Cycling / uci

When late last year Team Sky announced that they would be withdrawing from pro-cycling at the end of the 2019 season, the sport as a whole found itself confronted with a familiar scenario; the financial plug was once again been pulled on one of the peloton's most high profile teams by a want-away sponsor. Whereas in most pro-sports the end of a sponsorship deal forms part of a natural cycle of negotiation and renegotiation, cycling's idiosyncratic straight-line economic model transforms it into what you could describe as an existential threat. Unlike the majority of mainstream sports, where teams owe their financial stability to diversified revenue streams, think TV deals, gate receipts, merchandise, etc etc, cycling persists with a precarious model largely dependent on the direct patronage of sponsors. As you can doubtless well imagine any loss of sponsorship, therefore, has potentially grave repercussions for any pro-cycling team. Moreover, to compound matters, of equal concern for the sport is the fact that, as the Team Sky example illustrates, not even success can insulate a team from the caprice of sponsors. Considered from a purely commercial standpoint, however, such flakiness is perhaps understandable. For sponsors, it is exceptionally difficult to accurately measure the financial returns derived from an investment into what essentially constitutes an advertising platform comprised of peddling billboards. Any decision to invest, moreover, will be cognisant that beyond die-hard cycling fans, broader public interest in the sport is largely limited to the Tour de France's transcendent appeal. In the USA, for example, La Grand Boucle is the sole cycle race which commands a rights payment to broadcast live. However, even cycling's most lucrative asset struggles to entirely disassociate itself from the sport's almost culturally ingrained synonymity with doping. Indeed, without even mentioning you know who, it could reasonably be argued that the confidence-sapping connotations of the overtly branded "Festina affair" have yet to be wholly overcome. While the official line surrounding Sky's withdrawal is predictably platitudinous, once the scripted niceties are stripped away it's hard to separate the decision from the growing wellspring of public cynicism surrounding the methods underlying the team's obsessive pursuit of so-called "marginal gains". Having ostentatiously positioned themselves at the vanguard of cycling's reformative "zero tolerance" generation, their credibility has subsequently been badly damaged by the doping accusations levelled against both Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome - further proof that in cycling terms sporting exoneration holds little sway in the court of public opinion. Throw in allegations of missing medical records and Dave Brailsford's appearance in front of a Parliamentary Select Committee and you have enough bad publicity to make even the most committed sponsor have second thoughts. For all that, cycling's difficulty in securing sponsorship isn't simply just another case of the sport disappearing down the doping rabbit hole. Cycling's steadfast euro-centricity, which persists to the point of hardening despite efforts to expand the racing calendar into emerging markets, has obvious implications for the scalability of the sponsorship model. As does the sport's reluctance to embrace the paradigm shift tilting advertising strategies away from sweeping scattergun ambiguity toward targetted data-hoovering specificity. Plainly blithe perseverance with a business-as-usual model is unsustainable and yet, tweaks to the racing calendar notwithstanding, the existential imperative of tackling core financial challenges seems at best to be a secondary concern. Cycling's convoluted structure, composed of a web of competing interests, begets a fragmented approach intrinsically at odds with consolidated planning. For example, an unwieldy administrative framework, wherein the proprietary rights of the sport's most high profile races are scattered between self-interested corporate entities, such as ASO, RCS Media Group, and Flanders Classic, is antithetical to the development of a cohesive direct-to-consumer streaming strategy. With cable subscriptions increasingly considered a turn-off, an "over-the-top" model, as it is known, is already widely accepted as the next big thing in sports broadcasting. Critically, for cycling, the express "directness" of the model is amenable to tailoring individualised advertising campaigns, to integrating real-time gambling options and hence to monetising rider performance data, and to streamlining engagement between the fanbase and sponsors into a reciprocally profitable transaction. However, despite being palpably in the sport's best long term interest, there is little to suggest that a radical overhaul of broadcasting is in the offing. Quite the opposite indeed, the tired old status quo in remaining both stubbornly intransigent and irreconcilably byzantine clings covetously to deep-seated anachronisms. As a consequence change, if it is to come, may be scarcely distinguishable from mutinous insurrection and manifest in the fallout of a divisive internal schism rather than as a constructive collective compromise. Indeed, the first faultlines may already have begun to open. As far back as 2014, in an effort to bypass the hopelessly entangled bureaucracy