The Women’s WorldTour: Growth, Fragility, and Opportunity
Chasing equality is not the answer; building a better system is.
This article was written months before the recent TDFFaZ, and originally appeared in my ‘Peloton Economy’ long read. That means a lack of any 2026 TDFFaZ content or reference to the FDJ Red Bull signing. I have a follow-up WWT piece to come next week.
The crux of my article is simple: I hope the WWT doesn’t sleepwalk into the men’s model while blindly chasing equality. Equality is not the answer here; building a better system is.
Thanks,
Joe
The Women’s WorldTour (WWT) is at a fork in the road. Not because it’s failing, but because it’s succeeding. After decades of underinvestment, the sport is growing fast; many argue too fast.
The WWT is a shining light of what professional cycling should look like. The racing is exciting, with (at the time of writing) neither the Tour de France Femmes, nor Paris-Roubaix ever having a repeat winner. The calendar is shorter, and easier to follow. The teams are smaller, which means the best riders face each other more often.
This is precisely why this moment matters, and why the WWT faces a choice. Equality says mirror the men’s WorldTour, and with it begin a long, but gradual suicide. Equity asks a different question: what structure gives this ecosystem the best chance of thriving long term?
The Tour-ning Point
The arrival of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift in 2021 was not just another race added to the WWT calendar. It altered the economics, visibility, and the expectations of the whole sport.
For the first time since 1989, when the ASO closed down the race as a cost cutting measure, women were to have their own multi-day Tour de France. The return of the race was a reminder of a broader truth: the Tour de France remains the most powerful force in cycling.
When the Tour de France stamps its mark, the sport follows. The race has always set the terms of the sport. Not just in prestige, but in what is considered worth watching, funding, and building around. The women’s race is now starting to do the same.
As much as ASO’s press release stated: “After having enriched its calendar with prestigious women’s events over the last few years, A.S.O. will accentuate its development in women’s cycling.” The return of the Tour de France Femmes was not them acting out of goodwill. A defining accelerant was the COVID-19 pandemic. With the road calendar suspended in 2020, racing moved to the online platform, Zwift.
Kate Veronneau, the Director of Women’s Strategy at Zwift explained her perspective of the race’s inception in an interview with ENVE Composites:
“We were forced to think differently during the pandemic. Everyone was on Zwift and everyone was hungry for racing so we put our heads together with ASO. It was simple to us: we’re doing it on Zwift, so we’re doing it by Zwift rules. That’s equal opportunities for men and women.
The shorter format of Zwift racing suited a lot of the female pros and they took full advantage of the opportunity. The women brought their best, and the racing was dynamic and exciting. That kicked off the conversation of bringing it into the real world. The proof of concept was there.”
Context is important and while there had been pressure on the ASO for years to hold a true Tour de France Femmes, there hadn’t been action. The pandemic altered the equation. Suddenly there was proof of concept and a committed financial backer in Zwift. It was an open goal for the ASO.
The packaging of the event tells the real story, Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift shows who did a lot of the commercial heavy lifting and the “Watch the Femmes” campaign that drove global attention was conceived and funded by Zwift.
It took decades of lobbying, a global pandemic and ultimately the funding of Zwift to alter the ASO’s policy of maintaining the status quo. While understanding how the race came about adds context, the important truth is simple: the race exists.
Rapid growth: a good problem to have?
The Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift has gone from strength to strength. Across the board, attention is growing. Four different winners in four years just adds to the positivity. It has also brought the Women’s WorldTour to an inflection point: it’s growing too fast.
“It truly did exceed all expectations - and I had high expectations.”, said Veronneau, “I thought it would take us longer to get to where we’re at right now. It’s incredibly exciting. At the same time, with that kind of rapid growth, it exposes some pains that need to be addressed.”
This is the tension at the heart of the Women’s WorldTour. Growth has always been the objective, but it has been delivered faster than anyone expected. The sport is more credible than ever before, but growth without structure is volatile. The ecosystem hasn’t had time to stabilise before being asked to scale.
As the commercial side of the sport tries to catch up to sporting ambition, teams are being pulled forward by rising costs. Rider salaries are up, there’s a deeper race calendar, and higher expectations, but there has not been the same acceleration in finances.
In an article for CyclingNews article, freelance journalist, Emma Magnus, analysed the financial problems of the WWT:
“[FDJ-Suez] are understood to have a budget of around €5 million, compared to the €7 to €8 million budgets of the richest teams. For over a decade, manager-owner Stephen Delcourt has factored in an annual budget increase of between 5 and 10 per cent – but in the last year alone, his costs have increased by 29 per cent.
