Nike, Specialized, and Vollering: FDJ-Suez’s Off-Season Masterclass
Why FDJ-Suez have already won 2025.
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They signed Nike, they signed Specialized, and they signed the most important rider in the sport. They exhibited a masterclass in activation and sports marketing. And, most importantly they’ve put themselves in the driving seat to win the world’s biggest bike race.
Hardly a pedal has been turned in the Women’s World Tour this year, but we can already count FDJ-Suez as one of the winners. Whatever happens on the road this season, they’ve already played a blinder.
On and off the field, it has been a masterclass. Other teams should get their notepads out and study—allow me to explain.
The Vollering Impact
The rumours in the press this summer were that Demi Vollering was about to be the first million-euro rider in women’s cycling.
Even if you take Demi Vollering out of the equation, FDJ-Suez has one of the best teams in the world. If you add Demi Vollering to the equation, they have a team which you would never-ever bet against winning the sport’s biggest race: the Tour de France.
A French team has never won the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift (TDFFaZ), and it’s been close to forty years since they won the men’s edition. FDJ-Suez, whether they outwardly admit it or not, are all in for the Tour.
Vollering is the biggest name in women’s stage racing. She won the TDFFaZ by over three minutes in 2023, and if it wasn’t for *that* crash in 2024, she’d have comfortably won last year’s edition too. She’s simply the best. She also wins a whole lot of other races each year, but the Tour’s the biggie.
The thing with Demi is she doesn’t just bring herself, the world’s best cyclist, to the team. She brings her sponsors too…
Introducing Specialized, and Nike
Specialized is arguably the biggest brand in the cycling world, and it’s almost certain that Demi Vollering has a personal contract with them. This effectively means that if a rider wants to move teams, the bike brand also goes with them. See the Pidcock scenario this past winter.
FDJ-Suez moving to Specialized doesn’t just mean a change of bikes, it’s a guaranteed investment in performance. You’ll struggle to find a team that gets slower after moving to Specialized. At the very very least, expect the team to be better time-triallists in 2025.
Then, Nike.
This is the first time in cycling’s history that Nike have had an official partnership with a team. It’s hard to put into words how important that is. They’re the biggest sporting brand in the world, and it arguably says more about cycling that it took this many years for them to spend their dollars.
[Ed. After a few messages, I’m not 100% sure if it is the first time in cycling’s history that Nike have held an official partnership in cycling. Need to research this one further.]
It’s funny, Nike is far from the coolest brand in the world. They’re not the most stylish, or fashionable either. But, in sports culture, a Nike sponsorship is just about the biggest thing you can sign.
The Women’s World Tour is growing at an insane rate and Nike’s investment has just legitimised it even further.
The Activation
This is where I’m going to geek out. I love athlete marketing and if you read my previous article, you’ll know my belief that sponsorship without activation is worthless. I don’t know who’s been in charge of FDJ-Suez’s marketing strategy for the last few months, but they deserve a raise.
It was first rumoured in April that Vollering would head to FDJ-Suez, and by the end of summer, it was the worst-kept secret in the peloton. The team stood strong and refused to make a statement.
It wasn’t until October 28th, months after the rumours, and in cycling’s slow news season, that Demi was announced. With Vollering moving over, everyone was 95% certain that the team would be going to Specialized too, yet FDJ-Suez stood strong once again.
December 10th, the Specialized announcement came with a YouTube video from the home of the Californian bike brand. Interestingly, the video starts with the team’s new star running - not cycling - around San Francisco.
Then, January 7th, Nike. Another 10/10 launch. Simple but effective.
This may all sound a little silly, but cycling’s off-season is slow. By drip-feeding the announcements over the course of ten weeks, FDJ-Suez ensured the whole winter’s narrative was about them. Simple, but clever.
In the background, there’s so much more going on. There are behind-the-scenes YouTube videos from the team’s training camp in Calpe and the team’s Instagram page that isn’t traditional (boring) pro-cycling.
This is what I like most about the FDJ-Suez campaign, none of it has been traditional pro-cycling.
The bike sponsor announcement didn’t include a bike for the first 56-seconds of the bideo, the Nike announcement was the opposite of curated, and their kit announcement had one of their rider’s wearing jeans, not lycra.
Road cycling media is traditionally dull. For some reason, both teams and brands like to stick to photoshoots and announcements that we’ve all seen a hundred times before and generate next to no attention. Of course, it helps when you have the biggest names in the sport, but execution still matters. It would have been oh so easy to do this all the traditional way.
As for whoever their creative director/ strategist was, I want them to advise me on my privateer racing content strategy, and once again, they need a raise.
Just a little note, the team also have a worldie of a slogan: Tomorrow is decided today.
The Signings
Back to the sporting side, Demi Vollering is taking the headlines and rightly so, but away from the Dutchwoman, I have to tip my hat to the team’s other savvy hirings
Juliette Labous, the current French national road champion was a coup. Then there’s Elise Chabbey, the Swiss rider who has been to the Olympics in two(!) different sports (slalom-canoe and cycling), and she’s also a qualified doctor. Finally there’s double Olympic medallist, and double Track World Champion, Ally Wollaston. The Kiwi arguably the leader of the next generation of sprinters.
It’s easy to forget the already signed Evita Muzic. The French super-climber finished 4th overall in last year’s Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. Grace Brown’s departure is a shame but he retired at the top of her game as Olympic and World Champion.
In 2025, FDJ-Suez will have the riders who finished 2nd, 4th, and 9th at last year's Tour de France. Two of those riders are French, something which is very important if you’re a French team…
My Thoughts:
Investment
There’s been an injection of cash into this team. Even if Vollering’s rumoured million euro salary isn’t true, it won’t be far off. With their other signings, we’re talking an increase in wage bill.
Why did Demi choose FDJ?
If we’re presuming she has a personal contract with Specialized, then they were on the negotiation table. If we’re also presuming that Nike were at least a part of the conversation, then she had an insane negotiation hand. What other teams was she talking to?
But, only two years?
Merely an observation, but in a sport that has finally come to terms with putting longer term contracts on the table, it seems strange that Vollering only signed for two-years. It could be because salaries in the WWT are rapidly rising and she wants to renegotiate in whatever the 2027 market looks like…
Why did Nike become a team sponsor?
This is the first time in cycling history that Nike has officially partnered with a pro team. They’ve sponsored individual athletes: Lance Armstrong, Mark Cavendish, Demi Vollering - but never their teams. Why now?
Grace Brown?
Although she’s now retired, did Grace Brown winning Olympic Gold, World Championships and Liege-Bastogne-Liege activate certain clauses in the team’s sponsorship contracts that gave them a bigger budget in 2025?
The Next Superteam?
There is no doubt that FDJ-Suez are now the stage-racing superteam. What will the other teams do? Will we see wages rise in the WWT because of this?
Team Sky-ification?
Are we about to see the Team Sky-ification of the WWT in stage races? Hire a team of riders that could be GC leaders in their own right, and put them in support of the world’s best GC leader. I think I’ve seen this show before.
What’s Next?
There’s almost guaranteed success on their horizon: a team of superstars and a stable of sponsors that are household names. FDJ-Suez has gone from being a respected mid-high level team, to one that’s turning heads. It’ll likely be even easier for them to recruit new talent and sponsors in 2026.
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I’m a privateer pro-cyclist and when I’m not racing myself, can often be found writing about athlete marketing and sponsorship.
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I thought Nike made the US postal service jerseys for lance ?
Nike wore US postal (after discovery channel) and also the Spanish ONCE team for a short period of time.