slowing the sport's modernisation, a collective of teams joined forces to form Velon. Crossing something of a commercial Rubicon, Velon is, in essence, a marketing, media, and technology company formed with the explicit intention of safeguarding the future economic viability of pro-cycling. As defiant a statement as Velon represents it has nevertheless yet to prove a seismic departure from the fractured continent of cycling's structural Pangea. Best known for enlivening the televised spectacle by delivering an array of live in-race data feeds and innovative bike-mounted camera footage, Velon's reforming potential is limited by the extent to which the mainstay of their business model relies upon collaboration with some of cycling's traditional powerbrokers; the race organisers. Such cosmetic tinkering represents little more than a prettified recapitulation of economic stagnation or the mirrored doom of cycling's fateful narcissism. Consequently, the change, if any, to date, instigated by Velon's data-led push to modernity is of the sort measured in the whispered increments of lip-service rather than in the giant leaps of true reform. Nowhere, indeed, is this more clearly stated that in Velon's own accounts, which echo cycling's widespread impecunity by remaining defiantly loss-making. That said, in the shape of the Hammer Series, Velon has hit upon a potential game-changer. Deliberately conceived as a modernist counterpoint to cycling's closely guarded traditionalism, the Hammer Series pits teams, rather than individuals, against one another across a series of sprint events. Following in the footsteps of cricket's T20 format, the Hammer Series distils the cultural zeitgeist of constant engagement into the sporting realm to create a willfully consumer-friendly offering. So whereas a sprint stage at a Grand Tour may typically deliver 5 minutes of truly combative racing across a 5-hour timeframe or a mountain stage perhaps up to 30 minutes, proportionately the Hammer Series promises much greater levels of entertainment and hence of engagement. While the series' visceral thrills may never translate into the sporting cachet amassed in cycling's Grand Tours or its Monuments it may nevertheless come to represent a replicable template for slightly lower profile races such as Tirreno-Adriatico or Critérium du Dauphiné which find themselves in a constant struggle to remain solvent. Indeed, the inevitable corollary of rationalising races into a shorter and more explosive format is to significantly reduce cycling's notoriously extortionate broadcasting costs, which easily outstrip those of competing "products". For example, hiring the specialised camera equipment required to cover a race can cost organisers up to $30,000 per day, while a helicopter could set them back $5,000 per hour. Investing such lavish sums on a niche sport marooned in a daytime TV slot borders on being unjustifiable from a commercial perspective and explains why some lower-profile races are even forced to pay for coverage. Moreover, the overall impact on TV rights is deflationary to the point of precluding any adoption of a redistributive broadcast-revenue sharing model and as such only serves to further entrench cycling's sponsorship dependence. An effect which is accentuated by the resounding dissonance with cycling's broader economic landscape, which is folding resolutely skyward under inflationary pressures. With pro-cycling stuck trying to reconcile financial forces pulling in opposite directions long term sustainability is naturally eclipsed by short term survival as the sport's pressing imperative. The resounding failure of Aqua Blue's short-lived experiment with a self-sustaining model only helps solidify the prevailing risk-averse mindset into the steely reserve of systemic consolidation. A recapitulation enshrined as cycling's sponsorship-leeching iteration of "economic realism". Team Sky's upcoming transition into Team Ineos is symptomatic of both the condition of sponsor-dependency and of its contradictions. While Ineos' money may safeguard sporting hegemony it cleaves the team's ethos into an irreconcilable before and after. Before Ineos; Team Sky crusaded, if perhaps with somewhat cynical intentions, to raise awareness of the global plastic waste crisis. After Ineos, they find themselves sponsored by one of the world's leading producers of non-degradable plastics, which boasts an environmental rap sheet headlined by accusations of "ecocide". Such erratic bipolarity represents an extreme example of the discontinuity arising from any switch in sponsorship within cycling. A fracturing of identity which is crystallised initially in teams' inability to build loyal generational followings and thereafter in their failure to efficiently monetise interest in the sport. With the eccentricities of pro-cycling's economy seeming incompatible with the very notion of sustainability the pursuit of finance turns increasingly unscrupulous. Somewhat inevitably, therefore, cycling finds itself subject to the pernicious encroachment of "sports-washers" intent on turning the sport into a reputational laundromat. Setting aside the moral implications, assessed from a purely financial perspective the influx of state-sponsored cash lumps additional inflationary pressures on top of an already dangerously over-leveraged system. And so it comes to pass that, somewhat paradoxically, cycling's