Who Funds Professional Cycling?
Billionaires, nation-states, sealants, and kitchen supplies...
Billionaires, nation-states, construction, shipping, education, retail, and of course the bicycle industry. The sponsors of World Tour teams are an eclectic mix, but does it make sense?
As my mind casts to 2025 and figuring out the complexities of a privateer calendar, sponsorship is centre stage. Hours are spent at my laptop racking my brain as to what I can do, or who I can approach to plug that final little hole that I have in my budget.
As part of my research, I looked over to the World Tour to figure out where all the money is coming from. It’s often said that pro-cyclists are underpaid, and in comparison with other sports, you can argue that’s true.
However, the average salary of a male World Tour cyclist is EURO 449K*, while the median is EURO 220K* . They aren’t insignificant numbers.
You have armies of staff, logistics, cars, training camps, and resources too. The budgets of these teams are getting into the tens of millions of dollars (average EURO 28 million*, median EURO 25 million*), and I wanted to know where they’re coming from.
I’ve always had a theory that there’s more money coming from non-endemic partners (those without a product directly related to the sport) than there are endemic partners. This has therefore nudged me to focus my budget search away from the cycling industry too.
*Internal UCI Seminar, detailed by Benji Naesen
EF Education - Easy Post is often considered as one of the peloton’s coolest teams.
They’ve had collaborations with streetwear brands like Palace, have fun on social media and do things differently. Their partnership with Lachlan Morton is a masterstroke, and Rapha has helped to lift their brand too. They’re true fan favourites.
Yet, their two title sponsors have nothing to do with cycling:
EF Education First: An international education company that specialises in language training, educational travels, academic degree programmes, and cultural exchanges.
Easy Post: A shipping API that solves complex logistics problems for eCommerce businesses, enabling them to deliver online shopping.
I have so many questions here, ones which, one day, I hope to interview the team’s founder and long-term CEO, Jonathan Vaughters about. It fascinates me, where do you even start with these companies? Who approaches who? How do you decide on a dollar amount? How long are the contracts?
Two key ‘industries’ that back pro-road cycling are billionaires and nation-states. Out of 18 World Tour teams in the men’s peloton, six are either backed by a billionaire of a nation-state. In some cases, it’s both.
Gerry Ryan, Sylvan Adams and Jim Ratcliffe are three billionaires who are listed as “Team Owner”, or “co-Team Owner”. It’s therefore presumed, that these individuals are the main benefactor of their respective teams.
In EF Education - EasyPost, you have the rare situation where the team is owned by its title sponsor - EF Education First. The Swedish education company is indeed owned by the billionaire Hult family, but I think this is a slightly different case to the aforementioned individuals.
Oh, and who can forget Oleg Tinkov?
Then, you have UAE Team Emirates, Bahrain Victorious, and Astana Qazaqstan. Jayco-AlUla has the billionaire-nation state double whammy, with Gerry Ryan and the Royal Commission of AlUla, a Saudi-Arabian city, as their main financial support.
Who else comes out to play?
Surprisingly, construction and household appliances come out pretty strongly in the World Tour market too. Brands such as Soudal (silicone), Quickstep (floors), Deceuninck (windows), Fenix (interior design), and Bora (kitchen appliances) are all title sponsors.
Why? I’m not quite sure.
In other sports, namely Formula One, you see much ‘sexier’ sponsors. Take McLaren: Goldman Sachs, Android, Chrome, Jack Daniels, Dell, Deloitte and Hilton Hotels are just some of the listed partners. Red Bull has their eponymous team, with Oracle, Tag Heuer, Visa, and Zoom featured on their car.
Now, I’m not trying to compare pro-cycling and Formula One. They’re two completely different sports with differing markets. But, what I am saying is that F1 sponsors make sense. They’re large, household-name companies with huge marketing budgets.
Cycling is just a bit odd.
