Being a professional cyclist at the highest level and racing some of the biggest races in the world is a dream for many. For the lucky few who ride for WorldTour squads that we get to enjoy watching every year, this dream is a reality.

Riders race their bikes, deliver results or work hard for their teammates, get noticed by teams, and sign on the dotted line to ply their trade in any given squad for a few years. But what happens when that contract reaches its end and you haven’t been re-signed? What’s it like to be a pro cyclist without a contract? What happens to your bike and equipment? How do you earn money? Do you stop racing altogether or fight to keep the dream alive?

This is a situation some riders might never find themselves in, but many do every year, and there are several unexpected consequences and difficulties. It's a topic riders perhaps don't like to open up about much, preferring to focus on the search for a new team, or not wanting to lift the curtain on the tough reality of unemployment for an athlete.

When riders have opened up, the details are often surprising. Though he was later offered a contract after all, James Shaw was initially not renewed with EF Education-EasyPost last winter. He spoke in a YouTube video in December about losing access to things like subscription training apps and coaching resources at the end of the racing season, rather than the end of the year, leaving him in the lurch until he finally re-signed on December 1.

Other riders find themselves without even a bike to ride, having never owned their team-issue frame and without an actual bike of their own. Riders have to wear team kit and ride a team bike until December 31 of the year of their current contract, but many aspects of their employment are taken away sooner than that. They can be left floundering, trying to find a contract in January, February, March. Sometimes that happens, and a team comes along, yet sometimes the phone never rings.

In search of uncovering the reality for riders who are left without a team, I spoke to Sweden's Julia Borgström, who rode professionally for AG Insurance-Soudal from 2020 to 2025 – joining straight out of the junior ranks and staying there until she was 24. She competed at races like Paris-Roubaix, the World Championships, and the Tour de France Femmes, where she was a contender for the white jersey in 2022, and her career looked promising.

But in the spring of 2025, she learned through her agent that her contract wouldn’t be renewed and she didn’t have a place on the team in 2026.

"I got the answer in late spring, early summer, which is quite late, but I didn't ask them either. They were very clear that I didn't have a place on the team next year," she told me.

I asked Borgström if they gave her a reason for not offering a new contract. Her response was very pragmatic: "No. I don't blame them for it because I also understand that it's a business and they don't owe me an explanation. However, that doesn't take away that it's really, really hard. You put so much passion into developing something, and – even though they don't owe me anything – it's really hard because you just want to know what to do better."

At this point in her season, Borgström and her agent had already started speaking to other teams in search of another contract.

"I actually thought I had a good chance of moving elsewhere. But then I realised it was clear people wanted numbers. I could see my training was going well, but I hadn't done proper testing because I was busy trying to race. We started doing some tests again and could see that my numbers are getting there; they're not great, but they're still not bad."

Throughout 2023 and 2024, Borgström experienced RED-S (Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport), a condition caused by low energy availability, where athletes don’t consume sufficient calories to support their training, causing issues like reduced bone density, hormonal imbalances and fatigue. After a long and arduous period of treatment, recovery, and a return to normal training, she was able to continue racing. However, her results and training data didn’t accurately reflect her full potential as an athlete, which, in a competitive market, is a massive hurdle to overcome.

I asked her why she thought Pro-level or Continental teams didn’t offer her a ride, which is often the landing spot for riders who drop out of the WorldTour, but it isn't always as straightforward as it seems.

"I think people assume that you are a very demanding rider as a WorldTour rider coming down to a Conti team, but I was desperate to just keep on racing, so I think I would be the least demanding rider. Some people would have assumed that I had a conflict with AG, which I definitely didn't have."

The practicalities

One of the most coveted parts of being a pro cyclist is the equipment. Multiple bikes and all the equipment you could ask for is the dream for any bike rider. But when a contract reaches its end, what happens to it all?

Borgström continued to be employed by AG Insurance-Soudal until December 31, 2025, two and a half months after her final race with the team. Pro riders typically don’t travel to races with bikes, as these are moved around by the team, and keep a training bike at home. But even though contracts last until the end of December, teams often try to recall equipment earlier than that.

"This team asked for all bikes and even some helmets and wheels to be returned. I pushed to be allowed to keep my training bike until the end of the year, and they agreed on me sending it back by mail. It turns out it's really hard from Sweden to Belgium, so it got bounced back a couple of times, but now it is with the team," Borgström explained.

With her AG Insurance-Soudal spec bikes returned to the team’s service course, she had to bite the bullet and invest in her own race machine to continue riding. "I got really, really good help from a bike shop and a few people I know. I got the best price you absolutely can get, but I have paid for the bike."

It’s not uncommon for riders to sell or donate their clothing and spare equipment from previous seasons to clear out space for new kit, and I wondered if Borgström had used this to generate some income.

"According to my contract, they can ask for everything back. Usually they don't want old clothes and stuff like that back, but they could ask in theory. I tried to donate as much as possible to people that need it," she said.

What to do next

Despite no longer having a pro contract at only 24, Borgström clearly still had a real passion for racing her bike. Towards the end of 2025, she was offered a ride on a club-level team in Belgium, Kassein Feits Huis. Belgian law stipulates that club-level teams cannot pay their riders, so she was racing without a salary.

"My savings account is taking a big hit," she said. "I was preparing myself to close the chapter of racing. I got over the shame, and then I realised that the only thing that's left is just being sad because I wasn't allowed to race my bike anymore. That was where Jess and Jake called [owners/managers of Kassein Feits Huis]."

From the outside, the step down from the WorldTour to a club-level team appears severe, but Borgström was humble and honest in her outlook.

"At first I thought, 'No, I can't, I can't do that. I cannot go to a team house anymore. That chapter is done.' And then every time I spoke to them, I just had this really, really good feeling in my gut. It was the first time I’d spoken to someone in so long and felt like I really wanted to race for them."

Although she wouldn’t be receiving payment, she was presented with an opportunity to keep racing.

"I had a chat with my partner, and I looked at how long I can survive out of my savings. How much could we actually do? We realised that I can get one season out of my savings. We decided that we will give it one more year and see what happens."

She spent the start of 2026 splitting her time between Meulebeke in Belgium, where the team is based, and her home in Sweden, paying for all her own flights and travel and coming across for a month or so at a time to compete in kermesse races, and the occasional UCI race against her former colleagues.

Borgström was still represented by The Team, formerly Wasserman – the same agency that manages the likes of Julian Alaphilippe, Lotte Kopecky, and dozens more top-level riders – in the hope that, through consistent racing on the Belgian circuit, she could find a space on a UCI team once more - a hope that’s backed by her contract at Kassein. "As long as it’s a move to a team at a level higher than this, I can break my contract if I’m offered one elsewhere."

As it turned out, that chance came along soon after our conversation. Borgström was offered a contract with Norwegian high-level Continental outfit Hitec Products-Fluid Control, based in her native Scandinavia, and she officially joined their ranks on Tuesday. It's not quite a return to the WorldTour, but it will give her opportunities to race higher-level races and access to equipment and resources that she doesn't have to pay for herself.

Despite this chance, and a contract for the rest of 2026, when we spoke, Borgström was still thinking ahead to the future and the possibility of a life without bike racing, having come face to face with the precarity of this sport once already.

"I am studying a little bit to get my grades up to apply for university. It's not taking away any time from my cycling, so the training I do is actually the same as I would have done if I was still a WorldTour pro," she explained.

"In Sweden, you get paid to study, or you can take a loan, so studying means a really, really small income, which is also why I'm hoping to get into a university at the end of the season, because that will also mean that I have a small salary. I'm really trying to get some money in as well, but getting prize money is proving to be a bit harder than I thought."

The difference mindset makes

Borgström's passion for racing remains, and it’s clear that – despite the financial challenges – her heart is set on the road, whilst some other athletes are turning to gravel racing and the privateer lifestyle.

"I was a bit naive in searching for sponsors because I was really hoping to get on a Conti team or something right up until the last minute at the end of 2025, and I didn't want to bring on a sponsor and then have to cancel it later if it conflicted with a potential team sponsor," she explained.

"I've done one gravel race, and I really loved that. But comparing how much I love road racing to how fun it is racing the gravel, I really want to race road. For me, the cool thing about cycling is the tactics and understanding the game, and positioning in the bunch is one of my traits that I actually am quite proud of. Road is where my big passion in cycling lies."

However, in a bittersweet twist of fate, the acceleration in growth of women’s cycling could be more of a hindrance than a help for riders who find themselves in Borgström's situation.

"I think women's cycling is growing so fast that if you struggle with your health or if you have a problem, no one can wait for you," she said.

Two things really struck me throughout my conversation with Borgström. Firstly, her incredibly calm, pragmatic demeanour about the realities of being left without a job and the struggle of trying to forge a career in bike racing with the odds stacked against her. She was incredibly professional with how she approached the situation, which is a testament to her quality as a pro rider.

Secondly, her obvious passion for racing and ability to still find joy in the sport that would have left others jaded and maybe even bitter were they in her shoes. It's probably down to this outlook and determination that she was able to do what all free agents are trying to do: find a new team, no matter how late in the season.

"It's really cool to be in races having no clue what I'm doing anymore and trying to figure that out together with my teammates. It's also really scary because I know how to race a WorldTour or a UCI race, but I have no idea how to race an interclub or a kermesse," she said.

"It's quite inspiring to be reminded of the early days of elite racing where you didn't know how to race, and you learned. I think mentally for me it's been really important to focus on where I am at the moment and trying to see it as I'm here for this one year. If something else happens, we will take it when that comes – but that's not a problem for now."

The Giro d'Italia is far more than a bike race. It's a three-week celebration of cycling that showcases Italy's beauty and culture better than a plate of pasta, an Aperol spritz, or an Armani fashion show.

The 21 stages of the Corsa Rosa visit every corner and highlight every geographical detail of the 'Bel Paese.' The Giro covers the barren but beautiful roads of the south, climbs into the steep central Apennine hills, skirts the long coastlines, passes through historical towns and villages, and then high into the mountains in the third and decisive week of racing.

Race organiser RCS Sport loves to describe the Giro as 'The toughest race in the world in the world’s most beautiful place'. It is a marketing spin, but it also evokes the Giro's unique beauty. There is nothing like seeing the peloton ride through the snow-covered Dolomites, contest a sprint around the Bay of Naples or celebrate reaching the finish in Rome with laps of the Colosseum.

The Giro marks time as the Italian spring gradually becomes summer. Fields grow green, pollen fills the air, and red poppies invade the roadside. Italians traditionally change their wardrobe in May, swapping winter clothes for summer attire. Pink polo shirts and dresses are seen out on the streets as the colour of the maglia rosa, and La Gazzetta dello Sport inspire a new seasonal trend and celebrates the race.

Local authorities pay to host stage starts and finishes, and so encourage local businesses to get involved. Quiet piazzas are decorated with pink balloons and bunting. Shop windows are filled with old bikes, jerseys and anything pink. Pizzeria and restaurants create special dishes, and bars try to cash in on the sense of celebration with Giro-flavoured cocktails and gelato.

The simple joys of Italian life are easy to see when the Giro comes to town.

"Legendary Italian journalist Indro Montanelli wrote that 'The Giro has the power to transform every day into a Sunday.' He's right," La Gazzetta's chief cycling correspondent Ciro Scognamiglio tells Cyclingnews.

"The Giro unifies Italy during May, offers a great sporting battle and makes us briefly proud to be Italian. When the Giro comes to town, it's a day of celebration, and millions of people still watch the race go by from the roadside. School is out for the day, and factory workers are given a break to watch the race go by. It's a moment of aggregation and community."

For Giro d'Italia organiser RCS Sport, the Corsa Rosa is also big business.

Like the Tour de France, the Giro d'Italia was created to sell newspapers and advertising and is still part of the influential RCS Media Group, which owns La Gazzetta dello Sport, other media titles and Italy's third most important television broadcaster, La7. Urbano Cairo, who learned about the media business as Silvio Berlusconi's personal assistant, has been the majority shareholder and CEO since 2016.

Like ASO and the Amaury family, who own the Tour, RCS Sport taps into national pride and uses political connections to prop up their money-making sports business. RCS Sport generates just a small percentage of RCS Media Group's revenue, but it is a strategic asset, with a turnover of €80 million and around €22 million in profit.

RCS Sport organises Milan-San Remo, Il Lombardia, the UAE Tour and other races, but most of its revenue is made in May thanks to television rights, stage hosts, and sponsors. While the Tour de France revenue is much higher at close to €250 million, RCS Sport has been deft at controlling costs and earning extra revenue since Urbano Cairo took over.

The 2026 Giro d'Italia will start in Bulgaria, a year after the Grande Partenza in Albania. Recent elections in Bulgaria have disrupted the preparations for hosting the Giro, and the teams asked for higher expenses due to another logistically complex start to the race, but RCS Sport has shrugged off any criticism. It's just happy to earn an estimated €10 million for the Grande Partenza and three stages in Bulgaria.

Entwined in Italian history

The Giro is entwined in Italian history, making cycling part of the history of the nation, its culture and its people.

The first edition was held in 1909, just 48 years after key regions were united to create Italy. This year's Giro is the 109th edition, with only the two world wars putting a stop to the race's running.

The history and events of the Giro d'Italia have been coloured and reported by the pink pages of the La Gazzetta dello Sport newspaper. Created in 1896, La Gazzetta built on the success of two cycling newspapers and launched just a few days before the first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens, Greece. In 1908, a rival newspaper was about to create an Italian cycling stage race, and so the Gazzetta owners and editors moved quickly and announced the creation of the Giro d'Italia for May 1909.

They didn't have the funding or an official route, but announced the race would cover 3,000km over eight stages and head as far south as Naples. Luigi Ganna emerged as the first overall winner, calculated on points rather than overall time, despite a series of punctures and misfortunes. He snatched victory on the final day in Milan thanks to a level crossing delaying his rivals and a horse taking out key rival Giovanni Rossignoli.

Over the years, great rivalries fired up the Italian tifosi during the Giro, helping to build the history of the race and sell hundreds of thousands of copies of La Gazzetta.

Costante Girardengo versus Alfredo Binda in the 1920s, Gino Bartali and Fausto Coppi crossed swords before and especially after World War II. The 1946 Giro was a symbol of the Italian 'rinascita' or return to life, a year after liberation from the Nazis, a year after fascist dictator Benito Mussolini was hung in Milan's Piazza Loreto, near where stage 15 finishes this year.

The Bartali-Coppi duel of those years was one for the ages, with Bartali representing the Catholic conservatives and Coppi the modernisation of the nation. They inspired a cycling boom for a generation, with Felice Gimondi later cheered on as he took on Eddy Merckx in the late sixties. The tifosi again took cultural sides in the daily discussions as Giuseppe Saronni clashed with Francesco Moser in the late seventies and eighties. Saronni was the Lombardy-born big-city sprinter, while Moser was the son of a farmer from the Trentino mountains. Cycling has always represented more than just sport.

Marco Pantani first became the tifosi's hero in 1994, and peak 'Pirata' came in 1998 when Pantani won the Giro and the Tour, as bandanas and pirate flags were seen along every stage. It was the pinnacle of Italian cycling, with Pantani still remembered and evoked with 'rosa' tinted spectacles even today.

The Giro lost its air of innocence in the EPO-fueled 1990s, just like the Tour de France and the rest of the sport. In 1969, Eddy Merckx was sent home but largely forgiven for mysteriously testing positive for a stimulant, but the 1998 Festina Affair was a watershed moment. Pantani was considered a saviour in Paris, but his Icarus-like career arc ended a year later when he was disqualified from the 1999 Giro for a high blood haematocrit. He died of a cocaine overdose in 2004.

Other doping scandals followed as the Giro struggled for credibility. The 2001 race almost ended in San Remo after a mass search of team hotels. Other riders, including Ivan Basso and Danilo Di Luca, were suspended and disgraced before the likes of Alberto Contador, Chris Froome, Tao Geoghegan Hart, Egan Bernal, Primož Roglič and most recently Simon Yates won the maglia rosa.

The Giro director was once as famous as the Pope

La Gazzetta dello Sport officially registered the name 'Giro d'Italia' in 1922 and has made money from the sport ever since.

Highlights of the Giro were broadcast on Italian television as early as 1957, further boosting the fascination and visibility of the race. In 1953, non-sporting brands were allowed to sponsor teams, and Nivea sparked another business revolution in professional cycling when they sponsored Fiorenzo Magni's team. Other Italian industrialists and companies followed, with San Pellegrino, Carpano, Faema, Molteni, Salvarani, Scic, Sanson, Brooklyn, Del Tongo, Carrera, Polti, Mercatone Uno, Mapei, Saeco, Lampre and Fassa Bortolo all becoming long-time sponsors to promote their wares.

Armando Cougnet was the first race director of the Giro d'Italia between 1909 and 1947, with Vincenzo Torriani holding another long reign until 1993. He was followed by Carmine Castellano, briefly by former La Gazzetta journalist Angelo Zomegnan, innovator Michele Acquarone and then Mauro Vegni.

Torriani is remembered as the greatest 'Direttore', the real boss of the race, who struck deals with local mayors and politicians to host stages, with teams, riders and sponsors to make sure the Giro turned a profit. Torriani was famous for furiously waving his arms at riders, the tifosi and anyone who got in the way of the Giro from the sunroof of his race car; a cigarette was often hanging from his mouth, and his anger was expressed by Italian hand gestures.

The riders and teams would get their revenge when their domestiques ransacked a bar for drinks and rode away without paying the bill, shouting "Torriani will pay". Some bar owners even tried to invoice the Giro organisers, but Torriani, smart to the last, never paid up.

"Torriani was Napoleon, and he conquered Italy each May with the Giro d'Italia," respected former La Gazzetta journalist Claudio Gregori wrote on the 20th anniversary of his death.

"The Gazzetta editor Gino Palumbo once wrote that every Italian was able to recognise two people: the Pope and Vincenzo Torriani. It's true, Torriani was an icon of Italy. He knew how to build relationships and balance the books; he was full of ideas and courage, never scared or fearful of the consequences of his actions."

Torriani brimmed with Italian creativity and used the rivalry with the Tour de France to often shake up the Giro and innovate race formats. He is said to have invented the team time trial, mountain time trials, time bonuses and extreme mountain top finishes. During his years in charge, the riders were sent up the Stelvio, Monte Bondone and the Passo di Gavia in the snow. The riders often protested, as they still do today, but Torriani could count on the protection and influence of the editors and owners of La Gazzetta dello Sport.

The 1978 Giro started in Venice, with the opening stage raced on pontoons and finished in Saint Mark's Square. Nine years later, the Giro started in San Remo with one of the early stages, a time trial descent of the Poggio. Other stages finished in central Siena, like Strade Bianche does today, below the Leaning Tower of Pisa, inside the Verona Arena and at the Vatican. Torriani introduced the first 'Grande Partenza' from outside of Italy, and so the 1973 race started in Belgium and passed through seven countries to celebrate the creation of the European Union.