“We are like a start-up without funds,” he says. “We play with money that we don’t have in our pockets. That’s dangerous. The consequence is that we have 15 WorldTour spots, and only 14 [teams] apply. We need to analyse that. We go too fast because we have no rules. There is space for the big teams, but for the others, there is no place.”
“There is a budget decision and a sports decision,” he said. “I really feel that if [costs] continue to increase at 29 per cent, I need to be calm and not go too fast. And with the new UCI rules, I want to be careful.”
If costs continue to grow at the rate Delcourt claims, team budgets will double every 2.7-years. If this rate of growth continued for a decade, something that is unreasonable to expect due to the law of compounding, but adds valid context, then FDJ-Suez’s €5m budget would be €63.8m by 2036.
It’s a basic business equation: if costs increase faster than revenue, you will go bankrupt. It’s not if, it’s when.
Also mentioned in Magnus’ article is an interview with the owner, Claude Sun, of the now defunct Ceratizit Pro Cycling team. “I can imagine that the UCI wanted to achieve the same level [as men] for women: teams, culture, budget.”, said Sun, “But they forgot one thing: the sponsor.”
In February 2025, the UCI announced a new regulation for the 2026 season. Women’s WorldTour teams may only miss one WorldTour race per season. The intention is to move closer to parity with the men’s regulations, but the impact has been significant, stretching both budgets and squad depth.
It’s widely believed that this rule has been implemented three-to-five years too early. The intent is understandable and broadly supported, however a lack of appreciation for the bigger picture by the UCI has caused widespread frustration. This is one of many cases where gradual evolution rather than sudden upheaval was needed.
Big-prize money or contracts get the headlines, but constructive reform is often quieter. I propose two sets of reform, one creating a closed league, with financial guardrails in place at the top of the sport, and another focussing on building pathways.
Natascha Knaven-den Ouden is one of the most qualified names in women’s professional cycling. A former pro rider, an ex-WWT Team Manager, a mother to four-professional riders, the wife of a Paris-Roubaix winner, and the founder of NXTG, a development programme that has had so many high profile names there are too many to mention.
She is an advocate for youth development, and wary of rapid professionalisation.
“The UCI have skipped too many steps. Artificially pushing for financial equality does not work. Emphasis needs to be on building the systems around the sport. When you see that Women’s WorldTour teams can go up to twenty-two riders, but the average is sixteen riders. There are fifteen WWT spots, but only fourteen teams. It doesn’t make sense - it is currently better to be a ProConti team because the costs are lower and you can still race every race.”
The analogy often used is one of a pyramid. Too much time spent on growing the top of the pyramid without focussing on the base, creates an uneven structure, that at some point, topples over.
This was prevalent in ‘Clasica Almeria,’ a Spanish 1.Pro race (second level) demonstrated this; only 46 riders started the race. If the sport cannot assemble a full peloton, something must change. A focus has to be placed on stabilising the bottom of the pyramid too. A higher quality of riders entering the professional ranks will benefit everyone.
“We should not be advocating for a minimum salary through the whole pyramid, instead we should focus on development. When I was manager of NXTG in 2020, 40% of our €200,000 cash budget went towards rider remuneration. We couldn’t spend it on professional staff, training camps, or expenses for other races. That’s not development.”, said Knaven-den Ouden, “With the folding of smaller races, and the increasing salaries in the WWT, we’ve seen development teams get squeezed. Teams go back down to sixteen riders, development teams are around eight or nine riders.
They are then put in with the WorldTour team to gain UCI Points or fill out rosters. Riders are not gaining experience in smaller races against the same level of rider, they are missing so many steps. There are only a few teams doing it right, who see the goal of their development team as developing riders, not filling out their WorldTour roster.”
Knaven-den Ouden is planning at the possibility of building a development league across multiple countries. Her goal is to use lower level UCI races to create a pathway to the WorldTour. In turn, WorldTour teams benefit from a deeper talent pool and the whole sport rises together.
But, structural reform at the development level still leaves a larger question unanswered: what should the top of the sport actually look like?
What about a closed league?
After generations of fighting for financial equality, it feels amiss to suggest measures that slow down the financial progress of the WWT. However, the men’s WorldTour offers a cautionary tale, a blueprint of how not to do business. Chasing equality with a system that has a clear economic weakness should not be a goal.