I’m not doubting that some teams have ‘sexy’ sponsors, Tudor Pro Cycling being the first one that comes to mind. There are also the nostalgia glory days of BMC Pro Racing too…
Could the World Tour be the anomaly, rather than the rule? Only one of the eighteen WT Teams has a bicycle manufacturer as its title sponsor (Lidl-Trek).
Yet, if we look at XCO MTB, the top teams are all headline-sponsored by their respective bike brand: Specialized Factory Racing, Trek Factory Racing, Scott-SRAM MTB Racing, Canyon Collective, etc.
Why is this? Honestly, I’m not too sure. Maybe, it’s because the World Tour has the Tour de France which from a global perspective, is bigger than the whole of cycling.
I wrote an article late last year titled “How Red Bull can win the Tour de France”. Ultimately, it came down to Red Bull having deeper pockets, resources and connections than the rest of the World Tour.
Other global entities could also do this quite easily though. When it comes to elite sports, cycling has a pretty good ROI. You can field a Tour de France winning team for the average transfer fee of two Premier League footballers*.
*average Premier League transfer fee is £25m - Deloitte
So what?
The “so what” question gets thrown around a lot. The “so what” of this is that sports sponsorship doesn’t always make sense, and that’s okay.
It’s a blurred model. If a company places adverts on Meta, there’s cold hard data that they can analyse to see if it has been a success. That data doesn’t exist in the same way for sport sponsorship.
Sports sponsorship is about finding partnerships that make sense. There are more motivations than initially meet the eye and partnership making sense means different things to different brands.
The most obvious one is simple - endemic. I win races on a Ribble bicycle, and more people buy them.
Away from that, it’s complex. In Formula 1, there’s the corporate hosting side of the equation. Sponsoring a team can offer “money can’t buy” experiences for employees and clients.
Certain companies want to align with athletes as it matches their business ethos of always being at the forefront of innovation, of pushing the limits of what’s possible. While researching this article, I found the following quote from a paid advertorial Rouleur ran with the Ineos Grenadiers.
“Above all, the partnership that the INEOS Grenadiers have with the team that created the Grenadier 4X4 is a good example of teams and sponsors working together. In every race, the riders aim to take with them the ethos that has gone into creating the vehicle: pushing limits to reach the best performance with a plan that is reliable enough not to fail".”
So, why is it that off-road teams have more endemic sponsors than road teams? I think it could have something to do with growth potential.
Being younger, and less commercialised, the off-road scene has a much easier path to grow than the complicated giant that is road cycling.
I think that’s the exact reason that we don’t see many non-endemic partners yet.
It’s as simple as they haven’t been made aware of the opportunity…
With all of these numbers thrown around, my total budget seems relatively modest. To run a full privateer calendar, and pay myself the UK average salary, I need a total budget of ‘just’ £70,000 per year.
I’m a fair chunk of the way there, but I’m still trying to plug part of the hole for 2025. I’m going to go into more detail on the budget of a privateer next week. How I plan, break it down, and where I spend the most.
Oh, and if you know a billionaire, nation-state, silicon brand, flooring company, or financial service that has a few quid down the back of a sofa, then please put me in touch…
Project TAG, proudly partnering (both for my athletic and influencing ability) with…
While you’re here…
I’ve added a paid subscription and a ‘Buy Me A Coffee’ link to this post. As the year progresses, I’m planning on building this blog and putting out articles which I’ve always wanted to write but for whatever reason, haven’t wanted to pitch.
Any money that I make from either my Substack or BMaC link will go straight back into supporting my 2024 racing project. I am planning on keeping all content on here free to view though.
Great analysis Joe. The fundamental challenge with the current model of cycling as a sport is that the "value" of ad dollars (sponsorship) is low compared to other mediums. The TdF is great for eyeballs on screen but the amount of spend can be put to much more concrete channels and mediums. Hence, the need for passionate benefactors - interally in a large corporation (kitchen supply, etc) or an independent billionaire. Part 2 is you proposing how to fix it!