The true value of the Giro d'Italia

RCS Sport has learned that an Italian Grande Partenza generates far less revenue, and so the Giro has started abroad 15 times since the San Marino micro-state hosted the start in 1965. RCS Sport has tested the logistical limits of Grand Tour starts more and more in recent years, with Grande Partenzas as far away as Belgium, Denmark, Amsterdam, Ireland and even Israel in 2018. A Washington DC and New York Grand Depart was once discussed, with even an idea of starting in Japan briefly considered.

The Italian investment bank Ifis produced a report suggesting that the 2023 Giro d’Italia generated direct and indirect revenue of €2 billion. €605 million was said to derive from spectators attending the Corsa Rosa during the three weeks of the race, and a further €1.4 billion, based on the calculation of tourism spending by those who return or travel to Italy within 18 months after seeing the Giro d’Italia. Those calculations are somewhat theoretical, like declaring pizza as an asset against the huge Italian national debt, but they do indicate the intrinsic value of the Giro and its symbolism for the country.

In recent years, RCS Sport has cuddled up to the right-wing politicians currently in power in Italy to secure funding and sponsorship from state-owned agencies. The Italian Foreign Ministry has declared the Giro as an official global sports ambassador, using the race for 'sports diplomacy' and to promote the country. The cyclamen-coloured points jersey is again sponsored by the Italian Trade Agency.

RCS Sport moved the Giro finish from its home city of Milan to Rome in 2023 to earn a reported extra €1.5 million a year, and is always looking to cut costs and increase revenues. Even a fraud and internal financial misappropriation scandal had little effect on RCS Sport. A reported €17 million was said to have been taken from event accounts between 2006 and 2013, but only an internal accountant was found guilty, and little of the funds were ever recovered. Race director Michele Acquarone was sacked by RCS management but was later cleared in court.

RCS Sport flirted with the idea of joining the One Cycling project aimed at shaking up pro cycling's business model, with reports that their races could be sold to investors, perhaps even from the Middle East. However, Urbano Cairo knows how to run a business and knows the political, cultural and economic value of the Giro.

"Sell RCS Sport? No way. I'm not crazy…" he told Cyclingnews a few years ago, ever the salesman.

"I hope the Giro d'Italia can return to being the great race it was back in the 1970s. In every way, especially economically, so that we can invest and make it even bigger and better. It's got to get back to the level of the Tour de France."

Professional cycling is a thrilling, entertaining sport, packed with drama and intrigue, contested by incredible athletes on spectacular roads and mountains around the world. Yet at the same time, it is often dangerous, financially precarious as a business and reluctant to innovate, living on its history rather than building a new future.

Many fans and those within the sport know that professional cycling must evolve or risk further decline. Various projects, ideas and reforms to every aspect of the sport have been proposed over the years, but divisions, power struggles and arguments have hindered change.

The UCI has recently launched a consultation process, with a stated aim to "develop the sector's organisational model in order to strengthen its long-term appeal."

"The consultation aims to bring together stakeholders of road cycling to reflect jointly on its evolution," UCI President David Lappartient said.

Last year, Lappartient and the sport's governing body blocked the One Cycling project, which aimed to shake up the sport by having several leading teams and race organisers unite to create new events and generate new revenue. Lappartient wants the UCI to control the reform process and, by extension, the future of pro cycling.

"It is only together, under the auspices of the UCI, that we will take our sport to the next level: for greater stability, more growth and improved overall appeal," the Frenchman said.

Cyclingnews understands that Lappartient's call-out for reform ideas was sent to over six thousand emails, entities, federations and members of the sport's official stakeholders (race organisers, teams and riders' associations) with a deadline of April 30 for contributions and proposals from across the sport.

Cyclingnews has decided to anticipate the UCI's reform process and kick off the debate by offering suggestions on how to make pro cycling better, by looking at what other sports have done.

Formula 1, North American sports like the NBA and NFL, professional tennis and soccer all have their own problems, but do not appear afraid of change. Importantly, they are run as sports-entertainment businesses, generating profits for their owners and generally satisfying the desire of new and old fans.

Of course, the pursuit of higher revenue and profit means someone has to pay, and that is usually the sport's fans. Professional cycling is seen as a free spectator sport, with a general reluctance to charge fans to watch a race from the roadside. Instead, cycling fans indirectly 'fund' the sport through advertising, broadcasting, buying the tech that teams use, and spending money on the local economy at races. Other sports are becoming increasingly expensive to follow, but cycling's business model and the power struggles slow the development of new revenue streams, while team budgets and riders' salaries increase year on year.

To understand what might come from this consultation process and how pro cycling can learn from other sports, across a two-part in-depth feature, Cyclingnews spoke to several stakeholders within the sport, all of whom are adamant that cycling needs to evolve if it wants to avoid being left behind.

"Sports are constantly evolving. Anybody who's a traditionalist and thinks we have to keep doing as we have always done is a fool," former rider turned gravel privateer and respected blogger Michael Woods told Cyclingnews.

"We need to realise that everything constantly changes, so we as a sport have to change too. If we don't evolve, then the sport will become a relic."

The importance of good governance

People often ask me why I write about the governance of professional cycling for Cyclingnews, suggesting it is boring and that nobody really cares about the sport's politics. "Nobody wants to see how the sausage is made" is an often-used idiom.

However, I believe they are the foundation on which the sport is built. If the sport's principles and rules are weak, the whole sport loses out and will never reach its full potential.

The UCI – which is part of the International Olympic Committee and benefits from Olympic Games profits – governs the whole sport, including professional cycling, and sets rules and regulations on everything from team sizes and the race calendar to sock height, rider contracts, and the sport's business model.

Most other major professional sports are run more like a business, with all key stakeholders serving as part-owners and investors in the project and commercial entity that runs the business. This includes sports with Olympic origins that have developed and grown commercially and economically over time, massively boosting the sport's revenue and turnover.

However, cycling has developed a different, more fractional and frictional business model over the last 120 years, which has changed little, even as other sports boom. Long-standing race organisers like Tour de France owner, ASO, are especially influential, both economically because they own the biggest race in the sport and politically because they dominate the AIOCC race organisers association.

The teams come and go and are largely funded by sponsorship from brands seeking a return on investment, or, more recently, from state entities and their sovereign-fund-controlled companies. Riders usually sign short-term contracts with teams and so have a precarious, almost mercenary role in the sport.

"The UCI is not really designed to govern a professional team sport. The UCI president is elected by national governing bodies worldwide, many of whom have never been to a true high-level professional bike race," EF Education Pro Cycling team manager Jonathan Vaughters told Cyclingnews.

"It’s not that the UCI is bad at what they were built to do. It’s that they are not purposely built for professional team sports.

"The teams don't elect the president, we don't really have legislative power, we don’t have the power to vote. We're just like a little kid screaming in the corner. That's why David doesn't like us very much..."

In the early 1990s, the leading English football clubs sparked a revolution by breaking away from the Football League, the traditional governing body in Britain, and launching the Premier League. They agreed to follow the national and international rules of the sport, but created a commercially independent company, agreed a revolutionary broadcasting deal with Sky television and have since grown exponentially. It was British soccer's big bang moment.

The Premier League has become the wealthiest division in the world, attracting the best players, with its top teams regularly fighting for the biggest trophies, allowing them to generate more wealth and offer higher salaries. These clubs have also been able to invest in new stadiums, offering better facilities to their fans. However, some supporters argue that their love of the sport and their club loyalty have been squeezed for every penny of possible revenue by the teams, sponsors and broadcasters.

Premier League football is now watched and followed around the world and generates huge global revenues. The division's 20 clubs generated an aggregate revenue of approximately £6.3 billion in the 2023/24 season, with Gross Value Added to the UK economy (the value of goods and services of a sector) calculated at £9.8 billion.

Vaughters is a former president of the AIGCP teams association and has been a team manager for 20 years. He is convinced that professional cycling needs to be run by an independent company, like the Premier League and the NFL, with every stakeholder a shareholder, working together for the good of the sport, or at least to grow the revenue of the sport.

However, that has never happened in professional cycling.

"The UCI doesn't want that to happen. They don't like it, and ASO certainly doesn't like that," Vaughters said. "The UCI should realise that they would be much more financially healthy if they created a separate arm or body to deal with the professional side of the sport."

A change in the governance of professional cycling and the creation of a new, commercially driven company to manage the business of pro cycling could spark a new era and create a new business model. However, that is the least likely to happen in the coming months under the UCI's reform process.

Making a billion-dollar business benefit everyone

Professional cycling is a billion-dollar business built on sand, as the tide rises and the global economy whips up the waves.

The biggest race organisers are profitable companies, with ASO, which also runs non-cycling events such as the Dakar Rally, generating at least €250 million per year from cycling and posting a profit margin of close to 40%. Smaller organisers struggle and often only survive thanks to state and regional funding, volunteers and the grassroots love for the sport.

The average team budget has risen to €33 million for 2026, with the median salary for a self-employed WorldTour rider up to €350,000. However, teams do not generate a profit and often overspend as they try to win races, score UCI ranking points, and retain their three-year WorldTour licences.

The biggest North American professional sports, such as the NBA, the NFL, and the NHL, are collectively owned by the teams, with a CEO or Commissioner to manage the business. A new business model for professional cycling could be similar, with race organisers and teams working together as investors and shareholders, leaving the UCI to play a regulatory role.

European sports are historically rooted in sporting merit, promotion and relegation and the inherent financial risks of that system. North American sports have permanent franchises, salary caps and are run as profitable businesses. They are two very different business models.

Formula 1 also has a franchise structure, with team values surging in recent years, with the average team valuation at $3.4 billion. In comparison, Ralph Denk reportedly sold his successful WorldTour team to Red Bull for just €10 million.

"There's no intrinsic value to the asset in cycling because the asset is only a three-year license, controlled by the UCI and their rules. It's worth nothing," Vaughters said.

"Some of the biggest franchises have negative cash flow and debt. Yet, they are worth billions. Why? Because the franchise itself has value. It has permanency.

"In pro cycling, we seem to think that we are all in competition with each other. The teams are fighting each other on the road, the organisers are fighting the teams, the teams are fighting with the UCI, it's just a constant battle. But we are not each other's competition.

"Fighting for victory out on the road is healthy. Where it’s not healthy is on the business side, in the boardroom. Our competition is F1, our competition is Netflix. Our competition is any other sport and any other form of entertainment. Competing against each other is stupid and short-sighted."

F1 has boomed under the ownership of US company Liberty Media, doubling revenue to $3.41 billion in 2024, with reported profits of $791 million, according to sports business media reports. As revenue increased, Liberty Media convinced the teams to accept a budget cap to try to limit spending and level the playing field.

Top constructors like Ferrari were historically paid a higher share of television rights, but the F1 budget cap limited that, with exceptions for driver salaries, engine costs and some other costs. The 2026 cap is €199 million. New rules on car design and racing have sparked debate and push-back from drivers and die-hard fans, but F1 continues to innovate and modernise, growing its profitability and wider appeal.

The UCI said in 2024 that it was considering some form of budget cap to level the playing field between the so-called super teams, like UAE Team Emirates-XRG, with budgets close to €50 million per season, and those who struggle to compete on half that figure.

The biggest, wealthiest team and their riders are against a budget cap because they do not want any limitations on their spending and the dominance it brings. They claim the sport should welcome more major sponsors, not limit spending, often forgetting that they were once a small team struggling to compete or desperately looking for sponsors to cover their budget.

Late last year, Lappartient claimed that the teams voted against the idea of a pro cycling budget cap, saying they demanded a better 'model' for the sport before accepting any change.

It was another example of the power struggle and how the fight for control of the sport slows business development. Like in a hectic, high-speed sprint finish, nobody is willing to give an inch, fearful of helping a rival find a way through to victory.

The Tour de France dominance

It is widely acknowledged that the Tour de France generates 80% of a team's television exposure and sponsor visibility. A team's annual sponsor visibility, and so the funding is justified based on their results each July.

The Tour de France is what Wimbledon is to tennis: the Super Bowl of cycling. Without the global visibility of the Tour de France, pro cycling would be a niche sport. But that imbalance and near-monopoly over the sport's wealth have shackled the growth of professional cycling.

"Let them eat cake," Tour de France race director Christian Prudhomme and ASO CEO Yann Le Moenner perhaps say whenever teams ask about revenue sharing and complain about rising costs. ASO believes they created the current revenue and value of professional cycling and so deserve to control the business model.

Vaughters accepts that a shake-up of pro cycling and the adoption of a more commercially driven, franchise model would have to involve ASO, perhaps even giving them a majority stake.

It would be more revolutionary than the storming of the Bastille, but it could see the sport grow commercially and compete against other sports and forms of entertainment.

"Fundamentally, if you're going to change the entire business model of cycling, it really needs the Tour de France to be part of that," Vaughters admitted.

"Sadly, I don't see it happening. Nobody is getting along, but that's a really dumb place to be, and unfortunately, the sport has pretty much been in that dumb place since about 2006."

Despite the UCI blocking the One Cycling project, Vaughters believes in the underlying strategy of cycling's stakeholders working together.

"Essentially, there have to be enough teams to just come together, create a corporation and put on a race and sort of demonstrate that the unified model works, then we might see some changes," he concluded.

Whether you like it or not, gravel riding now has a professional side to it. That's reality, and not the argument of this article. There's no single definition of 'gravel pro', and the fact that it is given so many column inches shows how young the discipline is.

Brands are seeing huge demand for gravel bikes, and they're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to market them. As always in sport, a big chunk of that budget ends up behind athletes.

The athletes are paid to drive value for the brands. That's where the tension sits. Results matter at the biggest races, but the value drops off sharply beneath that top tier. So, if you finish 17th but produce a YouTube video that hits six figures in views, that can make you more valuable than the rider who finished seventh. That's not controversial. It's the commercial reality of modern sport.

The goal of these brands is to sell bikes and other products. Winning races is just one way they're trying to do that.

Gravel is in an awkward teenage stage. It's growing fast, changing faster, and never quite looking the same for long. What it was even a few months back already feels foreign, and what it is today won't last for long.

Part grassroots, part WorldTour adjacent, part marketing vehicle, part genuine racing. Everyone sees a different version of gravel's future, and that's OK. Everyone is different, and every sport attracts different crowds who are there for different reasons. Gravel is no exception.

This season is a turning point, and brands are investing big in teams. It could, almost ironically, be a democratising moment for pro-gravel.

Is the era of the privateer moving on?

A privateer is simply an independent professional athlete. They build their own group of sponsors and deliver both racing results and content. In gravel, this model effectively started with Ted King in the mid-late 2010s. He wasn't called a 'privateer', but a brand ambassador who happened to be racing bikes fast. The model grew and evolved with time.

Ted King walked, which allowed a whole host of others to run: Pete Stetina, Ian Boswell, Laurens ten Dam. They used their WorldTour engines and industry connections to race at the pointy end while getting paid.

The privateer model became gravel's default. It brought freedom to a generation of athletes who could exist outside of the sport's tradition. You choose your own calendar, sponsors, and travel the world with friends. There's no team telling you what to do or where to go. It almost made life cheaper for the brands, with athletes splitting income across a network of partners.

The analogy of running a start-up business is one that's often used. The job of being a pro in gravel isn't just racing bikes fast; it's the whole picture. Accommodation, flights, spreadsheets, sponsors, contracts, and deliverables.

You still have to be as strong an athlete as possible, but you have to figure out everything else, too. Unless you're on the podium at the biggest races every week, it's no longer good enough to just be an athlete.

If the first generation of what we now deem 'gravel pros' were ex-WorldTour riders, the second generation were WorldTour or XCO adjacent. Two of the leading names in the modern men's field are Alexey Vermeulen and Keegan Swenson. Both had careers in their respective first disciplines, road and mountain bike, before switching to gravel.

At the top level, the narrative was always that gravel, especially in the US, meant freedom and big pay cheques. But that wasn't entirely true then, and it's becoming even less true now as the sport enters a new era.

Enter the team era

Speaking to The Guardian in 2024, gravel racer Payson McElveen, who is also a two-time US Marathon MTB champion, said: "Gravel races forbid team tactics, which opens the door for more creativity and storytelling."

Less than 18-months later, that ship has sailed. As more money pours into gravel from brands looking for return on investment, the sport is slowly moving beyond the romantic idea of privateer racing.

The most notable shift this off-season is the signing of Keegan Swenson and Mads Wurtz-Schmidt to the men's side of Specialized Off-Road Racing. They joined Matt Beers, who can count World Marathon MTB Champion, European Gravel Champion and three-time Cape Epic winner in his career achievements. Time will tell, but this team seems to have already drawn a line in the sand for a new era of gravel racing. They're not alone either; PAS Racing have increased their racing investment, and Q36.5 launched a women's pro gravel team this year.

There has been pushback, often wrapped up in the meme-ified 'spirit of gravel', and sometimes, almost ironically, by the same generation of riders that first professionalised gravel.

In late 2019, Stetina left the WorldTour and declared: "I'm still going to be a pro rider… I'll just be doing different kinds of races." That moment turned out to be pivotal. It marked gravel's shift to a legitimate professional race scene. The riders who arrived next simply accelerated that shift.

Nothing is shocking about this, though. It's just sport behaving like sport. Brands paid big for gravel winners, the audience grew, and the incentives got bigger. As soon as there was big money on the line, riders naturally started to realise that teamwork makes a difference.

In gravel, as in any sport, the choice is simple: evolve or die. In truth, the earliest generation of pro gravel racers became victims of their own success. They raised the discipline's profile, and the discipline changed around them.

Teams aren't the issue. The real threat is pretending gravel should stay stuck in some beers-the-night-before era, an era that, let's be honest, mostly benefitted the ex-WorldTour riders who dropped in with huge engines, and ready-made sponsor relationships.

There is a certain irony to all of this. The growth of teams could, in fact, democratise pro-gravel. Teams create natural pathways for riders who didn't come from the WorldTour pipeline, and with proper support, riders rise on talent and work ethic, not just pedigree and connections.

This is where the debate gets interesting because while teams make sense competitively, they're harder to justify economically.

One of the biggest arguments against teams is simple maths. Every additional rider costs money, not just in salary, but also in travel, equipment, and logistics. The return on investment for a rider who won't win every week is hard to justify. A three-rider roster guarantees maximum exposure with minimum outlay, but expanding to five or six requires a sponsor to believe those additional athletes will generate proportional value. And right now, gravel doesn't reward depth.

A team can gain huge visibility with one race-winning rider; they won't gain much more with a strong 15th-place finisher. Until gravel has meaningful coverage, rankings, or a true league structure, the commercial incentive is to stay small. The ceiling grows, the floor stays low.

How much money are people making?

Pro gravel has, at least in part, been painted as a gold rush. And sure, a handful at the very top do get paid well. But the idea that gravel is full of big salaries and endless autonomy was always a myth. The vast majority were nowhere near those six-figure numbers.

