated supply chains going around the world. There are so many companies from garage artisan frame builders to corporate giants quoted on several stock exchanges at once.
I’ve put together a list of some of the main companies involved and the brands they operate. You might find some surprises, for example that Lapierre is Dutch-owned and part of the same corporate empire as Tunturi gym bikes. Or that helmets from Giro and Bell are from the same company.
No this isn’t retail, this is corporate deal making. In more business news UK online retailer Wiggle could be up for sale with a price tag of 200 million pounds (€225m / $325m) according to one business blogger. That’s one very big shopping basket.
If you’ve got a good invention in the cycle trade, don’t be surprised to get a call from someone at SRAM to meet up one day. Whether it’s over lunch or dinner a takeover deal might be on the menu. That’s what’s happened to Quarq, SRAM have just announced a deal to buy the US power meter company. It’s the latest in a line of deals by SRAM, from Sachs to Zipp.
There’s a new Swiss sports event management company called Global Cycling Promotions SA. Big deal you might say, after all there are many sports promotion businesses around the world. But there’s difference here: GCP is owned by the UCI.
It’s a curious situation where the governing body owns a private promotion business. There’s no mention on the UCI website, at least I’ve had a trawl, used the UCI search feature and checked via google too where there’s only a press release that mentions Alain Rumpf’s dual role, as both UCI official and “Global Cycling Promotion Director”. Here’s hoping the UCI website gets updated and that the accounts are published too.
Team Sky continue to fascinate by their professionalism and new methods. The road team is just one visible element of the Sky sponsorship deal, the aim is also to back the Great Britain team ahead of the Olympics and the expected gold mine in the London velodrome. But for all the excitement generated by the arrival of a big sponsor into the sport, I wondered what financial interest Sky had in backing the sport.
But one big factor in the sponsorship isn’t business, it’s personal. Sky’s James Murdoch is a keen cyclist who rides a lot, doing the Etape du Tour and other cyclosportives as well as hanging out with his riders.
You might know Andy Rihs as the boss of BMC Racing but he’s become wealthy by creating a hearing aid company, Sonova. A Swiss company, Sonova is the world’s leading manufacturer in this sector. If you haven’t heard of it, you might have known it under its previous name of Phonak. The company was started by cycling aficionado and wealthiest man in cycling Andy Rihs, it’s grown from a tiny start-up into a medical electronics giant.
Only the company took a hit today with its CEO and CFO both tendering their resignations whilst Chairman Andy Rihs is to step down as a result of what the Financial Times calls “an insider trading probe”.