“I do think we should consider budget caps. Without clear financial guardrails, the sport risks becoming unsustainable, with a handful of teams outspending the rest and creating a competitive imbalance. Nobody wants that.”, said Veronneau, “We should absolutely be discussing what new measures need to be in place to build stability and protect the long-term health of the peloton.
This is the moment we should be taking a really hard look at the structures, the rulings in place, and if that works for this modern age. We understand the landscape better, how fans are engaging with the sport. We have the opportunity to learn from other women’s sports that are thriving right now.”
I believe the WWT should evolve into a closed, franchise-style league. Such a move would require reform of the UCI Points system as well as the introduction of financial regulation, but the benefits are significant. Cycling teams should become investable assets rather than disposable marketing vehicles.
A closed league would allow teams to hold licences that provide economic predictability and therefore long-term stability. Once participation in the top tier of the sport is guaranteed, teams and sponsors can plan beyond sponsorship cycles.
In this context, financial regulation becomes essential. Spending controls help ensure that competition remains balanced, and that costs do not escalate uncontrollably. At the moment, teams operate in an environment where they do not know whether costs will rise by five percent or twenty five percent from one season to the next. That level of uncertainty is unsustainable.
The goal of such regulation would not be to suppress the salaries of the sport’s top riders. Safeguards and salary protections could ensure that the best athletes continue to be rewarded appropriately. Instead, the aim is to encourage and stabilise investment.
As discussed in the ‘Superteams’ section, financial regulation is always contentious. However, in the Women’s WorldTour it is a necessary step. A closed system would be the first move towards making teams themselves assets, while carefully designed financial rules could provide the stability needed for the sport to grow sustainably.
Yet, for a franchise to become a true asset, it cannot rely solely on participation in a league. Predictable income streams are what gives a license its value. Financial regulation restricts the spending from getting out of control, but cycling’s lack of revenue sharing remains the underlying issue here.
With the teams not owning the races, a league is still dependent on someone else’s product. The ASO owning the biggest races once again is a huge problem. If the sport wants long-term stability, it must start building structures where teams themselves hold lasting value.
Teams must do better
Being a professional sports team in the modern day is not just about finishing first, it’s about the bigger picture: fan engagement, cultural relevance, and long-term growth. The women’s market is widely recognised as one of the most exciting growth arenas in sport, yet most in the WWT operate with an ancient mindset: results first, everything else somewhere down the list.
FDJ Suez United have shown what’s possible when a team treats itself both as a world leading race team and a media brand. Their team ride-outs, consistent media output, and an active YouTube presence give fans reasons to care beyond race results. They are investing across the board in experience and visibility, and it shows.
Contrast that with a team like Canyon–SRAM Zondacrypto, which at its peak had huge cultural appeal and an identity that transcended results. It was a team fans felt attached to, not just because of results but because of character and narrative. Over time that energy has felt diluted. Their social media following remains large, but engagement and relevance has dwindled.
If a pro sports team is not winning, and not appealing to fans, then what is it doing? It takes financial investment, being a brand requires strategy and resources. But the results are clear: teams that embrace this approach see positive impacts on sponsor appeal, fan engagement, and long-term relevance. A strong media brand signals professionalism and ambition, it becomes a self-fulfilling recruiting tool when signing riders too.
Reform: Now or never.
If the goal is parity for parity’s sake, then the WWT can copy the men’s model and accept the fragility. If the goal is financial strength and longevity, then this is the moment to be brave.
Not all change can happen at once. In fact, the worst mistake that the WWT could make is trying to do everything simultaneously. Rapid regulation can be put in place to stop unchecked escalation and market distortion before they become structural problems. This allows stability to be protected while reform is phased and deliberate.
Burying heads in the sand is not an option. Paradoxically, teams and riders hold more power in the WWT than the male equivalent. The teams, sponsors, riders, journalists, and the brightest minds all must work together. This is not a rejection of the UCI or ASO as a form of protest, but an acknowledgment that meaningful structural change rarely emerges from the same bodies that benefit from the status quo.
“Reform of women’s cycling has the potential to outshine men’s and change the sport’s business model in the process.” - Rapha Roadmap.
If you enjoyed this article, here’s a recent piece I wrote about FDJ United Suez signing Red Bull:
Why FDJ United-Suez signed Red Bull.
FDJ-Suez United have the best rider in the world, the deepest roster in the peloton, a Giro and a trophy cabinet full of the biggest Classics. Off the pitch, they have a media operation that’s the envy of the peloton, and a sponsorship roster that includes Nike and Specialized. No team in the Women's WorldTour comes close.
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