The privateer model is often praised because riders can choose their own sponsors, but that's not the reality for most. Choice only exists when you have leverage. For many privateers, partnerships are dictated by who can actually pay, not who they'd ideally like to represent. Business is business, after all.

There is real money at the very top, but that's exactly the point: the money is concentrated, not widespread. Gravel is a professional sport being played on completely different playing fields. It has winners and survivors, but almost nothing in between. A healthy ecosystem needs a middle class where riders who aren't winning everything can still make a living.

Right now, that doesn't exist. There are maybe 15 to 20 riders earning six-figure salaries, and the drop beneath them is steep. Some riders finishing inside the top-10 of the Life Time Grand Prix (LTGP), the world's most prestigious off-road series, are barely breaking even, let alone earning a salary. A discipline where most of the 'league' can't cover their costs isn't a professional one.

Andrew 'Lespy' L'Esperance is a Canadian professional rider who finished seventh overall in the 2025 Life Time Grand Prix, along with a long list of high-level results. His experience captures the reality behind gravel's supposed 'gold rush'.

"As a Canadian, we're not international, but we're not American. We rely on US sponsorships, as the Canadian market is smaller; it's a weird place to be. I gather a pot of money from sponsors that allows me to run a calendar, and in certain cases, expenses like accommodation are provided at events. It's not clear cut in gravel as to why you're paid what. There's not an exact value to being in the Grand Prix; it's more 'What can each brand afford to spend?' All of our contracts have confidentiality clauses, which doesn't always help," the 34-year-old revealed.

"I'll be very honest, last year I didn't do that well at all financially; it was definitely a bridge year. I need to perform well to keep doing this. We're essentially small businesses, and there are a lot of ways to create efficiencies in small businesses.

"For 2026, a lot of my sponsorship discussions happened before the Grand Prix selection. Maybe my sponsors assumed I'd get in, but it wasn't discussed. I don't have an additional bonus if I get into the Grand Prix, but I do have them attached to performing within the Grand Prix."

Raise the floor, not the ceiling

To their credit, Life Time accelerated gravel's professionalisation. The Grand Prix created a marketplace for riders to prove value and gave structure to a discipline that had none. And they've made it clear that they want the LTGP to become a true league. Their 2026 prize pot of $590,000, split evenly across genders, is their biggest step yet.

The huge prize pot unsurprisingly grabbed headlines but fundamentally missed the point. For the LTGP to become a true league, it needs to have strength and depth. At the very least, each rider in said league needs to be making a livable salary.

You have a handful of riders making six figures who are racing against, and often being beaten by, some who aren't making a cent. It's nonsensical. To become a legitimate league, it would be better to raise the bottom of the LTGP than to reward the winner. It sounds paradoxical, and it's far from sexy.

Gravel doesn't need bigger rewards for the already successful; it needs a middle class. If Life Time wants the sport to professionalise, as they seemingly do, their priority has to shift. Not more money for the winner, but better conditions for everyone else. A league can only be as strong as the minimum standard it guarantees.

So, how do you become a gravel pro in 2026?

In many ways, it's positive news. Becoming a gravel pro is becoming more similar to any other discipline. If you are consistently performing at a top level, brands and teams will pay attention to you. And, if you're good, but your results aren't exceptional, you need to bring another form of value to the table.

The privateer model will still exist and thrive, but it won't be the dominant pathway anymore. It will reward the few who can juggle racing, media, and business.

For everyone else, the rise of teams shouldn't be seen as a threat, but a chance to level the playing field. That being said, teams still need to be wary. Gravel isn't the WorldTour, and trying to copy that system would be a mistake. The WorldTour model barely works for the WorldTour. The teams need to find that sweet spot between performance and relatability to their original audience.

Nonetheless, they bring the structure and finances that allow riders to rise and exist based on talent, not just reputation.

"I have never won such a big race," said cyclist Cédrine Kerbaol in 2024, beaming in a post-race interview. She had just won a stage of the Tour de France Femmes after a 15km solo attack, making history as the event's first-ever French stage winner, and securing her team Ceratizit-WNT Pro Cycling's most prestigious victory. "It's crazy."

A lot can change in a year. Kerbaol left for EF Education-Oatly at the end of the season, activating a get-out clause after the team had some hiccups registering for their WorldTour license. Then, in September 2025, Ceratizit Pro Cycling's general manager Claude Sun was forced to close the team he'd spent more than a decade building. "It's your baby," he tells Cyclingnews. "You've got a good relationship with all the riders – it's like your family. And from the sports point of view, it's not a good thing."

The irony is that women's cycling has never been bigger: the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift is broadcast in 190 different countries, with 7.7 million viewers watching the final stage last year, according to France TV. There is more money, more professionalism. The Women's WorldTour level was introduced in 2020, the average WorldTour team budget has risen to €4.67 million, and the UCI's minimum salary requirements are almost in line with the men's. But with costs soaring, teams like Ceratizit are struggling to stay afloat. Is women's cycling becoming a victim of its own success?

Sun, who was previously sales manager for the B2B cutting and machining tools company, launched the team, then known as WNT, in 2014. The aim was to promote the business – diluting the brand's masculine image by sponsoring a women's team – and, he says, to "develop new talent, very important for us, and have an international team." In 2019, the team moved from Sheffield to Germany, signing riders like Kirsten Wild, Clara Koppenburg and Lisa Brennauer. It joined the WorldTour in 2024, and, over its 11 seasons, achieved 65 road victories – 13 in the WorldTour – and four Olympic medals, hardly poor results.

The Ceratizit Group had made a 10-year commitment to sponsor the team, intending to extend it. But after the pandemic, the company closed two factories in Germany, making 600 redundancies, which made it impossible to justify continued sponsorship of the cycling team. "We never [planned to stop]. It was the economic situation," says Sun. "The question was: what can we do with the team?"

Sun approached five different teams in 2024 and 2025 – including Lotto, Ineos Grenadiers, Cofidis and Decathlon – to discuss a potential merger. He initially targeted men's teams without a women's counterpart, as well as Lotto, with whom Ceratizit shared Orbea as a bike sponsor.

"I was very optimistic, because we had a WorldTour team which was number 10 worldwide at the time," says Sun. "But unfortunately, the economic situation for the men's teams was the same… They had no budget, or no interest in women's [cycling], because the costs have exploded."

For a year and a half, Sun contacted potential title sponsors, only to receive the same answer. "We always thought we'd find a solution… We had so many discussions," he says. "It was always the same: no budget."

Sun is not alone in having to close his team in the last 12 months. US-based Continental team Cynisca announced a "strategic hiatus" last year after falling short of its $1 million sponsorship goal, while Arkéa-B&B Hotels folded both its men's and women's teams at the end of 2025.

"In my opinion, the development of women's cycling over the last four years was too fast," says Sun. "I can imagine that the UCI wanted to achieve the same level [as men] for women: teams, culture, budget. But they forgot one thing: the sponsor. The sponsors give the money. The sponsors pay the UCI… When the budget increases, the sponsors have to pay. I know, because I was the sponsor."

Rising costs, but not rising investment?

It is a perfect storm: a combination of rapidly multiplying costs and revenue from sponsorship unable to keep up. In 2014, Sun had a budget of €400,000 for the team. By the time Ceratizit closed in 2025, this had risen to €3.2 million, an increase of 700 per cent. And it still wasn't enough. According to Sun, it costs around €5 million a year to run a women's WorldTour team now; the average had been €2.4 million in 2022. "It's like in a company: you've got the same turnover, but your personnel costs double. If you do not find a new sponsor or increase your budget somewhere, you've got a big issue."

Cycling's problem, of course, is its dependence on sponsorship. Approximately 85 per cent of an average team's revenue comes from its sponsors. With costs ballooning, teams have two options: persuade their sponsors to pay more, or find more sponsors. This is easier said than done. At the team's inception, Sun says the return on investment was 1:10, meaning the sponsor earned €10 for every Euro invested. Now, though, he believes this has fallen to 1:7. "The sponsor's value has not increased by 100 per cent [since 2022]," says Sun. "In terms of the money to pay for a team, you've got only the sponsorship. This is dangerous."

For team managers, it is outgoings like travel, accommodation, staff, food and, increasingly, altitude camps, which have risen most. Holding a WorldTour licence carries its own price tag, and new rules are making it even more expensive: as of this season, there is an obligation to compete in more races – including all three Grand Tours – with teams only able to skip one of the remaining 24 WorldTour races. This means more riders, more transport, more staff, more bikes – and more money.

For some teams, the costs attached to a WorldTour licence are simply too high to compete in what was once every team's target league. Last year, Basque outfit Laboral Kutxa-Fundacion Euskadi were the 15th-ranked team in the world – enough to earn a WorldTour license – but decided to remain a ProTeam, despite its long-held goal of joining the WorldTour.

"Three years ago, we set up a budget to be a WorldTour team. Today, we have that budget, but the reality is that it's not enough to be a top WorldTour team," general manager Aitor Galdos told Cyclingnews in November. "We're keeping our current category."

Likewise, rising salaries in the sport are rightly hailed as a step toward gender parity. The majority of women's WorldTour riders now earn between €80,000 and €100,000 a year, with Demi Vollering rumoured to earn up to €1 million. The introduction of big agents to women's sport is inflating salaries further, managers say.

"It's good for the rider," says Sun. "But the development of the riders' agent is a big issue, because they smell money. It's like if you have a lake with some fish in it, and everybody wants to have the same fish. If you take the same fish for two or three times more money, the agent can take the money, 10 per cent, but the fish will not go faster."

Without the budget to pay larger salaries, it is harder to retain talent, with some riders trading leadership at a smaller team in favour of a higher-paid domestique role elsewhere. Kerbaol, for example, terminated her Ceratizit contract a year early to join EF Education-Oatly, despite it being – at that point – a step down from the WorldTour to ProTeam level, though likely for a higher salary.

Unlike sports like football, there are no transfer or development fees for teams that have invested in and developed young riders. As a result, the ever-increasing gap between the richest "superteams" at the top of the WorldTour, like Lidl-Trek, SD Worx-Protime and UAE Team ADQ, and those at the bottom, like Ceratizit, is widening. "The bigger teams are becoming bigger, and the smaller teams are in difficulties," says Sun. "In my opinion, the small women's teams have no future anymore. Financially, you cannot survive in the WorldTour."

Pragmatic decisions to survive

FDJ United-Suez finished last season as the top-ranked women's team, and, with riders like Demi Vollering, Juliette Berthet (née Labous), Évita Muzic and Elise Chabbey, is now one of the sport's 'superteams'. But they too are under pressure. The team is 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."

Like Sun, Delcourt has been struck by the rise in personnel costs, with participation in the WorldTour calendar becoming increasingly expensive. Race organisers typically subsidise travel for teams to compete in races. But one of the problems, says Delcourt, is that despite having similar expenditure, this contribution is much smaller for women's teams. For the Santos Tour Down Under, men's teams received €60,000, while women's outfits were paid only €25,000, despite participation costing FDJ €31,000.

"How can we continue in 2026 to have a difference like this?" he asks. "In cycling, we pay to work. When we go to Paris-Roubaix or Flèche, the cost of the travel is more expensive than the fees I get back."

As a result, Delcourt has had to make pragmatic, budget-conscious decisions about the coming season. He has slimmed his team down from 18 to 16 riders, and is planning a reduced racing calendar with more focused goals. "There is a budget decision and a sport decision," he says. "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."

Nevertheless, the sport's growing profile and FDJ United-Suez's roster of star riders have helped to entice new sponsors. When the team signed Vollering in 2024, it led to high-profile collaborations with both Nike and Specialized, which replaced long-term partner Lapierre as the team’s bike sponsor and is understood to contribute to Vollering’s salary. And mid-season last year, FDJ United-Suez signed new deals with aparthotel brand Adagio and insurance company Gan Assurances. As a team, they seem to regularly add new sponsors. Interest in sponsoring women's teams is booming, says Delcourt, but it remains harder than ever to close partnership deals.

"When we started the team in 2006, it was hard, because nobody knew [about women's cycling]. Now, it's easier to gain the attention of bigger brands because we have visibility, we have numbers – and we are number one in the world. It is hard to conclude the deal now, because of the worldwide economy. Everybody is afraid that tomorrow Trump will put a tax on Europe. I feel that everybody wants a women's team – everybody wants to be involved in my team, especially – but they say they need to wait."

Zwift is one of women's cycling's most prominent sponsors, funding both Canyon-SRAM and Fenix-Premier Tech as well as races like Paris-Roubaix and the Tour de France Femmes, which represents the company's single biggest marketing investment. It is keen to encourage other potential sponsors to follow suit. "We want to be a part of the solution, says Kate Veronneau, director of women's strategy. "We recognise that the sport is growing really fast, and we want to ensure that more investors are coming to the table, so we try to share as much as possible that this has been a positive move for us on so many levels – not just pure return on investment, but on sentiment, on brand value, on who we are and our community feeling good about being Zwifters."

The sponsorship landscape has changed since Zwift started supporting Canyon-SRAM in 2016, and Veronneau says return on investment has increased. Athletes are no longer as accessible, but audiences are bigger than ever. "The way that the sport is growing, and the increase of fans just means more exposure for us, and that we're reaching bigger global audiences," says Veronneau. "To see how much further those sponsorship dollars go now, because more people have access and visibility into women's cycling – that's seen all of us get a lot more return on investment."

On the surface, the sport appears to be thriving – thanks in part to companies like Zwift. But while some teams are buoyed up by the wave, others are borne down under it, unable to stay afloat. Sun has terminated his contracts with his sponsors, shut down his facilities, and is in the process of selling off Ceratizit's old stock.

"This is not negative," he says, listing the team's achievements. "We had 70 different riders, we've got good contact with all of them, we love them, and we pushed women's cycling. Perhaps our time is over. It's not a bad thing. It was a good time. The future will tell us what will happen next."

‘How the bloody hell do you start a pro cycling team?’ is a question that’s been taking up a lot of my time recently.

Not in the abstract, 'if I won the lottery' sense, but in the spreadsheet open, budget-planning, and pitching sense. I’ve pitched in the US, the UK, and across Europe. I’ve spoken to decision makers who have the means to make it happen. I’ve come close, and I’ve dared to dream. But, so far, I’ve fallen short.

Because once you start asking that question seriously, you realise the biggest challenge isn’t really the bike racing part. Most people assume the hardest part is convincing riders to sign or brands to supply bikes. However, the real battle starts long before that. It’s persuading someone to fund a structure that, so far, by any rational metric, makes very little sense.

Cycling teams don’t behave like other sports teams. There’s no equity, limited assets, or exit opportunity. You can pour millions in and still walk away with nothing. That’s where the real discomfort sits.

I’m either leaning on a system that’s already proven fragile. Or I’m standing in front of someone and saying: 'I know why this doesn’t work, and I think I know how to fix it.'

Teams are playing the wrong game

Answering the question of why I want to start a professional cycling team is a great place to start. Maybe it’s youthful arrogance, or perhaps naivety, but I feel our sport deserves better. In fact, I believe the majority of the professional peloton has failed to evolve and fundamentally misunderstood the modern sports landscape.

If you’re not winning, and you’re not appealing to fans, then what the heck are you doing as a sports team?

Those at the very top, UAE Team Emirates-XRG, Visma-Lease a Bike, and Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe are all-in on winning. That makes sense. If you’re chasing yellow at the Tour de France, results are the product.

Then there are teams which understand fans. The best example is Bas Tietema’s Unibet Rose Rockets, whose goal is to be the most supported, liked and followed team. Then you have EF Education-EasyPost, a funny hybrid who manage to exist in both categories.

Yet, the other who-knows-how-many teams operating on eight-figure budgets simply, well, exist. They’re not dominant enough to demand attention through results, and they’re not interesting enough, or perhaps willing enough, to build a fanbase through storytelling. They’re run by brilliant sporting people, but not media people.

It’s Bernie Ecclestone-era Formula 1 thinking. Ecclestone, who held the role of F1 CEO for three decades, was a visionary in his time, but openly dismissive of the modern media landscape and largely uninterested in anyone beyond the existing, die-hard fanbase.

"I'm not interested in tweeting, Facebook and whatever this nonsense is. Young kids will see the Rolex brand, but are they going to go and buy one? They can't afford it. Or our other sponsor, UBS - these kids don't care about banking. They haven't got enough money to put in the bloody banks anyway," Ecclestone said in a 2014 interview about F1's financial problems and the future direction of the sport.

When Liberty Media took over F1, they proved something cycling still seems reluctant to accept: audiences don’t magically appear because the sport is good. You build them deliberately, or you slowly disappear.

And that’s the part cycling keeps missing, and the part that brings me right back to the original question: what’s the cost of running a cycling team? It’s not the trucks or the bikes or the payroll. It’s the cost of building an audience in a sport that still thinks it doesn’t need one. If you can’t win attention, you can’t win anything.

Saying 'f**k you' to tradition

It was in 2024 that my interest first turned to team management. My bike sponsor at the time, Ribble, was looking to start a road team, and asked for my opinion. One thing led to another, and within months, we had a team fielded to take on the UK and US race scene.

For years, there’s been a question about whether a European squad could go out to the US to put up a fight against L39ION of Los Angeles and their counterparts in the crits. This was the chance to set that record straight.

When we launched, I wanted us to make as big a splash as possible while spending as little money as possible. The way of doing that wasn’t to go after the world where teams spent telephone numbers on the sport.

In reality, that project was never supposed to be mine; I was simply providing advice and helping the team as they got set up for racing. However, an internal personnel change meant that the team became my team. I was officially Team Manager.

This is where I learned the true cost of running a cycling team.

To do it properly is a full-time job, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. There’s a responsibility to the riders, to the sponsors, to the race organisers, and to the fans. You’re constantly on call.

It broke me. While we were racing in the US, I’d join calls at 6am in the morning, do a full day of work for the team and then line up shoulder-to-shoulder with the boys at 8pm that night in the race.

I’d make calls to towns I’d never heard of, and knock on the doors of strangers who had agreed to put us up for the night - the US tradition of 'host housing' saved us thousands of dollars. We did a pop-up activation with Red Bull that I somehow managed to organise in under 36 hours.

It felt like building the plane while flying it. We were having success on and off the bike. We were winning races on both sides of the Atlantic, and we were rapidly gaining a cult following. All because we were saying 'fuck you' to the traditional way of doing things.

The beauty of Ribble Rebellion is that I never had to worry about the financial side of things. While I ran everything day-to-day, worked alongside the board, and rode shoulder to shoulder with the boys in the lead-out trains, the budget was always there. I’d submit what we planned to spend race to race, try to be as thrifty as possible, negotiate deals and secure host houses, but I never had to find the money in the first place. The cold, hard cash part was Ribble’s problem.

At the end of 2024, for exact reasons that were never made clear to me, the brand decided to close down the team, opting to take "a different path" in 2025.

$2.5 million and a dream

Asking what it costs financially to run a cycling team is an arbitrary question. How long is a piece of string?

