Happy New Year!
The season is now just two weeks away with the Tour Down Under. Today marks the day when riders officially start their new jobs and are able to wear the colours of their new teams. With this in mind, here is the list of 2012 Pro Tour team bikes.
Garmin-Cervélo was to become Garmin-Big Mat but the French building supplies firm pulled out, leaving the squad hunting for a new sponsor and with a hole in their budget. I wonder what happened to make the company back out, especially since there are reports of a “binding” letter. But that’s for another day.
Fortunately there is Doug Ellis (pictured left). The Chairman of Slipstream Sports and a very wealthy entrepreneur, he helped Jonathan Vaughters found the squad several years ago. But it means the team now joins the Sugardaddy club of squads dependent, partially or wholly, on wealthy backers.
The Geox-TMC team looks set to stop at the end of the year after its main sponsor pulled out at the eleventh hour. The squad’s management have been filing paperwork with the UCI as part of the registration process to ride in 2012 but when the matter of depositing the bank guarantee for the 2012 season arose the sponsor Geox refused to provide the necessary funding. Without this the team cannot continue.
The UCI is traditionally the governing body of the cycle sport but, via a subsidiary called Global Cycling Promotions, is now also staging the Tour of Beijing, making it not merely a governing body that sits above the sport but also a player on the ground with its own business interests.
This conflict of interest has worried some for a while. But now there could be evidence of the extraordinary steps the UCI is taking in order to further its commercial activities.
The Velocast has obtained a copy of the letter that appears to be sent from UCI President Pat McQuaid directly to team sponsors:
The UCI might declare the sport to be in a “golden age” but I see otherwise. Sponsors are staying away from the sport and teams are increasingly reliant on wealthy benefactors for funding. There’s nothing wrong with the sugar-daddy approach but it substitutes corporate sponsorship; many companies might find their audience demographic of cycling is ideal for them but right now they are watching instead of investing.
The shortage of sponsors means there’s still plenty of uncertainty for the 2012 season. Things might fall into place in time for the Tour Down Under but don’t forget a team costs millions to run. For me it seems quite off-putting that several squads don’t know for sure what they’ll be doing next year. If you want to spend millions on a team you need transparency and long term visibility.
I’m more interested in the Worlds right now but with allegations in the Corriere della Sera involving the notion of undeclared revenues and money being transferred around Europe, here’s quick mention of the subject of image rights.
As announced earlier today, CSE Pro Cycling LLC is proud to announce that RadioShack and Nissan are joining the Leopard-Trek World Tour Team as sponsors for the 2012 and 2013 seasons. The team will hold a license in Luxembourg and be named the RadioShack Nissan Trek Professional Cycling Team.
That’s the press release from 5 September announcing the team resulting in the “merger” of the Radioshack and Leopard teams. Note the long name of Radioshack Nissan Trek, a mouthful already.
In fact it’s undigestable. It’s been pointed out that the proposed team name w0n’t fly because UCI rules only allow for two sponsor names. Here’s the relevant bit:
One rider agent has denounced the “dictature of UCI points” when it comes to teams hiring riders. I’ve long suggested these ranking points are important, to the point of twisting incentives within the sport. But teams will recruit for other factors too. Obviously they want to hire riders capable of winning, or if not then good helpers. There are several other factors at play here. But one is nationality. Let’s take a look.
There’s an air of the obituary across newspapers, cycling news websites and fellow blogs. Everyone’s lamenting the announcement that the Highroad team could not find a replacement sponsor for HTC to keep the team going into 2012 and beyond. And many are asking aloud why such a good team could not find a replacement sponsor.
But one answer is that they never had sponsorship in place since the day the team started.
The Tour de France is bigger than anything else in the sport, it’s the race everyone’s heard of. As such it’s in a monopoly position and able to dominate the sport.
At the same time others in the race are struggling. Garmin-Cervélo have taken four stages so far and held the yellow jersey but the team’s finances are always under review, the constant need to hunt for new sponsors whilst juggling a big wage will means a team manager’s job is often as much about fundraising as it is tactics.
The difference between a wealthy Tour de France and teams hunting for money is now leading squads to lobby for a share of the TV rights enjoyed by the Tour de France’s owners.