economy finds itself creaking beneath the weight of excessive amounts of money. Far too much of which, up to 80%, disappears down the wage sinkhole, an imbalance which mitigates against investment in tangible physical assets in the short term and against a potential break with the overarching sponsorship model over the long run. It has further been argued that wage inflation also serves as a financial conduit for a destabilising form of hyper-elitism wherein self-evident unsustainability inhibits fresh outside investment. Under the sponsorship model, levelling the scale of expenditure required to match Team Sky's rumoured annual budget of £34 million with the almost spectral intangibility of any subsequent returns appears almost antithetical to the most basic tenets of business. Additionally, there is an argument to be made that when such "a-commercialism" eventually does crystallise, into something other than ethereal speculation, that it manifests as a competitive imbalance. According to this line of reasoning, the ensuing competitive deficit translates into predictable outcomes, shrinks the sports appeal to fit the reduced overall spectacle, and embodies a disequilibrium which can only be offset by the introduction of a budget cap. On the other hand, the Katusha-sized counterpoint suggests that Team Sky's success is attributable to much more than their outsize budget alone. Although the suspicion lingers that a form of embittered "Team Sky rejectionism" may fan some of the debate surrounding a putative budget cap, the underlying proposal - most commonly mooted as a "soft cap" mechanism wherein budgetary infractions are subject to increasingly punitive levies depending on the scale of the financial transgression - if depoliticised, certainly seems worth exploring in greater detail. Appearances can be deceptive, however, and the budget cap's apparent conceptual simplicity belies a convoluted path to implementation. Opposition to the policy could easily escalate from the merely vociferous into the outright disruptive and potentially, therefore, strike down the proposal before it gains any substantive traction. It doesn't stop there. In terms of practicalities, framing the policy would likely represent a tortuously Sisyphean task beset by vertiginous multi-jurisdictional legal complications. Furthermore, even if those issues were to be successfully navigated, the inevitable loopholes could disadvantage efforts at enforcement to the point of reducing any budget cap to functional obsolescence. Although not quite a dead end, any attempts at introducing a budget cap would nevertheless deteriorate into a drawn-out and acrimonious slog. If the process of change turns into an excuse for treading water and hence proves itself inimical to innovation cycling may have to look outside its mainstream to discover a catalyst for reform. On that note, could the E-sport revolution be the jolt cycling is crying out for? Frank Garcia, an entrepreneur and dyed-in-the-wool Zwift aficionado, certainly thinks so. In 2017, Garcia launched the Cycligent Virtual Ranking (CVR) World Cup, a three-part series incorporating events in Las Vegas, Paris, and London, to harness E-sport's burgeoning popularity as a catalyst for cycling's long-awaited renewal. CVR's simple premise, involving riders competing on a virtual platform, belies its intriguing long term potential. The novel configuration circumvents some of pro-cycling's longstanding financial obstacles; as an indoor event it is amenable to ticketing and is broadcast via a streaming service incorporating a live data feed. An additional potential boon is that the virtual format seems to lend itself to an emboldened form of aggressive riding, notably distinct from the slow-burn circumspection of many traditional races. When this liberated style is coupled with CVR's preference for punchy parcours the result is a brand of dynamic racing perfectly attuned to the modern age of instant-gratification. Admittedly, a virtual reformatting of the sport offers neither an immediate resolution of cycling's financial difficulties, the Paris leg of the World Cup attracted only 3,000 online viewers over 2 days, nor a panacea, a wholesale digital reconfiguration would only impoverish public recognition, but, nevertheless, as a harbinger of future trends it does signpost the direction in which pro-cycling needs to look. Or rather should that be, one of the directions, for there are, as we have seen, numerous proposals circulating on how best to extricate cycling from the grip of the prevailing sponsorship model. Looking forward, the hope must be that these separate ventures, including a diminished reliance on sponsorship, can be reconciled into a future financial model, which in reflecting its variegated provenance shifts decisively toward diversification and hence sustainability. Of course, it's all too easy to proselytise on behalf of "sustainability" when safely ensconced within the unaccountable commentariat and nestled far from the coalface of cycling's day to day financial realities. All too easy to criticise, all too easy to snort derisively, and all too easy to know better. But for all that it remains difficult to imagine that cycling's financial arms race if left unchecked, will end in anything other than mutually assured destruction and as such reach a point when it would be all too easy to say nothing at all.