At one end of the spectrum, you can get a group of friends together in matching kits for a few hundred Euros. On the other hand, you can spend north of €30 million, which is the average budget of a men’s WorldTour team.

$2.5 million - that’s the number I’m pitching for three years. And I'll be honest, that’s peanuts. If I want to build a ProTeam, one division below the UCI WorldTour, that’s $5 million a year, at least.

That number has a lot of spreadsheets behind it. There’s room for growth, rider salary, staff salary, a media crew, and logistics. It’s also starting small.

Year one will require $350,000, and is really a minimum viable product; just shy of 40% of that number is to be spent on salaries for riders and staff. If you’re not paying salaries, then you are not a professional sports team. That sounds so obvious to say in this article, but trust me, most outfits below the ProTeam level aren’t paying riders a penny.

From year two, it starts to grow. A step up to the Continental level would bring access to races like the Tour of Britain. It would provide a world stage to be the scrappy underdogs. Year three brings increased investment in behind-the-scenes logistics, a bigger media team and so on.

It costs a lot of money to do it properly. I could’ve fielded a team in 2026 if I’d have wanted to, but I learned the hard way that doing things on a shoestring budget, or without knowing if at least your second year is guaranteed, will create problems.

Having the correct funding allows you to make long-term decisions that can benefit the project five years down the line rather than making month-to-month decisions with the goal of keeping the lights on.

So, where does a boy from Grimsby (a fishing port on England's east coast for those unacquainted) find $2.5 million? That’s a question I don’t yet have the answer to. The truth is, nobody hands you a blueprint for this. You learn by trying and failing. You also learn by studying the people who’ve already done it. And right now, no one has rewritten the rulebook quite like the Unibet Rose Rockets.

It’s not rocket science

Bas Tietema is the co-founder of Unibet Rose Rockets, a team that has gone from a YouTube channel to a ProTeam in four years. And whether the traditionalists like it or not, they’re the clearest proof that the old model of professional cycling is being outpaced by a new one.

What makes the Rockets different isn’t budget or talent or some secret performance edge. It’s their intention. From the beginning, they treated storytelling as the foundation of the team rather than something you sprinkle on once the racing is done.

"[The team] feels like our life mission, not work," Tietema told me, and that mindset shows. They documented everything from starting as fans at the Tour de France to now competing in Monuments. It’s the backbone of the team’s identity.

"When I’m in a race, I want to win. But if you zoom out, people care because they know the background," added the co-founder.

That’s the difference. Most teams assume that fans will care because they race. The Rockets, whose motto is 'To the Tour and beyond', understand people care because they understand the journey.

Tietema pointed to a video about the Olympias Tour, an event where no one on the team finished the race, which ultimately proved to be a turning point. Not because of the result, but because it showed vulnerability. In other words: the stuff that actually builds emotional investment.

"If you’re just a team riding, and people only see you on television, then who are you? What’s the story?" Tietema explained.

Their focus on fans isn’t an accident. It’s the strategy. The Rockets have the biggest media team in cycling (25 people) because they believe that an engaged fanbase is the most valuable asset a modern sports team can own. As Tietema said, “Ultimately, the brands we work with want an engaged fanbase.”

And he’s right. Racing alone doesn’t build that. Storytelling does.

They didn’t build a team and then look for fans. They built a fanbase and then a team worth following.

The costs you can't budget for

So, what’s the cost of running a cycling team?

On paper, it’s salaries, bikes, flights, staff, logistics, media, insurance, and a thousand line items that slowly bleed you dry. In my case, it’s an initial $2.5 million spend over three years, with year one run as a minimum viable product and years two and three only making sense if the foundations are solid. That’s the number I’m pitching for, and the figure that spreadsheets are built around.

But that’s not the real cost.

The real cost is commitment. It’s time, stress, responsibility, and the acceptance that running a team is not a side project. It’s a full-time job with real consequences. I learned that at Ribble Rebellion, where I saw firsthand what it takes.

Even still, you may fail, very publicly, and very expensively.

And then there’s the cost that cycling still refuses to price in: attention.

Tietema and the Unibet Rose Rockets understood something early on that most teams still don’t. You’re not just competing on the road. You’re competing for eyeballs. Media, storytelling, and fan engagement aren’t 'nice to have' add-ons once the racing is sorted. They are the product. The racing is the amplifier.

That’s where most teams get stuck. They spend heavily on performance, assume fans will follow, and then wonder why sponsors struggle to see a return. They operate like it’s still enough to simply exist, to turn up, to race, to hope. It isn’t.

So when people ask me why I want to start a professional cycling team, this is the honest answer. Not because it’s easy. Not because it’s profitable. Not because the model works. But because I think it can work differently.

Because if you’re not winning, and you’re not building an audience, then you’re not running a sports team. You’re just burning money and hoping someone else hasn’t noticed yet.

Professional cycling team budgets are increasing year on year, with riders and staff earning more and teams spending more on performance, travel, altitude camps and every detail that can help them win races and score UCI ranking points.

This 'teamflation' is driven by some of the top men's squads spending their way to success, with the teams contending for the Tour de France's top prize of the yellow jersey operating on budgets above €50 million per season.

According to official accounts prepared by the UCI and obtained by La Gazzetta dello Sport last winter, the combined budget of all men’s WorldTour teams for 2025 was €570 million, having risen dramatically from €379 million in 2021 and €499 million in 2024.

In this subscriber-exclusive feature, Cyclingnews will break down where teams spend their budgets and shine a light on the growing extra costs, while also considering the impact a budget cap may have on the sport.

The average men's team budget for 2025 was €32 million, up from €28 million in 2024 and €20 million in 2021. The median figure sat at €27 million, excluding the near €60 million budget of UAE Team Emirates-XRG and the by-comparison slender €17 million budget of Arkea-B&B Hotels.

Teams spend around 60% of their budgets on rider and staff salaries. The rest goes on logistics and vehicles, training camps, altitude camps, nutrition, special equipment and marketing.

Tadej Pogačar is the most successful rider in the sport and naturally the highest earner, picking up a salary estimated to be €8 million per year, with bonuses pushing his total earnings closer to €10 million. Each of the men's WorldTour teams includes several leaders earning over €1 million per season, with a few women's salaries also close to that amount.

Overall, the budgets of women's teams are far lower, perhaps even a tenth of the men's budgets, but the rate of growth is much higher, highlighting the rapid development of women's peloton and the potential room for further increases in budgets and salaries.

Excellent return on investment despite rising costs

According to the La Gazzetta dello Sport's data, 87% of WorldTour team revenue comes directly from sponsors, who fortunately receive return on their investment thanks to team naming rights and excellent brand visibility, especially at the Tour de France. The pro cycling business model is precarious, but fortunately doesn't usually lead to major debts.

When Cyclingnews carried out a one-off sponsorship report in 2013, it calculated that the average WorldTour team delivered €75 million worth of media exposure in 2012, with Team Sky generating a massive €465 million after winning the Tour de France with Bradley Wiggins. The Tour de France generated 80% of the team's television exposure.

EF Education-EasyPost CEO Jonathan Vaughters recently revealed a snapshot of internal 2025 data calculated by specialist agency Nielsen that showed that the team created a media value of €98 million during the 2025 WorldTour, an increase from €84 million in 2024. Ben Healy won a stage at the Tour de France and later wore the leader's yellow for two days, transforming the American squad's season from average to successful.

Pro cycling often imitates life, and behind the multi-million euro budgets and headline success stories, many teams face a battle for survival due to the sponsor-centric business model of the sport and the race for UCI ranking points.

The 18-team men's WorldTour can be divided into roughly three wealth or budget tiers, with the rich getting richer and the poor becoming poorer, and so struggling to compete.

According to data seen by Escape Collective, the top six teams accounted for 48% of the 2024 team budgets, while the bottom six teams accounted for just 21%. Some teams have the backing of sovereign wealth funds and state sponsors, while others depend purely on commercial sponsors, adding another twist of disparity.

There are super teams such as UAE Team Emirates-XRG, Visma-Lease a Bike, Lidl-Trek, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe and Ineos Grenadiers, with Decathlon CMA CGM expected to join them in 2026. They all have budgets above €40 million for 2026.

A second tier of teams like EF Education-EasyPost, Movistar, Alpecin-Premier Tech and Soudal-QuickStep have become the squeezed middle, with budgets of around €30 million. Below them are the teams in the fight to avoid WorldTour relegation, like Jayco Alula, Picnic PostNL and Lotto Intermarché. Their budgets are estimated to be below €25 million, with some teams forced to merge or use 'rider trading' to balance their books.

In recent years, the number of ProTeams has fallen, while the budgets of those that remain have increased massively. Tudor Pro Cycling and Pinarello-Q36.5 have lifted the quality and spending power of ProTeams, with the average close to €10 million for 2025. However, some smaller ProTeams operate on half that amount and need Grand Tour wildcard invitations to survive. New UCI rules mean that only ProTeams ranked in the top 30 can be invited to cycling's three Grand Tours, usually the only reason why they exist in France, Spain and Italy.

A deep dive into Visma-Lease a Bike's income and spending

A recent report on the finances of Visma-Lease a Bike by Money in Sport lifted the lid on where they secure funding and how they spend their budget, with similar reports on Decathlon and Ineos Grenadiers published by the well-informed Inrng blog.

Money in Sport – who investigate the budgets and revenue of Formula 1 teams, golf, cycling and other sports – delved deep into the 2024 accounts of the Visma-Lease a Bike management company. They discovered that Yellow B Cycling is now co-owned by team manager Richard Plugge and Dutch billionaire Robert van der Wallen, the creator of the Brand Loyalty company, which he sold for almost €1 billion before starting a similar company called L-Founders of Loyalty.

According to Money in Sport, Visma-Lease a Bike had revenues of €52 million in 2024 but lost €6.1 million, with the cost of the sale of the team also adding €1 million per year to the balance sheet for the next ten years.

A 72% chunk of the team's total revenue came from sponsors such as Visma, Lease a Bike, Skoda, Cervélo, Jumbo supermarkets, SRAM and Rabobank. €37.3 million was in cash, with €9.6 million in what Money in Sport described as barter transitions or value in kind, when products but no cash changed hands. This amount likely includes bikes and vehicles, but the team also noted amortisation and depreciation charges totalling €4.1 million for 2024.

Other revenues listed include €1.8 million from marketing and fan base, such as selling team merchandise and clothing.

Additionally, the Dutch team reported €1.2 million from partnerships and events, €800,000 from race participation, €500,000 from end-of-season equipment sales and €500,000 in race premiums, which could be additional race participation fees negotiated directly with major race organisers.

Visma-Lease a Bike's operating costs in 2024 were revealed to be €58.7 million. Employee costs were €32.9 million, or 56% of the total revenue. The team spent €2.6 million on race and training camps, €1.9 million on partnerships and events, €1.1 million on its fleet of vehicles, €800,000 on materials and nutrition, and €3.9 million on other operating costs.

Visma-Lease a Bike did not wish to comment on the details of its finances when contacted by Cyclingnews, but highlighted that the €6.1 million loss in 2024 includes several investments and some annual amortisation and depreciation costs.

The Dutch squad's budget is higher than some rivals, but they also run a highly successful development team and a Women's WorldTour team that won Paris-Roubaix Femmes and the Tour de France Femmes in 2025 with Pauline Ferrand-Prévot.

One source estimated to Cyclingnews that major teams now spend around an average of €400,000 on altitude camps each year, with coaches, sports directors and even team chefs also attending the vital blocks of race preparation.

Visma-Lease a Bike have long believed in the benefits of altitude training and spent six times that amount according to their 2024 accounts. When at Movistar, Matteo Joregenson once lamented the fact that he spent most of his salary on altitude camps, diet and personal performance support. At Visma-Lease a Bike, and most other teams, all those costs are now included as part of riders' employment.

Due to national employment laws, teams registered in France and Belgium have to employ many of their riders – rather than contract them as self-employed workers – and so they pay additional tax and social security contributions.

Other teams pay most riders and staff as external contractors, meaning that they pay their own tax and contributions. This usually allows teams to offer higher basic contracts, with riders saving on tax and contributions by living in Monaco or Andorra.

This reportedly raises rider and staff costs by 35% but ensures they will have pensions and access to other state benefits.

Cycling millionaires and ever-bigger teams

Rider and staff salaries are logically the lion's share of every team's budget and annual costs. Fortunately, riders' success in the biggest races generates huge media value, with each of the 30 riders creating far more value than the cost of their salary.

According to 2024 data seen by Cyclingnews, UAE Team Emirates-XRG spent €27.3m on salaries, by far the highest. Contracted with the team until 2030, Tadej Pogačar's €8 million salary makes him the highest-paid rider in the men's WorldTour. In comparison, Tour rival Jonas Vingegaard earns around €5 million a year.

A well-informed source broke down the estimated earnings of other riders for Cyclingnews.

A big-name sprinter able to win Grand Tour stages earns around €1.5 million per year, a Tour de France super domestique earns close to €1 million, while a smaller-name WorldTour domestique earns at least €200,000. La Gazzetta dello Sport claimed that the average earnings for an employed rider was €350,000, with a contractor earning €630,000 before their own pension and insurance costs.

Mads Pedersen is believed to earn €2.3 million, Wout van Aert takes home €2.5 million and Mathieu van der Poel, approximately €3.5 million. UAE Team Emirates-XRG won the bidding war to sign Isaac del Toro in 2024, offering a reported €2 million a year.

Seventy riders in the men's peloton earn more than €1 million a year, with all the riders on the UAE Team Emirates-XRG Tour de France squad all likely to be earning nearly seven figures, even if Tim Wellens recently played down the level of UAE salaries.

"In the past, UAE riders might have been paid a lot to lure them to the team. These days, it's a bit the other way around. Now everyone wants to ride for the team, so the salaries really aren't as high as people think," Wellens told Het Laatste Nieuws.

The super teams spend far more than their weaker WorldTour rivals, and that spending power is why the best riders are concentrated more and more at the biggest teams. The biggest WorldTour teams spend around 60% of their budgets on their riders and staff, while smaller teams can only spend between 35-40% due to facing similar fixed costs.

In the UK, the average wage-to-revenue ratio in the Premier League was 64% for the 2023/2024 season, with a maximum limit of 85% for squad costs, which includes player wages, transfers and agents' fees.

Meanwhile, in the US, under the NFL collective bargaining agreement, players receive 48% of the overall NFL revenue. In tennis, it is 17.5% but with only the top-100 ranked professionals taking home a considerable amount, despite the multi-million dollar prize money and high earnings of the Grand Slam winner.

Team spending on staff, and especially strategically important performance staff, has increased massively in recent years and is estimated to be about 20% of a team's revenue, with staff contracts rising faster than rider contracts. Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe have invested massively in performance staff in the last two years as they try to catch up with UAE, Visma and Lidl-Trek.

Three decades ago, most teams travelled to a race with two sports directors, two carers and two mechanics. The introduction of team buses sparked a change in spending and rider support. Staff numbers have increased massively as performance, coaching, nutrition and marketing have become more and more important.

Most men's WorldTour teams now have a staff of at least 80 personnel, with a dozen mechanics and carers, eight sports directors and vital service course and office staff to keep a team on the road throughout the ever-expanding season. XDS Astana hired a data scientist to help them successfully plan their ranking points strategy for 2025, while other teams have mental coaches, aerodynamicists, fleet managers and logistics experts.

The so-called super teams are even bigger, with headcounts above 170 or even close to 200 if a successful Women's WorldTour team and a development team are also part of the project.

The Visma-Lease a Bike team has a 30-rider men's WorldTour roster, a 15-rider Women's WorldTour squad and lists 170 staff on its website. Lidl-Trek and other major teams are expected to be similar in size.

Under UCI rules, race organisers have to reimburse a limited number of hotel beds for each team. The number has recently risen from 25 to 30 places for a Grand Tour, but teams are often far bigger for the three weeks on the road. This year, Ineos Grenadiers' Tour de France group consisted of eight riders and 32 staff. Teams have to pay for any extra hotel rooms, with some teams spending around €100,000 a year, just at the Tour de France. The teams receive that same amount from the Tour organisers for other expenses such as fuel and logistics, but most teams spend more than they receive, sparking claims from teams that they 'pay to race'.

'A budget cap is for losers' but some see it as vital for survival

The significant increase in some team budgets and the amounts they spend is outpacing inflation and testing sponsorship limits.

Some see the arrival of major new sponsors as a sign of cycling's good health, but others are concerned about the narrowing of an increasingly high-peak pyramid, creating a budget bubble that will eventually hurt competitiveness across the sport and so ultimately the attraction of the WorldTour to fans and major sponsors.

Some stakeholders are calling for a salary cap or budget cap of some kind to level the playing field, like in US sports. Others prefer a more free-market economy approach.

The UCI approved, in principle, the implementation of a budget cap of some kind for UCI WorldTour and Women's WorldTour teams for 2026. However, that never happened, with UCI President David Lappartient claiming the teams voted against the idea because they also wanted wider reforms to the sport.

"We're going to get to the point where three teams dominate the sport, but that won't make it exciting," Brent Copeland told Cyclingnews, speaking as the Jayco AlUla team manager rather than his wider representative role as president of the AIGCP teams association.

"It's great to see some big new sponsors come in, but it's very difficult for all the other teams to secure similar investment. Some kind of budget cap regulation has to be put in place. Of course, in parallel, we also need a new business model, and that's something that I'm very much wanting to push for in the future."

Leading rider agent Alex Carera defends his rider's ability to maximise their earnings and so is against a budget cap, telling Cyclingnews that "a budget cap is for losers!"

"You can't manage a commercially driven sport by limiting the work of the best managers and teams. We've got to help and stimulate the other teams to find new big-buck sponsors.

"The decision of Lidl, Red Bull and Decathlon to all become team owners is a significant change for one year and a sign of cycling's good health. We overcame the huge problems of doping in cycling, so we can surely resolve the financial problems and look after the riders much better.

"There are numerous brands and companies around the world that can and want to spend huge amounts in the sport. The problem is attracting them to pro cycling by making the sport a great product," Carera continued.

"Cycling is a beautiful sport, but it needs to resolve its problems, and everyone needs to work together. That way, we can see teams with €100 million budgets, and so everyone can earn more."

It is one of cycling’s great modern mysteries and recurring conversations: how committed is Sir Jim Ratcliffe to Ineos Grenadiers? And how long will the British team continue being one of the sport’s richest teams, if indeed it continues at all?

When the British billionaire – the richest man in the UK until 2022 – replaced Sky as the WorldTour team’s title sponsor in the spring of 2019, he did so promising much of the same as before: regular and dominant Grand Tour success.

That, as has been extensively documented, hasn’t quite happened. Egan Bernal won the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia in 2019 and 2021, respectively, and Teo Geoghegan Hart also claimed the maglia rosa in 2020, but since then, Ineos has been left chasing the new dominant teams – UAE Team Emirates-XRG and Visma-Lease a Bike. There have been Grand Tour podiums – four from Geraint Thomas and two from Richard Carapaz – but nothing like the heady days of the Sky era.

Set against the backdrop of the chemical company reporting huge losses and lamenting a shrinking chemical industry in Europe, many have pondered whether Ratcliffe will keep funding the cycling team. The arrival of TotalEnergies as jersey sponsor before the 2025 Tour de France prompted even more speculation that Ratcliffe was looking for a managed long-term exit. So what does the future hold for Britain’s first and only WorldTour team?

Ineos Sport's portfolio

Ineos’ 2019 investment into cycling was the company’s third major foray into the sporting landscape. It bought the Swiss football club FC Lausanne-Sport in 2017, and a year later invested in the British sailing team for the subsequent two America’s Cups.

Since then, Ineos has poured millions into athletics, Formula One, rugby and most famously into two more football clubs: OGC Nice in France and Manchester United in England. The investment in the latter has been reported to be in excess of £1.3 billion.

In an era of multi-club ownership models in football (interconnected networks of various clubs all owned or partly owned by the same entity), Ineos Sport operates as a similar concept but with a notable twist: it brings together not just three football clubs, but six sports, connecting each of them with one another. For many years, until his recent return to the cycling team, Sir Dave Brailsford was the head of Ineos Sport.

Ben Williams was Ineos Grenadiers’ head of performance, support and innovation between October 2021 and October 2023, joining the cycling team from the Ineos-funded Britannia sailing team. He told Escape Collective last year that there were monthly meetings between all sports, with Ineos Grenadiers adopting cooling and nutritional methods first used by Britannia.

"There was a very clear collaboration between the two sports," he said. "There was a lot of crossover between aerodynamics, hydraulics, fluids, electronics, and engineering. All teams across the [Ineos Sport] group made sure we were at the forefront of sports science, medicine and also from a tactical perspective. We had a strategy in place where we could have peers review our work to enable us to learn and challenge one another and pick up what other sports were doing."

A sell off

The year 2025, however, has seen Ineos Sport shrink. The sponsorship agreement with New Zealand rugby ended early and acrimoniously, as did its funding of the America’s Cup sailing team. Ratcliffe is also reportedly looking to sell OGC Nice. These decisions have led many observers to assert that Ineos is pulling back from its various sporting projects, fuelled by turmoil and heavy losses for the parent company.

Financial accounts for 2024 detailed that total debts for Ineos amounted to almost £10bn, with leading credit rating companies all expressing concern about the company’s long-term health, noting that those debts were between five and six times bigger than Ineos’ annual revenues.

Though the company is building a €4 billion sustainable ethane cracker plant in the Belgian city of Antwerp, it has shut down a number of its chemical plants across Europe in recent years, with the loss of hundreds of jobs. A smaller chemical industry in Europe is what Ineos has blamed. "We’re at the eleventh hour," Ratcliffe said in October, calling on governments to scrap green and carbon taxes.

Financial worries have seeped into other areas of the business, too. In August, Ineos sold the fashion brand Belstaff to Castore; the company had lost money every year since it was bought by Ratcliffe in 2017. A few months earlier, Ineos sold Ineos Hygienics, a further streamlining of the business. Meanwhile, its automotive industry – centred on the 4x4 Grenadiers, the car the cycling team is named after – hasn’t been as successful as the company had wished.

Seventy-three-year-old Ratcliffe’s own finances have also taken a heavy hit – according to the Sunday Times Rich List 2025, his personal worth dropped a whopping £6.5bn last year, to now put his total amount at £17.05bn.

Yet despite those dark clouds, there appears to be an unwavering commitment to what remains of Ineos Sport. Alongside its funding of the cycling team, Ineos continues to invest heavily in Manchester United and the highly profitable Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 team, where it has a 33% stake.

Outside of sport, Ineos has spent £100 million funding the Ineos Oxford Institute for antimicrobial research at the University of Oxford, for which Ratcliffe was awarded the Sheldon Medal, the university's highest recognition for philanthropy.

In its latest annual financial accounts posted to Companies House, Ineos Racing Limited – the subsidiary company behind Ineos Sport – noted a loss of £153.4m, almost the exact same figure as the year before. The 2024 report stated that the "directors have received confirmation that the parent company, Ineos Industries Limited, will continue to support the Company [Ineos Racing] for at least the 12 months from signing of these financial statements."

That is a financial commitment written down on legal papers, but it’s also true that Ineos does not want to increase its investment in the cycling team.

TotalEnergies' involvement

Last winter, when Ineos Grenadiers announced a search for new financial partners, its CEO John Allert issued an honest assessment of Ratcliffe’s investment. Confirming that he had received reassurances that the team would exist until at least the end of 2028, he said that Ineos "have had numerous opportunities if they didn’t want to be in the sport, to make that clear, but they do want to be in the sport." In the same breath, however, Allert also said that “it’s fair to say that Ineos don’t want to spend more money."

That shouldn’t necessarily be read as Ratcliffe wanting to pull out. More, it’s a reflection of the rising costs of running a WorldTour team. Official UCI documents seen by Cyclingnews show that budgets are increasing by 7.5% year on year, and many stakeholders – including the UCI, who are pushing for a budget cap – fear that that is simply unsustainable.

It can be reasonably assumed that Ratcliffe wants to keep financially supporting Ineos Grenadiers, but that he wants to cap that amount. Financial accounts from 2019 suggest that Ineos invested around £38 million (€43m) into the cycling team in 2019, and according to several insiders, that investment has since risen to £45m (just north of €50m).

In order to continue to compete with the best, Ratcliffe wanted help. Enter TotalEnergies. Ineos, the chemical company, and TotalEnergies, the petrochemical giant – France’s biggest company – have had a strategic and business partnership for several years, and thus the two teaming up to fund cycling’s sleeping giant was both a natural link-up and a marriage of convenience.

"This jersey sponsorship reflects the broader industrial cooperation between Ineos and TotalEnergies on a global scale, in particular in Europe and Saudi Arabia," TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanné said in June, tellingly referencing the shared business links.

A number of well-informed insiders told Cyclingnews that TotalEnergies’ investment into Ineos Grenadiers for the 2026 season will amount to around €15m – more or less what it has been investing into the eponymous French second division team that it will stop funding at the end of the 2026 season after eight years.

Those same insiders said that Ineos Grenadiers’ total budget for the 2026 season would be between €50 million and €55 million, placing it among the top four richest teams in the world. For comparison, UAE Team Emirates-XRG has a reported budget of close to €60m, while both Visma-Lease a Bike and Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe are also thought to have a budget of around €50m.

TotalEnergies’ arrival has allowed the British team to remain one of the richest in the peloton, but permitted Ratcliffe to reduce his investment, albeit marginally. His estimated €35-40m investment still outweighs that of most other WorldTour benefactors, so to suggest that Ratcliffe has had enough of his cycling project would be premature.

Going forward, it is not yet known what TotalEnergies’ long-term ambition with Ineos is, but there are a few clues, and even more speculatory murmurs.

As part of the decision to become Ineos jersey sponsor, multiple sources told Cyclingnews that the British team would have to have a minimum of three French riders on its roster. Joining Axel Laurance – the sole French rider for Ineos in 2025 – for next season are French champion Dorian Godon and Kévin Vauquelin. The latter can possibly expect Tour leadership in the future after finishing seventh on GC this past summer.

At the moment, TotalEnergies is prohibited from becoming a co-title sponsor, as UCI regulations do not allow for a company to title sponsor two separate teams. But it is widely expected that from 2027, when its support to the French team ends, the British team will become Ineos-TotalEnergies. There are also rumours that the current plan is for the team to take on a French UCI licence from 2028 or 2029 – but Cyclingnews has been unable to verify that.

A future with Ineos?

Ineos' and Ratcliffe's commitment to the cycling team can be seen from opposing sides: the fact that the billionaire does not want to up his investment suggests that he is no longer as enamoured with the project as he once was. Additionally, by seeking out new partners he seems prepared to relinquish at least some control and is open to a changing of the team’s identity.

But recent sporting decisions would suggest the opposite: from next season, the team will finally have an under-23 development team – an owner who is no longer interested doesn’t commit to finding and developing the next best young talent. What’s more, Ratcliffe has brought Brailsford back into the fold as the team's chief, and he is said to be personally excited by the expected arrival of Geraint Thomas into a newly-created management role.

Though Ratcliffe rarely attends races or training camps – sources said he last witnessed a race at the 2024 Tour de France when stage 21 started in Monaco, his place of residence – team insiders said that he still signs off on all new contracts and signings. He might not be physically present, but he’s involved in key decisions, guided by Brailsford, a man he trusts enormously.

Cyclingnews reached out to Ineos Grenadiers with a number of questions relating to Ineos’ commitment, but a team spokesperson declined to comment. Ultimately, no one knows how long Ratcliffe will stick around. He’s never said he wants to sell up, but nor has he publicly pledged to invest in the team for several more years.

When Ratcliffe invested in the team back in 2019, he said that "cycling continues to mushroom for the general public as it is seen to be good for fitness and health, together with easing congestion and pollution in city environments". But it doesn’t appear that the Grenadiers is a passion project for Ratcliffe; unlike other billionaire owners of cycling teams, Ratcliffe is not known to be a keen cyclist himself.

It’s been suggested that owning a cycling team is attractive to Ratcliffe as it is an antidote to his chemical company, proof that, through his business ventures, he supports green causes. What’s more, his relationship with Brailsford, reportedly a genuine friend and trusted associate, probably keeps the cycling team somewhat immune to the axe he’s wielded in other sports. It’s not an impossible scenario that when Brailsford, 61, grows tired of cycling, Ratcliffe will too.

What is certain among all the uncertainty is that though Ineos Grenadiers has faded from the once all-conquering beast it once was, intrigue and speculation still follows the team around intensely. And though the team isn’t as successful as its glory days as Sky, Ineos and TotalEnergies jointly fund the team to be one of the richest in the world. Its riders really should be rewarding Ratcliffe (and now Pouyanné) with more success.

There has never been a better time to become rich from cycling, with an estimated 65 millionaires racing the world’s biggest races. But away from the heights of the Grand Tours and the Monuments are 178 third-division men’s UCI Continental teams, stacked full of riders trying to work their way up the ladder and veterans looking to extend their careers, all riding races with next to little fanfare. Million-Euro contracts are not a pipedream, but an impossibility – many of them essentially pay to race.

Cyclingnews has spoken with managers, riders and agents across the globe to understand the working conditions of male Continental riders in 2025. The third-tier is the breeding ground of many young talents – 17 professional teams now have their own Continental teams which operate as development squads – but there remains an overriding sense of desperate athletes, many of them students or working part-time jobs, being preyed upon, sucked into the trap of being promised a world that doesn’t exist.

“So many teams say that they have plans to be a [second-tier] ProTeam, but most of it is nonsense,” said one rider who wished to remain anonymous. “It comes from people who seem like legitimate businessmen, giving their speech to young riders who haven’t had the life lessons to know anything different. I often feel like riders are exploited for the love of sport and sold a dream that isn’t a reality. It’s really unfair.”

Bound by the rules

There are 91 registered Continental teams across Europe in 2025, with traditional cycling nations France (12) and Italy (10) boasting the most. Riders on third-tier teams will occasionally rub shoulders with riders from professional teams in lesser-ranked events, but they are not allowed to compete in WorldTour races – it’s for this reason that some races, like the Tour of Britain, have never applied for WorldTour status as then it would exclude the host country’s Continental teams.

Unlike with WorldTeam and ProTeam squads that are registered with the UCI, all Continental teams are regulated by their national federations. What that means is that they are bound by the rules of their respective countries, as opposed to the UCI. And that explains why wages and conditions vary greatly depending on the country.

In most Western European countries – the heartlands of cycling – there is a minimum wage that Continental teams have to pay their riders, as set by each national federation. In France, where riders are treated as professionals and not amateurs, the minimum salary in 2024 was €25,000; and in Belgium, it’s €24,674 for full-time riders, and €12,337 for riders under-25, students or those deemed as part-time employees. Not all federations make that amount publicly available, but Cyclingnews has been told that the figure in the Netherlands, which has eight teams, is €600 per month, and in Italy it’s closer to €300.

Of the several sources that Cyclingnews spoke to, the consensus was that riders on European Continental teams outside of France and Belgium are generally paid between €11,000 and €22,000 a year, with the mean salary being somewhere around €14-15,000. Development teams, which have grown in popularity and tend to scoop up the best young talent, will pay less – often not much more than €12,000.

Minimum wages in the 22 of the 27 European Union member states who have one range from €551 per month in Bulgaria to €2,704 in Luxembourg. The Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and France – countries with a combined total of 35 Continental teams – all have minimum monthly salaries between €1,802 and €2,193. Typical Continental cycling wages, then, are clearly inferior.

It wasn’t too long ago that top riders in Portugal – home to a thriving domestic scene, including the Volta a Portugal which is sometimes referred to as the ‘fourth Grand Tour’ – could command wages of between €60,000 and €70,000. Similarly, at the height of the UK scene between 2015 and 2019, the biggest names were said to be pocketing up to £50,000 a year, roughly the equivalent of €70,000 back then.

Those extraordinary amounts are partly to blame for the collapse of domestic UK racing, with the number of British Conti teams reducing from seven to zero. “That destroyed the British scene,” commented one rider who rode in the UK at the time. “They blew their budgets, and it wasn’t sustainable.”

One thing that hasn’t changed from a decade ago is that younger riders on teams not affiliated to professional outfits often race without being remunerated. “In Estonia, the minimum salary is around €800 a month, but in our team we have many youngsters who don't receive a salary,” said Mihkel Räim, of Quick Pro Team.

The 32-year-old has been racing mostly for Continental teams for the past 12 years, though he did ride in the WorldTour for Israel Start-Up Nation in 2020. “There is no rule we have to pay them, and they agree to that. They get expenses paid, of course, so we give them a bike, a place to live if they need it, food and prize money. This is the deal for most young riders on European teams.”

Some things are covered, other things are not

Expenses: Some things are covered, other things are not. British rider Harrison Wood, who spent two years at Cofidis until his release last season, is racing for one of Portugal’s nine Conti teams this year, Anicolor-Tien 21.

The 25-year-old earns around €12,000 a year, a minimum wage that “four to five riders on all the Portuguese teams will be getting,” he said. Highlighting just how tight finances are, though, Wood has had to secure three sponsors for the team to participate in the Tour of Britain.

“We lost a main sponsor at the start of the year, so we haven’t got the budget we anticipated,” he said. “Without the sponsors I got for the Tour of Britain, we wouldn’t have been able to make it to the start line.”

Wood always has his expenses covered when with the team, but he has to pay his own way to races – a policy that is common among most teams. On some teams, riders are given a set fee each month, often around €500, to cover their expenses. If there’s a shortfall, they have to pay it themselves.

Many riders report issues with delayed wages or being reimbursed for expenses, and it’s not uncommon for money to be paid to a rider from different bank accounts, as teams scramble around to find the necessary amount.

One rider, who did not wish to be named, said that they had a “pile of receipts from this year of what the team owes me, plus prize money from races, but I have no idea when – or if – it’ll ever get paid.”

South African rider Callum Ormiston rode for the now-defunct Global 6 United team in 2023 and 2024. The team, which was first registered in New Zealand and then Luxembourg, had a number of serious financial problems, leading riders like Ormiston to seek out additional sources of income.

“I didn’t get paid at all by Global 6, so had to find personal sponsors throughout the year,” he said. “I had my flights paid for the year and hotels at races thanks to the organisers, but that was it. The rest of the travel I covered myself, and I bought my own food if we needed stuff. I only stayed because the calendar was good.”

'Word is spreading that there is good money to be made from racing in China'

Ormiston is now riding for The Hurricane & Thunder Cycling Team, one of 15 Continental teams in China. The country has a thriving and developing cycling scene, counting 13 UCI races and a strong domestic competition, the highlight being the China Pro Cycling League. “They’re throwing money at the sport and it's only going to keep on growing,” Ormiston predicted.

The situation in China for younger riders is similar to that in Europe: many will have their essential expenses covered, but won’t receive payment for riding. Older, more experienced and better riders, however, will get paid between €1,000 and €4,000 a month. The best in China are earning more than the minimum salary of ProTeam riders, which is set at €35,392 for employed riders, and €58,043 for self-employed riders. It’s little surprise that riders from across the globe are moving to China in increasing numbers.

“China is super cheap – you can have a good meal for €1-€2 – so I’m able to save most of my wages. Word is spreading that there is good money to be made from racing there,” Ormiston said. “The racing is also really good – the Pro League is strong, and there’s loads of UCI races. It’s the first time I’ve really felt like a professional rider.”

Prize money is also good. Räim and the Estonian-registered team Quick Pro have a Chinese backer and therefore race frequently in Asia. “We raced the Trans-Himalaya [in August] and you got $5,000 USD for a stage win, and $20,000 USD for winning the GC,” Räim said. “That’s way better in Europe, where you basically pay to race. If you win, you might get €800, but after tax, UCI fees, and splitting it with other riders, you might only get €100. which is honestly nothing nowadays in Europe.”

Räim cautions against the idea, though, of Chinese teams being willing to pay over the odds. “The prize money is good, and they have money to spend, but they don’t waste it,” he said. “It’s not a paradise. Some guys are on €4,000 a month, but not many guys get that type of money. You get some riders who have been on ProTeams asking for minimum WorldTour salaries but they’re not going to receive that.”

In total, there are 61 Continental teams in Asia and Oceania, with Japan (10) and South Korea (6) being the other hotspots. There are seven African teams and 19 teams in the Americas, but it is China that is making the biggest moves and attempting to take a slice of the European-dominated pie. “I think in the next five years it’s going to get even bigger,” Räim said.

Impressive racing calendar pitted against low wages

As the 2025 season nears its completion and preparations for the next one start to begin, the outlook for riders on Continental teams in most countries, with the exception of France and Belgium where there are more stringent labour laws, is unlikely to differ too much.

By agreeing to ride for third division teams, a rider is taking advantage of a potentially impressive racing calendar that pits them against professional riders, while accepting a life of low wages and very possibly even dipping into their own savings to get by. It’s certainly not an existence that promises wealth.

“You’re constantly battling to keep your head above the water, and it can have a serious mental toll on you,” one rider said. “For many years, it was definitely costing me more than I was making.”

Räim would like to see the UCI enforce a ruling on each of its national federations to instigate a minimum salary policy, but he has little faith it’d ever happen.

“It’s unfair because we’re in the same race, riding the same kilometres, and have the same risks as ProTeam or WorldTour guys. OK, one might be a superstar who is better, but a job is a job,” he said. “It would be nice if one day all Conti guys got at least something, but I don’t see it happening, not with the prices of everything going up. It’s never been harder to run a Conti team.”

The summer is fast approaching, and for cycling fans in 2025, that means one thing: facing the increased cost of watching the sport's tentpoles, the three Grand Tours. Across Europe, Canada and the US, watching cycling is only becoming more expensive. 

The situation in the UK has made the headlines because this summer’s Tour de France will be the final edition to be free to air on ITV4, and after that fans will need a £31-a-month TNT Sports subscription to watch most events, with the currently-running Giro d'Italia already behind that paywall – but it's not unique to Great Britain. Whether it's Eurosport, Max or FloBikes, cycling is increasingly going to subscription-only services, which are getting more expensive.

For ardent fans, it's a cost that many have little choice but to absorb, save for missing out on watching the key events of the calendar. But what is behind the changes, and where does TV subscription money go? 

Though TNT Sports owners Warner Bros. Discovery are now the sole owners of Tour de France rights in the UK, ITV's decision not to renew their contract with the Tour was not directly related to that, and the loss of free-to-air coverage was a long time coming.

Ned Boulting, who has been part of ITV’s coverage of the Tour de France since 2003 and will commentate alongside David Millar in July for the last time on the channel, says the more casual audience has been ebbing away for many years.  

"For 99% of the British public, the Tour de France is the only cycling race that exists, and even that is of secondary importance compared to the Olympics. The audience peaked with the Grand Départ in 2014 [when the race began in Yorkshire] and ever since then it’s been in slow decline, while the cost of re-signing the rights has grown much faster," said Boulting.

As a result, ITV failed to make a bid for the new contract, and neither the BBC nor Channel 4, which initially brought highlights of the Tour to the UK in 1986, were interested, as the audience is provably small.

“I know that the BBC have from time to time quite coveted the idea of showing the Tour, but they simply don’t have the bandwidth or the channels to stick up an event that happens every day for three weeks," Boulting added.

Although the rights holder, the European Broadcasting Union, is a club for public service broadcasters, it opted to sell the rights to TNT Sports, a pay channel created by a merger of BT Sport and Eurosport.  It made a loss of £34m in the year to July 2023, according to Companies House filings. The actual race footage will be provided by France Television, as before.

Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of TNT Sports have been working on streamlining their offering in recent years, shutting down GCN+ and Eurosport in the UK, and this consolidation is part of the reason why cycling is now in the main TNT subscription, rather than a cheaper Eurosport package. 

Of course, in other sports, subscription fees of £20-40 a month are not rare. When the Premier League took the plunge into pay television at its birth in 1992, the £304m paid by BSkyB was the first step in its march to worldwide popularity, but for cycling broadcasters, the imposition of an expensive paywall is a sign of weakness, not of strength. 

Rupert Murdoch, who had satellite dishes to sell, bet correctly that football fans were prepared to pay way more as subscribers than the rate bid by the incumbent broadcaster, ITV. The number of matches on air soared, and the quality of the coverage was transformed. There is, unfortunately, no such buzz around cycling. 

Darach McQuaid, chief executive of Oakbrew Swiss, who brought the start of the Giro d’Italia to Ireland in 2014, knows a thing or two about the delicate art of creating and funding cycling events. He has also brought Saudi Arabian funding into a WorldTour team - with Team Jacyo AlUla sponsored by the Royal Commission for AlUla, an arm of the Saudi Arabian government.

McQuaid entered the business during the lean times of the 1980s, when cycling was largely dismissed as an activity for people who could not afford to drive. He says: “Now cycling fans are famous for paying £10,000 on a new bike, but when they go into a bike store after that, they are sometimes very measly.” Is it possible that cycling fans are in denial about the realities of following a minority interest sport?

A tough sport to monetise

Around 12 million fans line the route of the Tour de France, one of the biggest sporting events of the year, watching it for absolutely nothing. That's magical in its own way, but a free day out for road race spectators is of little help to promoters of lesser events, struggling to make the numbers add up. Industry sources say that only a handful of other races, including the Giro d’Italia and Paris-Roubaix, run at a profit, thanks to things like lucrative sponsorship deals and sportive entry fees.

For comparison, the average price of a Premier League season ticket varies between £345 at West Ham and £1,073 at Arsenal and matchday receipts account for around a quarter of revenue.

With no income from ticket sales, race organisers need to make money somewhere, and this is where host cities (which we'll come to later) and selling television rights come into play.

It should be noted that the teams who take part in the Grand Tours do not receive a slice of the television rights, but must fund themselves through sponsorship or rich benefactors. The increased subscription costs to watch cycling funnel first to the service provider, then the production team creating the coverage, then the race organiser – none of the extra money a fan will pay will end up in the pockets of a team. Conversely, lower viewing numbers may even impact the appeal of major team sponsorship.

The organiser of the Tour, ASO, does not declare its television revenue, which makes up the largest share of the revenue, but the published figures for cycle racing are modest compared to other sports. A single game in the Premier League generates more in broadcast revenue than the annual media rights earned by the UCI, which administers the UCI World Championships, with Tadej Pogačar the reigning elite men’s world champion and Lotte Kopecky the elite women’s title holder. The UCI declared that it generated £5.1m in income from media rights and distribution before costs in 2023, a sum dwarfed by the £167m received by Manchester City for Premier League rights alone.

 ASO will make a lot more money than the UCI from selling the rights to the Tour, which is shown in hundreds of countries worldwide and even just in racing volume, eclipses what the UCI owns. But that is still just one income stream, and not enough to cover the cost of running the event. This is where sponsorship and hosting fees come in.

The Tour was born in 1903 of unabashed commercialism - to boost the flagging sales of the sports newspaper, L’Auto, the predecessor of L’Equipe- and, to put it politely, ASO, in charge since 1965, extract what it can along every twist of the 3,320km course. At its most boisterous, this means the cavalcade of publicity vehicles, which precedes the riders, bearing models of galloping horses and giant plastic smurfs. Showers of free trinkets and samples are hurled into the roadside crowds.

The Amaury family, who own ASO, shares little financial information, but in 2023 it disclosed that it typically received payments of €90,000 from towns hosting the start of a stage, and €130,000 for those hosting a finish. It declines to discuss this further, but the commercial benefits are significant when the travelling circus that accompanies the Tour comes to town. That means the race's route depends on what towns are willing to pay a fee, but in general, there's high demand from local authorities to bring the Tour to town. There are further negotiations on the precise location of the finish line, where there may be tensions between telegenic shots and the safety of the riders.

Some stages are so integral to the appeal of the Tour that negotiations are more complex. Take the ski resort of Alpe d’Huez, which has hosted a stage on 32 occasions and can expect up to one million spectators on its notorious 21 hairpin bends. The finale on the Champs-Élysées has also been woven into the fabric of the nation over the course of half a century: it is understood that ASO has to pay for the hefty costs of policing the event.

The big money for ASO comes from countries prepared to host the Grand Départ, at the start of each Tour, because the hotel and restaurant trade can count on up to a week of bookings. Since 2007, when it departed from London, the race has started more frequently abroad than within France. It launched from Yorkshire in 2014 and will return again to the UK in 2027, with stages in Scotland, England and Wales.

The impact of losing free-to-air cycling

The timing of the announcement that the Tour would return to the UK, just months after learning that free-to-air Tour coverage would end in the country, draws attention to a big question: what is the impact of losing free, accessible coverage of events like the Tour?

It remains to be seen, but there are certainly concerns that higher barriers to viewership might result in smaller audiences for the already fairly niche sport, and less eyeballs could mean less return on investment for sponsors, and eventually less sponsor interest. The next few years in the post-paywall era will show if this has an impact. 

What's more, putting a barrier in front of the sport can limit the wider social impact of events like the Tour.

When the Tour visited Yorkshire in 2014, UK Sport contributed £10m towards the event, and the official impact assessment claimed that it attracted 2.3m “unique” spectators along two stages in Yorkshire, apart from the third stage between Cambridge and London. It said the economic impact on the host regions was £128m, with a further £33m for the UK as a whole. [Three years later, in 2017, Boris Johnson, then serving as mayor of London, refused to pay ASO £4.7m to host another Grand Départ because the full organisational cost worked out at £40m].

Though those numbers are about who turned out on the road and in the host towns, the large interest was undoubtedly mainly there because people in the UK could watch the Tour for free in previous years. It was not a niche, paywalled event, and it was something many people have tuned into on a July afternoon over the years. They may not all be hardcore fans, but there's an awareness of the event. 

It was therefore awkward that in the midst of ASO's negotiations with the UK government to commit millions of pounds to the 2027 Grand Départ, it emerged that the television rights were being sold to a pay TV channel, very likely putting a huge dent in the public interest in the event.

Christian Prudhomme, director of ASO, made emollient sounds in March about the prospect of an ad hoc agreement for TNT to air the first three stages, starting in Edinburgh and then travelling through England and Wales, to a broader audience. That could involve placing it on WBD's free-to-air channel, Quest – which is showing free highlights of the Giro – or more helpfully, sharing it via one of the three main terrestrial networks, BBC, ITV or Channel 4.

 There are precedents for this: for example, Sky Sports shared its coverage of Emma Raducanu’s triumph in the 2021 US Open with Channel 4, and other major sporting finals have been given to free channels in recent years when the national interest and importance are high enough. 

The EBU said in a statement to Cyclingnews that ASO had “guaranteed” free-to-air coverage for all three UK-based stages of the men's and women's Tours in 2027.

Moreover, the British authorities have cheerfully promised a similar legacy to that of 2014, “tackling inactivity, improving mental wellbeing, boosting economic growth and supporting communities”- oh and also “to inspire a new generation of cycling fans and riders while boosting cycle tourism right across the country”. But can this be achieved if much of the public won't get to watch the race?

TNT, the EBU and ASO all declined to talk on the record on how they intend to deliver this legacy and cement the impact of the race's visit, but McQuaid points out that everyone involved with cycling in the UK will need to be much more ambitious if the Grand Départ is to enthuse a new generation.

Might new markets in the Middle East and South East Asia come to the rescue, as they have for other sports, including golf, football, and Formula 1, which has added circuits in Qatar and Saudi Arabia? Cycling as a sport has retreated in the USA, but is growing in parts of the Middle East and in Singapore. The Giro d’Italia started in Jerusalem in 2018, but Summer temperatures make it highly unlikely that the Tour could hold a Grand Départ in the Gulf. The emergence of One Cycling - a project backed by the Saudi Arabian SURJ Sports Investment fund - could bring cycling more prominently to the Middle East. With broadcast proposals still unclear, perhaps it could even make it more accessible. However, the future of this project is far from certain despite the enormous capital investment being discussed.

For now, it seems that there is no option but for cycling fans to put their hands in their pockets, which may well mean fewer people watching the sport as many simply can't or won't pay the inflated costs.

As McQuaid puts it: “Cycling sport has a terrible business model unless you own the Tour de France. The sport is luckily populated by people who are so passionate about the sport that it somehow works.”

Nine Monuments, four Grand Tours, closing in on 100 professional victories, Tadej Pogačar is so dominant and complete that his annual UAE Team Emirates-XRG salary of €8.2m is more than what seven WorldTour teams spent on their entire 30-man teams in 2024.

In compiling cycling’s 2025 rich list, Cyclingnews has been able to ascertain that Pogačar’s base salary is more than €3m more than the next set of wealthiest riders – and that’s excluding win bonuses, private sponsorship agreements and additional fees.

By combining publicly available information with Cyclingnews’ industry insights, we’re able to reveal the current top-10 highest earners, as well as a select few other standout names.

The total combined revenues of the 35 professional men’s cycling teams in 2025 exceed €730m, with an estimated 45% – €330m – spent on rider salaries. The typical salary for a WorldTour professional is around €250,000, but there are believed to be more than 60 riders on €1m contracts, with roughly half earning at least €2m.

“Salaries for the top guys haven’t exactly doubled, but have gone up significantly in the past few years,” one agent said.

The gender pay gap is clearly also still a substantial issue in cycling, where of the 60 riders on €1m contracts, our research suggests there is not a single female rider among them.

It should also be noted that there is still a disparity between the minimum salary received by women's WorldTour riders compared to their male counterparts. A female rider classed as self-employed can have a base-level salary of €62,320 compared to a male rider's €72,404 total. Meanwhile, employed women's WorldTour riders have a minimum wage of €38,000 compared to the men's WorldTour's lower limit of €44,150. It seems that the disparity is amplified as we escalate the pay scale toward the sport's super-rich.

However, the picture has hugely improved overall for female riders, with a handful now close to the magic million figure, which we'll delve into in more detail below.

All of the estimated amounts listed below only refer to a rider’s base salary and do not take into account additional payments from sponsorships and appearance fees. 

Top-10 cycling rich list

Tadej Pogačar, 26, UAE Team Emirates-XRG: €8.2m

It is no surprise to anyone that the three-time Tour de France winner, the man who many believe is on the path to becoming the greatest male cyclist of all time, tops cycling’s rich list. 

Previously earning a base salary of €6m, as reported by La Gazzetta dello Sport in January 2024, Cyclingnews understands that the nine-time Monument winner now earns €8.2m per annum. 

On top of that figure, Pogačar has private sponsorship deals with the shoe brand DMT, the I feel Slovenia tourism board, and the Slovenian water company Jana. Some of these ambassadorial contracts are thought to earn him in excess of €100,000, and he can demand similar amounts for appearing in criteriums, such as the Tour de France Singapore Criterium that he rode last November. 

Remco Evenepoel, 25, Soudal-QuickStep: €5m

Soudal-QuickStep are known within the cycling industry for being rather frugal, but when Evenepoel won two Olympic gold medals last summer, shortly after finishing third in his maiden Tour de France, the Belgian team realised they needed to act to keep their superstar happy.

What’s more, Belgian press, including Sporza and Het Laatste Nieuws, reported that Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe were willing to pay up to €10m to buy Evenepoel out of his contract, as well as giving QuickStep significant compensation for doing so.

In the end, Evenepoel signed a fresh contract to stay with the team he turned pro with, improving his salary from €2.8m to €5m per year, with Specialized contributing to his wage. He did not, however, extend his duration with the team, and his current contract will expire at the end of the 2026 season.

Like others, Evenepoel also enjoys a number of private sponsorships that pay him extra: he is Specialized’s main brand ambassador now that Peter Sagan has retired; he has a deal with Pizza Hut in Belgium; and he is also supplied a car from a local Audi dealership.

Mathieu van der Poel, 30, Alpecin-Deceuninck: €4.8 - €5m

The only man who has been able to regularly get the better of Tadej Pogačar in one-day races, Van der Poel, has also been rewarded with a pay rise in the past year. His came last March when he extended his contract with Alpecin-Deceuninck until the 2028 season, at which point Cyclingnews understands that his salary jumped from €4m to just shy of €5m. At the same time, the Dutchman also signed a 10-year contract with Canyon, but it is not known how much the German bike brand contributes to Van der Poel’s pay packet. 

The multi-disciplinarian star, who has won seven cyclocross world titles, has been a long-time ambassador of Oakley sunglasses, and in January of this year, watch brand Richard Mille began sponsoring him, too. His partnership with sports car brand Lamborghini is thought to be a purely assets arrangement – no money changes hands, but he is given a free vehicle.

Similarly to Pogačar, Van der Poel can command six-figure fees for such sponsorships and criterium appearances, meaning his overall annual salary possibly surpasses €6m.

Jonas Vingegaard, 28, Visma-Lease a Bike: €4.5m

Winner of two of the past three Tours de France, Vingegaard is Visma-Lease a Bike’s highest earner, pocketing €4.5m each year – although sources said that Vingegaard’s annual salary would increase through win bonuses in the event he is victorious in the Tour. 

The Dane’s value has remained steady in the past 12 months, but earlier this year, he did sign a personal sponsorship deal with Bygma, a construction materials supplier in his home country. As part of the agreement, Vingegaard sports a customised red helmet.

Primož Roglič, 35, Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe: €4.5m

Four times a Vuelta a España champion, Roglič’s wage at Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe is almost double what he was earning in his latter years with Jumbo-Visma, before his switch to the German team 18 months ago. With Jumbo, he was said to be earning roughly €2m, but it is understood that Red Bull pays him a base salary of around €4.5m, with bike brand Specialized covering part of his payment.

It was widely reported when he was leaving Visma that the Dutch team requested compensation of €3m for terminating the contract early by two years, and that the Slovenian himself paid part of that amount.

His contract with Red Bull will expire at the end of the 2026 season, by which time the 2023 Giro d’Italia winner will be 37. It is highly unlikely that he will be able to match his current salary, if indeed he decides to carry on racing.

Tom Pidcock, 25, Q36.5 Pro Cycling: €4.5m

Once Ineos Grenadiers’ best bet to be the next British rider to win the Tour de France, the Yorkshireman left Ineos mid-contract in the winter to join second-tier team Q36.5 Pro Cycling. 

He was on an annual salary of €4m at Ineos, and also earned win bonuses of €1m for winning any WorldTour race, World Championships or Olympic Games; he duly defended his mountain bike Olympic title last August.

Despite dropping down a division, Pidcock’s personal fortune has not taken a hit: Cyclingnews’ information suggests he earns €3.5m from Q36.5, while Ineos will continue to pay him around €1m a year for the next three seasons. One insider remarked that Pidcock “is still one of Ineos’ best earners.”

Additionally, Pidcock has private ambassadorial deals with Red Bull UK and Pinarello, swelling his annual income even further.

Wout van Aert, 30, Visma-Lease a Bike: €3.8m

The Belgian signed a contract until the end of his career with Visma last autumn, but various sources reported that the nine-time Tour de France stage winner’s salary didn’t increase much from the €3.5m he was previously earning.

Since 2018, Van Aert has had a private sponsorship and customised helmet deal with Red Bull, but that doesn’t pay as well as many believe, as it’s administered through the regional headquarters in Belgium, rather than via the global brand.

Jasper Philipsen, 27, Alpecin-Deceuninck: €3.2m

Regarded as the best sprinter in the world in the past few seasons, the Belgian increased his wage significantly when he signed a four-year extension with Alpecin-Deceuninck last summer. After previously picking up €2m a year, he now earns €3.2m per annum until the end of the 2028 season.

Although some top riders, such as Remco Evenepoel and Mathieu van der Poel, are managed by family members, Philipsen was unusual in that he had always negotiated his own contracts. In securing his latest contract, though, the nine-time Tour de France stage winner employed Alex Carera – Tadej Pogačar’s agent.

Chris Froome, 39, Israel-Premier Tech: €3m

Despite not having won a bike race since the 2018 Giro d’Italia, Chris Froome remains one of cycling’s highest earners. When he left Ineos Grenadiers and signed a five-year deal with Israel Start-Up Nation in 2021, it was reported that he was on an annual salary of €5m. 

At the 2023 Tour de France, Israel-Premier Tech’s owner Sylvan Adams famously said that the four-time Tour de France winner had “absolutely not” been value for money, and he strongly hinted that he would be happy if Froome cut short his contract.

But multiple sources have told Cyclingnews that Froome has been both unwilling to retire earlier than was planned, and neither has he been willing to take a significant pay cut, and thus is still being paid at least €3m a year. Some believe he is still earning even more. His contract expires at the end of this season.

Mads Pedersen, 29, Lidl-Trek: €2.8m

The former world champion would probably have at least a couple of Monuments to his name had he not been racing in the same era as Tadej Pogačar and Mathieu van der Poel, but the Dane still makes the top-10 list.

It was in the summer of 2022 when Pedersen last signed a contract extension with the team he turned pro with, and he inked a deal worth almost €3m a season. His contract is up for renewal at the end of this season, and there has been some talk about him seeking opportunities elsewhere, especially as Jonathan Milan has been selected ahead of him for the Tour de France.

Other notable salaries

Adam Yates signed a contract worth €2.7m with UAE Team Emirates at the beginning of 2023, as previously reported by La Gazzetta dello Sport, with his contract up for negotiation at the end of the current season. His teammate, João Almeida, earns a similar figure, but the Portuguese is on a heavily-incentivised bonus contract, meaning his final earnings over a season can be significantly more. UAE’s other GC weapon, Juan Ayuso, signed an extension with the team in 2022 to run until 2028, with a base salary thought to be around €2.2m; his father, who works in the financial industry, negotiated his contract.

Lidl-Trek’s two highest earners are Pedersen and Tao Geoghegan Hart. The latter signed a three-year contract, earning just north of €2.5m, when he joined from Ineos Grenadiers 18 months ago. Jonathan Milan, Lidl-Trek’s other star rider, signed at the same time but on a much lower wage – the Italian’s pockets around €1m before bonuses.

Jai Hindley, winner of the 2022 Giro d’Italia and a stage winner in the Tour de France the following year, signed a contract extension with Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe last spring, taking his salary to just over €2.5m. His compatriot, Ben O’Connor, signed terms with Jayco-AlUla last spring, before he finished fourth at the Giro d’Italia and second at the Vuelta a España and World Championships. It is estimated that he earns just under €2m.

For most of the past decade, Geraint Thomas has been one of Ineos Grenadiers/Team Sky’s biggest earners, with it being widely reported that he was previously paid €3.5m on an annual basis. But Cyclingnews has been told that when the 2018 Tour de France champion extended his time with the British WorldTour team by two years at the end of 2023 – his final contract before retirement – he took a significant pay cut on the acceptance that he will be 39 when he competes in his 14th and final Tour de France this summer. It is now understood that he earns around €2m.

His teammate, Egan Bernal, signed a five-year contract with Ineos Grenadiers, thought to be worth just a little bit less than €3m, in January 2022, but weeks later, he suffered life-threatening injuries in a training ride crash. Although Bernal has admirably returned to competition and Grand Tour racing, he has not yet demonstrated that he is capable of winning the biggest races again. Bernal’s wage was €3m, and we understand it’s something similar today. Elsewhere, the British team pay Filippo Ganna and Carlos Rodríguez slightly above the €2m marker.

Biniam Girmay is by far and away Intermarché-Wanty’s biggest earner at €2m, with Lenny Martinez at Bahrain Victorious also receiving €2m. Likewise, Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe duo Maxim Van Gils and Aleksandr Vlasov are on €2m.

The one million euro female rider

Salaries in the women’s WorldTour peloton are much less than in the men’s bunch, with the majority of non-neo-pros earning between €80,000 and €100,000, compared to their male counterparts who typically earn between €250,000 and €300,000. However, it is estimated that around 20 women are on more than €300,000, with a few nudging towards the €1m marker.

Cyclingnews understands that Demi Vollering, whose career is managed by her partner, Jan de Voogd, had been requesting a salary of €1m when she left SD Worx-Protime last year. Sources said that FDJ-Suez got close to that amount, but didn’t quite reach it, meaning the one million euro barrier has not yet been broken. Her former teammate, Lotte Kopecky, is also thought to be on around €900,000, with Elisa Longo Borghini earning slightly less at UAE Team ADQ.

Despite winning the Tour de France Femmes last year, Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney is earning less than the aforementioned. Cyclingnews research indicates that the Polish rider’s base salary has jumped to around €600,000, with Canyon covering part of her wage. 

In the bracket below sit the likes of Lorena Wiebes, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, Marianne Vos – who signed a lifetime contract with Visma-Lease a Bike recently – and Elisa Balsamo, who are all thought to earn close to €500,000. American duo Chloé Dygert and Olympic road race champion Kristen Faulkner are also thought to earn similar amounts.

At the end of Paris-Roubaix, as Tadej Pogačar was escorted from the velodrome by his entourage, his agent Alex Carera briefly walked away from the superstar to shake hands with a longtime team manager who was standing nearby. That boss then turned to Cyclingnews and said: “There are very few people who are making as much money from cycling as Alex is.” There’s no way to verify that statement, but it’s almost certainly true.

Agents have had an increasingly powerful role within professional cycling since the turn of the century, but in recent years their influence – and personal wealth – has skyrocketed. 

According to the UCI’s latest figures, there are 103 registered agents worldwide in 2025, but out of the 1,322 male and female professional cyclists, an estimated 576 riders – a whopping 43.5% – are managed by one of the 13 agencies that have at least 30 riders. That’s a lot of contracts and futures controlled in the hands of a small number of people.

As the biggest agents are becoming richer and more powerful, teams are becoming more reliant on them in determining transfer policy and future direction, while the smaller and individual agents are being pushed aside. Cycling has truly entered the era of the super-agents.

The big operations

Anyone can become an agent – all they have to do is sit and pass a UCI exam, or be a close family member of a rider. For a long period of time, most agents presided over the careers of only a handful of riders and did everything themselves. 

Nowadays, however, the big management companies have multiple associated agents and talent scouts in a number of nations, and employ lawyers, accountants, tax experts and social media managers – they’re truly big operations. 

“The biggest difference is that small agents have one or two people working in the company, but we have agents in many countries and multiple people in various roles in our headquarters,” said Carera, who was 22 when he started the A&J All Sports management agency with his brother Johnny in 1997 when there was only a small number of agents. The longest-running agency still in existence, today they represent around 100 riders, among them Pogačar, Jasper Philipsen and Biniam Girmay.

SEG Cycling is the sport’s other mega-agency. It was also founded by two brothers, Eelco and Martijn Berkhout, and in fact, they were still at university studying sports management when they set up their agency in 2005. 

“Managers thought we were neo-pros, not agents,” remembers Eelco, three years Martijn’s senior. Today, more than 80 riders – including Olav Kooij and Tobias Foss – are managed by the Dutch siblings. 

In his two decades in the sport, the older Berkhout has noticed the increased responsibility he and his colleagues have taken on. 

“In the beginning, not every rider had an agent, but now it’s very uncommon that you find a rider without an agent,” he said. 

“The second thing that’s changed is that teams need us more, especially to build their roster, and because we’re a big agency, we can help a team go in a certain direction. If a team wants to go from a GC to a sprint team, we can help them out not only with a sprinter but with the support riders and building a leadout.”

SEG was crucial in Astana becoming a sprinting team to support Mark Cavendish’s successful ambition to win a 35th Tour de France stage.

“Those are great projects to work on, and it’s easier for teams if they cooperate with bigger agents rather than agents who only represent one or two riders,” Berkhout continued.

“It works both ways, but often teams approach us directly, and will tell us what they want, and then we’ll come up with options to make it happen. Team managers are very busy people, so they choose carefully who they speak to, and it’s more likely to be the bigger agencies.”

In recent years, the World Association of Riders’ Agents (WARA) has been created to ensure that agents’ voices are heard and consulted in discussions surrounding the governance of the sport – another sign of their growing power.

“Ours is the most expensive UCI licence and we get nothing in return,” Berkhout said. “The UCI say it’s an obligation; otherwise, we can't do our job, but we don’t get any say in the sport’s regulations, despite us representing the riders. We think that has to change as we are more and more respected as a job group within cycling.”

Agent wars and the cost of doing business

In an attempt to secure the right to manage a rider’s career – battles that have intensified in recent years – some agents, like Carera, point to their experience and catalogue of managing hundreds of riders over several decades, while others, like the Berlin-based TeamVision, dominate their home market. The Berkhouts and SEG go about it in a different way. 

Between 2015 and 2021, the SEG Racing Academy was a Continental development team that gave racing opportunities to riders from across the globe. 

“Around 10 years ago, we realised that the focus was turning from young pros to U23 riders, so we created the SEG Racing Academy because we wanted to have an influence on the development of riders and our future clients,” Berkhout said. 

“In seven years, 36 riders from our academy turned pro, so it worked out well, and that was our recruitment strategy for youngsters.” 

The blueprint for enticing riders evolved, however. 

“But after seven years, we saw more WorldTour teams investing in U23 development teams, and we didn’t want to compete with teams that we also deal with for riders, so we stopped,” Berkhout went on. 

“Now we focus our recruitment more on U17 and U19 riders, and this year we have started partnerships with three U19 clubs, who between them have 40 riders. We think of it as SEG Racing Academy 2.0.”

The salaries of cyclists continue to increase, with more than 60 riders now earning more than one million euros per year, as Cyclingnews reported in February. 

Cyclingnews has been told of some agencies dropping their fees below the typical 5%-7% marker to ensure a rider chooses them. Twenty years ago, when having an agent was viewed as a premium service, the percentage was far greater. 

“In the mid-1990s, I have heard that the average commission was 15%,” says Marc Bator, owner of TeamVision, considered to be the third largest agency. They represent a good chunk of the German and Austrian riders, as well as the Americans Matteo Jorgenson and Brandon McNulty.

Reducing fees, potentially bringing cycling in line with football where the governing bodies recommend an average commission of around 3% (the clubs pay 10% or more), would not be a good thing for riders, even if they would get to keep more of their salary, Bator believes.

“Everyone can draw their own conclusions on whether it makes sense to go lower and lower every three-to-five year period, and whether going lower means an agent has a better chance of attracting riders, but quality work has a price, and I don’t think it makes sense to go lower just to attract riders,” Bator said.

His co-director at TeamVision, Christopher Langer, argued that “offering a lower commission sounds to me like a desperate argument. We always discuss commissions with athletes at the very end of our conversations, because they should decide if they want to work with us based on the quality of our work and how we progress their career.”

Ending contracts early largely remains a taboo subject, but cases have been more frequent in the past couple of years, with Carera overseeing two high-profile cases: Cian Uijtdebroeks’s move from Bora-hansgrohe to Visma-Lease a Bike, and Maxim Van Gils switching from Lotto to Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe.

Bator insisted that “formally, a contract is a contract and there’s no freedom to break a contract; sometimes, though, it does make sense and a regulated transfer system is something we would support and we believe would help all parties involved.”

Agents representing women in cycling is on the rise

As well as the rise of junior and U23 riders excelling on the biggest stage, the other seismic change for agents has been the number of female riders they represent. 

“When I came into the sport, there were no agents for female athletes. For so long, riders were told this was the only offer and take it or leave it – there was very little room to negotiate,” said Chloe Hosking, Australia’s most decorated road pro. “But it started to pick up six to eight years ago, and now you’re seeing an explosion of agents coming into the sport and saturating the market.”

Some agencies, like Koers is Koers, only represent women, but there is a paucity of female agents – Emma Wade of Bespoke, who counts both Elisa Longo Borghini and Lizzie Deignan as clients, is the standout figure. 

TeamVision’s first-ever client was Lisa Brennauer, formerly one of the best riders in the women’s peloton, and today they represent a number of current female German riders. 

“The underlying assumption with the arrival of agents in the women’s peloton is that we have increased salary demands, but that’s not the rule,” Langer said. 

“Women’s cycling has developed extensively in the past decade, and teams are putting more resources into those areas, and thus the need for top-level female riders has increased. It may be a very simple capitalist approach, but what that’s done has increased the need, and that drives the market. With the increased professionalisation of the sport, you see more and more women that need the advice of agents to manage their contracts.”

Despite the prevailing winds, riders do not need to have an agent – they can go it alone. That’s what Hosking did throughout her entire career from 2010 to 2022. “I don’t think there’s one size fits all and it’s up to the rider to determine what’s best for them, but they don’t need to have an agent, and there’s no reason why an agent should be taking a cut of a minimum wage,” Hosking, who is now a sports lawyer, said.

“If a rider doesn’t feel comfortable negotiating their own contract, there is an alternative option: there’s nothing in the UCI agent regulations that says you can’t bring in a parent, advisor or a third party into the negotiation of a contract. There are examples in other sports where athletes have not sacrificed a portion of their salary to get a contract. The basketball player Allan Ray negotiated his own $70 million contract by himself, and then hired a lawyer to advise him for $500 an hour. He spent a few thousand dollars on the lawyer, but an agent would have taken $2.8m.”

Did Hosking ever regret not having an agent? “Probably, a little bit,” she said. 

“When you’re a rider, you’re so tunnel visioned and focusing on what you’re doing, and that's where an agent’s biggest value and ability can really show, in negotiating contract details, but also commercial deals which create value for the riders now and in the future.

"But at the same time, the skills I gained negotiating my own contracts from the age of 18 are more valuable to me now than if an agent could have gotten me an extra $1,000 when I was 20. The skills of self-advocacy and building networks in what is a small sport were invaluable.”

Super-agents are only going to become bigger and more common

In all likelihood, fewer and fewer riders will follow Hosking’s example – super-agents are only going to become bigger and more common. 

“Every year there are more agents, but it’s risky for new agents because it’s expensive to start and you’ve got to be sure you take good riders,” Carera said. 

“Right now, there are around 10 big agencies, but in the future, there will be more, and some will focus on men or women only. Smaller agents will continue, but it gets more difficult for them every year. How do they convince a rider when we can give them 1,000 examples of successful careers over 28 years?”

Berkhout agreed. “Our job is still developing, and we’ll become more major and more respected in the coming years. I think cycling is typically 10 years behind the football industry, and if you look to football the big agencies have gotten stronger and stronger,” the Dutchman said. 

“While I think there’ll always be solo agents – cases like Remco Evenepoel being represented by his dad will exist forever – I expect more agencies like ours who have performance centres and have a lot of employers. I even see more agents joining forces to make the big agencies even bigger.”

In the height of summer, pro cyclists sweeping through the most stunning switchbacks of the most scenic mountains in the world foster an image of a dream rather than a job. Beyond the idyllic climes and days spent pedalling, pro cycling has also become exceptionally lucrative with many riders commanding eye-watering seven-figure salaries. But there are drawbacks beyond the souffrance and the pressure, and beneath the surface reveals an occupation with employment restrictions, complications and uncertainties just like any other.

Those pressures are currently mounting as the financial and political world around cyclists has evolved. Contracts have become longer, athletes have been signed younger, and the UCI has introduced new regulations and rules, all while the wider world of sports contracts has been picked apart by high-profile litigation. Remco Evenepoel and Juan Ayuso's high-profile and controversial early contract breaks are just the latest examples of this within pro cycling.

We'll return to this changing landscape in more detail later, but for now, let's consider why contract arrangements and contractual stability matter in cycling.

Longer, younger, more regulated

The transfer season can be a nerve-wracking time of the year for a large part of the peloton, especially for riders who are nearing the end of a contract. That's because a rider's contract typically lasts two years, and sometimes just twelve months, at which point they might be lucky enough to get a new contract, on the same team or elsewhere, if their results, form and fitness are strong enough.

In recent years, though, there has been a growing trend toward longer contracts to secure the world's best talents either at the height of their careers or at the very start of their exponential rise to form. Tadej Pogačar represents the former - recently securing over €50 million across a new six-year contract with UAE Team Emirates. Meanwhile, younger athletes, like Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale’s Paul Seixas, are entering into longer contracts at a younger age – in Seixas' case securing a three-year deal at the age of only 18 – which gives the rider the benefit of a longer run-road into the sport, and the team the ability to retain talent.

But this is sport, and in sport, contractual stability also has sporting consequences – and those consequences carry negatives and positives. For example, if riders could break their contract and change teams from one race to the next, it would completely undermine team competition. Equally, if a team can hoard talent simply because it has more money to offer, that will affect competitive dynamics and could reduce interest in the sport to everyone’s detriment.

That’s why EF Pro Cycling CEO Jonathan Vaughters told Cyclingnews: “You can purchase success, you can just buy success” amidst a rallying call for increased regulation on spending.

Wealthy teams and sponsors entering cycling have stoked debate across the sport. At times, the investment has been praised—and in a sport in which team revenues can be volatile, it’s easy to understand why—but the obvious friction is with the development of a system in which only a few teams can afford to win. Alongside simply out-funding their rivals, wealthy teams can do this by locking down talent for long periods, which can lead to a significant competitive advantage.

While pro cycling is a sport, a culture and a world of its own, it's also a market governed by the principle of fair competition.

So it’s little surprise that the UCI, like most sports governing bodies, has taken a regulatory interest in contractual stability and team transfers. In the summer of 2024, the UCI built on this by introducing an expanded set of rules to govern transfers and registration for UCI WorldTeams.

The governing body told Cyclingnews that it “acknowledges the general trends and increased competition for contracting riders and the challenges this presents in balancing contractual stability, riders’ and/or teams’ autonomy and sporting integrity.”

The new rules include two defined registration and transfer periods per year, restrictions on certain contract terminations, restrictions on team transfers during contracts, and a prohibition on teams approaching in-contract riders at other teams.

The UCI has cast substantial focus on “unlawful termination”. In the world of normal employment, our minds may jump to individuals being dismissed by their employer without proper process. Similarly, the UCI’s rules do contain protections for riders from abuse by their employers, for example, if a team were to repeatedly refuse to permit a rider to enter competitions, it lost its licence to participate in UCI events, or a sponsorship deal collapsed putting the team’s future in doubt.

However, unlike a typical employment relationship, the UCI rules contain a number of provisions that regulate how a rider may leave their team. An “unlawful termination” would include situations in which a rider tries to escape their contract before its full term has elapsed unless there is a specific contractual right to do so. This has particular consequences for riders who enter into longer contracts. The UCI rules have been designed to ensure that riders honour those contracts unless they have negotiated a specific right for the rider to leave earlier.

In the case of Remco Evenepoel, Soudal-QuickStep CEO Jurgen Foré admitted the team didn't want to get into a drawn-out legal case when it became clear the double Olympic champion would not renew his contract, so received "a fair amount" to allow him to break his contract a year early and join Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe.

The Belgian WorldTour squad would have received severance pay to allow Evenepoel to move on before the conclusion of his contract, rumoured to be around €2 million, although Foré would not discuss exact figures during an interview with Sporza.

Meanwhile, UAE Team Emirates-XRG and Juan Ayuso mutually agreed to terminate his contract, due to run through 2028, early after the rider-team relationship had broken down beyond repair, and Ayuso described the team situation as "like a dictatorship."

But there's another problem… These UCI rules as currently drafted could prove unlawful under European Union law, and if they are – for riders based in or with competitive interests in Europe, which, given the international nature of the peloton and the cluster of riders and teams being based in the countries within the bloc, is likely to be the case for many – they’re unenforceable.

The UCI - controlling the contracts

Dramatic as that may sound, this is an issue already faced by other sporting bodies and should already be on the UCI’s radar.

Not least because of a recent decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union, following a challenge brought by the footballer Lassana Diarra, found a significant part of FIFA’s transfer regulations to be unlawful.

Similarly to the UCI regime, FIFA’s rules contained prohibitions on the early termination of contracts by players without their club’s agreement. And like the UCI rules, there could be sanctions on the player and their new club if a tribunal found the player to have left their old team without a contractual right to do so, or the agreement of the club they wanted to leave.

Often, agreement to let a player leave their contract early came in the form of a transfer, sometimes with eye-watering fees attached. If an agreement could not be reached, the player might be stuck, forced to see out their existing contract.

In the Diarra case, the court found FIFA’s rules to have been designed in a way that was liable to both breach competition law and restrict the free movement of workers within the European Union. The rules gave too much power to clubs and reduced players’ career mobility. Because of that court decision, those rules can’t be enforced as they were designed.

This is of major consequence for football. FIFA has moved quickly to consult with stakeholders on what should happen next. However, the issues identified are not restricted to football. The principles set down by the court are also capable of being read across to other sports in which similar restrictions have been constructed. Given the changes recently made by the UCI, that includes road cycling.

With any legal matters, the devil is always in the details. But the contrasting positions of FIFA and the UCI should raise eyebrows. Just as FIFA is having to reorganise its transfer rules because of problematic rules that could lead to sporting sanctions for players who leave their deals early, the UCI introduces rules that could lead to sporting sanctions if riders leave their deals early.

The court did say in the Diarra case that a lawful set of rules to facilitate contractual stability was possible, so it’s not that the UCI faces an impossible task. But when you dig into the detail, there are some potentially problematic restrictions in the UCI’s current regulatory regime.

Some of the new rules lack transparency. One change allows a rider to register with a new team if they have unilaterally terminated their previous contract (meaning they have not come to an agreement with their old team on the contract coming to a premature end). However, this is conditioned on the President of the UCI Arbitral board’s approval.

The rules are vague on what exactly the President of the Arbitral board should consider, save to say permission should only be refused “if a prima facie analysis shows that the termination was clearly unlawful”, without specification as to which laws are to be considered, whether the rider will be able to represent their case, or otherwise.

This is problematic as it would be very hard for riders to consider offers from other teams, or for teams to make those offers. There would be too much uncertainty as to what consequences they each might face. The law generally will not allow rules that are so opaque that they could reduce competition for riders’ talents.

On the face of it, the rules may appear to be designed not to unduly impede riders’ freedom, but there is a lack of procedural precision and detailed points the UCI would consider – a projection of how the UCI would interpret these rules in real life.

While the rules don’t outright prohibit mid-contract moves, teams and riders will put themselves at risk of sanctions like bans on registering riders (for teams) or bans from competing (for riders). If they can’t be sure about what will happen, they are less likely to move.

Generally, rules which reduce competition are hard to justify legally. Harder still when the potential consequences are not transparent. The UCI’s rules don’t allow riders to make a proper assessment of the risks of leaving a contract early. It is left hanging over them that both rider and their new team might get published for a move.

That same rule goes on to say that an early contract termination won’t be “clearly unlawful” on first examination if the rider does not move for more money.

The insinuation here is that if a rider receives an offer to perform their job for money with another employer and decides that they want to end their current employment early in order to pursue that opportunity, that it might not meet approval. So unless a rider has a contractual right to move for a better offer, as was reported to be the case when Lorena Wiebes moved from Team DSM to SD Worx in 2023, they’re at risk of breaching the rules if they move for more money.

This has the air of what is referred to in competition law as a restriction ‘by object'. This is the most serious restriction of competition - 'by object' infringements include activities such as price fixing or predatory pricing. These restrictions are usually not capable of justification because they specifically intend to restrict competition. While the UCI rules do not explicitly say riders can’t leave their existing contracts for new, more lucrative ones, it is certainly implied to be a factor, and that one that would be very hard for the UCI to sustain. In an environment where longer contracts are becoming more common, this is particularly important.

The UCI's legal challenges

There are other issues. Another rule holds that a team wanting to engage an in-contract rider needs to inform the current team first. The rider can only move if the two teams agree to a transfer.

There aren’t many professions in which this sort of protective conduct would be tolerated: Neither accountants, nor lawyers, nor teachers, nor bricklayers need the permission of their company, law firm, school, or site manager if someone offers them a better job. Yet in sport, it’s common practice.

In some cases, that’s legally justifiable, recognising the special features of sport and the interest of maintaining the integrity of competitions. It is not always legal though, and in the Diarra case, the particular system governed by FIFA was found to be unlawful because, among other things, that sort of arrangement amounted to a ‘no poach’ arrangement between competitors. There is a real risk that the UCI counterpart could be construed as doing something similar.

If a team doesn’t get the rider’s current employer’s blessing before a mid-contract switch, the UCI can impose sanctions on both the rider and the new team, including suspensions (from competition for the rider, or from registering riders for the team) and fines. This doesn’t mean situations like the public divorce of Cian Uijtdebroeks and BORA–hansgrohe won’t happen again, but in the future, riders who want to force a move through will put themselves at risk of punishment.

This too could be a legal issue. The court in the Diarra case did not completely prohibit sporting sanctions for breaches of contract by players. But sanctions must pursue a legitimate objective in the public interest, and the overall framework must be transparent, objective, non-discriminatory and proportionate.

In a statement to Cyclingnews, the UCI denied that its rules were legally at risk in the same way as FIFA’s were, saying “Whilst we recognise the decision’s relevance for all sporting regulations, a fundamental difference lies in the manner in which the UCI Regulations provide clear guidance on the circumstances under which a rider’s new team can avoid being sanctioned, thereby striking a balance between contractual stability - historically linked with cycling - and free movement, as well as promoting best practices among teams.”

However, it is hard to hold the two sets of rules up against one another and spot the meaningful transparency created by the UCI regime in comparison to its FIFA counterpart, nor the obvious need for sporting sanctions from a legal perspective.

Sanctions must sustain the integrity of the sport in a way that the ordinary legal principles of contractual breach of an employment contract would not. A rider who leaves their contract mid-way through might still suffer legal consequences for breaching their contract––but that’s a matter between employer and employee; it does not need to include sporting sanctions unless those sanctions protect something essential to the sport. In the case of longer contracts, it’s not clear how it would.

High stakes for cycling

Not all parts of the UCI transfer regime are so knotty. The implementation of transfer windows is likely to fulfil its purpose and has met approval in EU courts in other sports (there was a case involving the basketball player Jyri Lehtonen in which the imposition of transfer windows was challenged as being an unlawful restriction on player mobility, but this was not upheld by the court). More restrictive terms are also capable of legal justification. Rules that are agreed as a result of collective bargaining and which improve employment conditions are generally immune to challenge (known as the ‘Albany exception’ after a case of that name).

Also to its benefit and advantage is that the UCI, unlike some sports, has riders’ representatives in its governance framework. As trends in rider contracts evolve, it will be critical for the UCI to properly enfranchise riders and their representatives in the design of the rules.

The UCI acknowledges this friction, telling Cyclingnews, “The positions among stakeholders on how to regulate this topic outline divergences: some advocate for strict rules with deterrent sanctions to uphold stability and integrity, while others favour an unregulated transfer market to enhance rider and/or team autonomy.”

Ultimately, any suite of transfer restrictions that do not adequately prioritise riders’ interests will be at risk of legal challenge. And if the rules can be defeated by legal challenge, their existence is a footnote for riders with greater economic power. They risk limiting the careers only of those without the financial clout to argue their case.

In a world where less experienced and less well-remunerated riders enter into longer contracts, a real imbalance could be created and competition would be stifled. The sport, and its fans, would suffer the consequences.

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When looking for perspective in cycling, Tao Geoghegan Hart is often a good voice to turn to. Recently, as he met the media ahead of the 2025 season, the conversation turned to the push for reform in the sport. The Lidl-Trek rider was mostly in favour of evolution but cautioned that the status quo isn’t as bad as some are making out. “I have friends in many different endurance sports, and there’s not 1,000 people making a very good living [from those sports], but in cycling there are. And it’s easy to forget that,” the Londoner said.

Part of the sport’s millionaire club, an ever-growing list of riders whose annual salary is at least one million euros, Geoghegan Hart’s comments reflected the reality on the ground: professional cycling, men and women, has never been richer. Team budgets have risen exponentially – the median among men’s WorldTour teams in 2024 was €25m, up from €18m in 2019 – and the average male rider salary, according to the UCI’s official figures presented at the WorldTour seminar in late November, stands at €501,000. In the women’s peloton, it won’t be long before a rider(s) joins the millionaire club – and some think that watermark has already been breached. 

We wanted to dig a little deeper into the numbers and the trends to find out just how profitable a career as a pro cyclist really is in 2025.

More and more seven figure salaries

In an official UCI document seen by Cyclingnews, the 18 men’s WorldTour teams collectively spent €226.5m on rider salaries in 2024, with teams spending on average €12.6m on their maximum quota of 30 riders. One team, thought to be UAE Team Emirates XRG, had an outlay of €27.3m on salaries, and at the bottom end of the scale, assumed to be Intermarché-Wanty, total salaries amounted to €5.2m.

In 2025, that figure has risen further, with several superstars improving their contracts substantially: Cyclingnews has been able to confirm that Tadej Pogačar’s wage has grown from around €6m to north of €8m, while Remco Evenepoel’s previous salary of around €2m (excluding bonuses) has swelled to between €4.5 and €5m. Jonas Vingegaard earns around €5m, Mathieu van der Poel €4m, and both Wout van Aert and Primož Roglič pocket €3.5m from their respective teams annually. They’re at the top end of the earning charts, but each year more riders join the millionaire ranks.

“Every team has, at a minimum, two riders on a million – some even have seven to eight,” agent João Correia, who runs the Corso management company, said. “If you go through each team’s roster and quickly add that up, I imagine there’s 75-100 on at least million euro contracts. There’s definitely 50, at the very least.” Of those surpassing the two million benchmark, Correia speculates there are more than 30.

His counterpart, Alex Carera of A&J All Sports, shares the same thought: “There are 22 big teams, and I’d say the median is three riders earning a million per team. So there are more or less 65 riders on a million or more,” the Italian said. Other agents estimated 70.

The average salary of €500,000 is bloated by the millionaires – that’s not a true representation of what the typical domestique earns. Cyclingnews spoke with six agents and the general consensus among them was that the median wage is between €250,000 and €300,000.

“Teams are realising that it’s no longer enough to have two or three star riders and then just fill the rest of the team with whoever else – you also need a very good midfield, whether that’s a leadout train for a sprinter or climbers for a GC leader. And that’s working in the favour of those mid-ranking riders because it costs more and more to sign them,” said Dries Smets, a Belgian agent for Wasserman.

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Historically, neo-pros – first year seniors – would be put straight on a minimum wage: in 2025, that figure for self-employed riders (explained below) in the men’s WorldTour is €58,582, and €35,721 for employed riders; those amounts respectively rise to €72,404 and €44,150 for non-neo-pros.

The youth revolution, however, has upended the rulebook – even if there are still many on around €80,000 contracts. “In the past, neo-pros signed for the minimum contract, but cycling’s changed. The best neo-pros, the ones who win Tour de l’Avenir or the World Championships, can now earn between €150,000 and €500,000,” Carera said. Cyclingnews is aware of some neo-pros earning significantly more than half-a-million.

One agent added: “Until Covid, if a neo-pro managed to get up to €100,000, it was considered a lot, but nowadays, and especially in the last two or three years, young and very talented riders are very sought after on the market and can go as high as €200,000. That’s triple the minimum wage.”

On the wider subject of minimum wage, all agents agreed that very few riders were on minimum contracts. “I haven’t seen a lot of teams paying minimum wages for riders for a long time because it’s hard for riders to live on that salary,” Correia said.

Cycling's gender pay gap

When looking at the women’s peloton, the story is somewhat different: minimum wages are far more common. “There aren’t many men on minimum wage, but there are lots of women,” Carera said. Only introduced in 2020 with a minimum salary of €15,000, Women’s WorldTour riders now must earn a minimum of €62,320 if they’re self-employed, and €38,000 if they’re contracted. The amounts for neo-pros drop to €52,000 and €31,768, respectively. 

The median team budget of the 15 women’s WorldTour teams is €3.6m, Cyclingnews understands, with teams typically averaging a roster of 17-18 riders. The majority of riders in the women’s field earn between €80,000 to €100,000, with more important domestiques and occasional race winners earning between €150,000 and €250,000. A top-10 rider takes home between €300,000 and €500,000, with the biggest champions nudging towards €850,000.

When Vollering, widely regarded as the best current female GC rider, announced that she was leaving SD Worx last spring, there were various reports that UAE Team ADQ had tabled an offer to make the Dutchwoman the first female rider to earn an annual salary of €1m. Vollering instead went to FDJ-Suez.

Among the various agents Cyclingnews spoke to, there was disagreement over the salaries of the current highest female earners. “I think we’re already seeing million euro contracts in the women’s field – I believe that’s been broken,” Correia said. “We don’t represent any of them, but I’m fairly sure two or three of women earn over a million. And if not, they’re pretty damn close to it.” Other agents, however, dismissed Correia’s belief. “I don’t think there’s three that make over €1m,” one said. “I think they’re just below that mark.” Carrera said: “In two or three years, for sure we’ll see women on over one million, but right now they’re not earning that.”

Win bonuses, sponsorship deals and appearance fees

As a rule of thumb, the higher the salary, the less a rider’s win bonus. There are outliers, though: Evenepoel received big winning bonuses from Soudal Quick-Step for winning his world and Olympic titles, as well as the 2022 Vuelta a España, while Cyclingnews understands that Tom Pidcock earned €1m for each WorldTour race or Olympic or world title victory when competing for Ineos Grenadiers.

Most riders can expect to receive between a few thousand euros and €15,000 if they win a stage of a WorldTour race, rising to €20,000-€100,000 for a Grand Tour stage, and €50k to €500,000 for winning a Monument, depending on the team and rider’s base salary. French teams pay out a big bonus for the French National Championships. But not everyone can be so lucky. “There are teams who say we don't give bonuses because riders get paid to race and score results,” Smets said. “Big name riders especially are on good salaries and might not get a bonus for a race that they’d be expected to do well in.”

Performance-related bonuses are common for younger riders and can work in various ways, Correia explained: “Quite a lot of contracts have salary triggers, whereby if an athlete does this performance their salary improves. And nowadays with UCI points more important, we’re seeing riders get rewarded based on how many UCI points they have earned.”

Typically, a team will exclusively own the image rights of a rider, but exceptions can be made for certain riders who seek external sponsorships. “There’s a bigger battle between male riders and their teams over non-team sponsors, but in female cycling, it’s becoming more popular,” Smets said. “There’s less history, and teams are more open to thinking: if it's good for the rider and doesn't hurt the team, why not?”

Demi Vollering signed a personal sponsorship deal with Nike last year, while the likes of Van Aert and Pidcock are both individually sponsored by Red Bull. Some riders have watch or car deals that can exceed €100,000, and others have partnerships with domestic businesses that are usually worth between €20,000 and €30,000. 

“It’s very country-specific,” explained Correia. “A Belgian rider has more sponsorship opportunities because they’re cycling mad, even though Belgium’s advertising market isn’t huge, while Pidcock being British has more opportunities than riders from small countries do. Some marquee riders can negotiate terms on image rights with their teams, but usually teams own the image rights and can say yes or no to these endorsements. Usually they’ll say yes if it’s a national company and isn’t a competitor to the team’s own sponsors.” Most riders have personal deals with shoe brands that provide a few free pairs of shoes, but some riders might receive a few thousand euros on top. “The best riders will receive €50,000 or more for a shoe deal,” one agent said.

Riders can often make additional money competing in end-of-season and/or post-Tour de France criteriums in Belgium and the Netherlands, but because of the additional travel involved, appearance fees are at a premium. “To participate in one crit is minimum €100,000 for the best riders,” one said.

Where a rider (and their team) can really earn big money is if big races pay for their participation. RCS, the organisers of the Giro d’Italia, has a long history of paying appearance fees, and reportedly handed Bora-hansgrohe a cheque of €1m for Peter Sagan race the 2020 edition of the Corsa Rosa. They also committed to paying Soudal Quick-Step for Remco Evenepoel’s involvement in 2023 but didn’t pay out, according to the team’s boss Patrick Lefevere. “Because Remco did not finish the Giro, they [RCS] did not want to pay the agreed starting fee,” Lefevere said. “Remco’s starting money in the Giro – in practice a sum for a package of RCS races - can ensure that we have a budget for an extra rider.”

Agent fees, self-employed riders and annual leave

The structure of a rider contract varies from team to team, with Smets revealing that “some teams have the standard UCI contract of seven pages which doesn’t contain much complicated language, to some teams who have 45-page contracts which are more complex and have a lot more clauses.” One mandatory inclusion is that teams cannot object to their riders beginning or continuing studying. 

French and Belgian teams by law must employ their riders, accounting for around 40% of the men’s peloton. In an employed contract, teams must provide health, life and permanent disability insurance, and a pension that equates to a minimum of 12% of the gross annual salary. Self-employed riders have to cover all of the above themselves. Agents typically take between 5-7.5% in commission of all rider earnings.

Of the various clauses and obligations, if a rider is injured or falls ill through no fault of their own, they are entitled to 100% of their wages for the first three months, reduced to 50% thereafter. “But I’ve never seen that enforced,” Correia stated. “And either way, there are insurance policies athletes can take out that cover them in the event that they get injured and they lose part of their salary.” Riders are also permitted 35 days of annual leave per year, but Correia said that “no one really looks at that, either. It’s in every contract but it’s not monitored. Riders only go on vacation in the off-season.”

Most contracts include a clause prohibiting riders from taking part in sports that are deemed dangerous, such as car racing, parachuting or skiing; teams have begun to loosen the last regulation, though, with cross-country skiing and ski mountaineering more accepted as beneficial cross-training.

As discussions over One Cycling continue apace, and the sport hopes to continue attracting additional investment, that’s all good news for the protagonists and those representing them. “When a team’s budget grows, so too does the rider’s salary,” Smets said. “Of course, the teams have service courses and vehicles, but their real assets are the riders. We’ve seen a big increase in budget since Covid and it looks likely to continue.”

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In the last few years, women’s cycling has been through waves of dramatic and wide-reaching change. Go back to 2019, and you’ll find a situation that was very different to today: no real Tour de France for women, no Paris-Roubaix, no WorldTour team status, no minimum wage for women, and no huge contracts. Fast forward to today, and the women’s peloton has all those things and more, with the trajectory only heading upwards.

Part of this is down to global trends in women’s sports - viewership is growing exponentially, commercial value is up across the board - but much of it is down to some specific changes in women’s cycling. In 2022, Tour de France organisers ASO put on the first Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, the first multi-day Tour de France race for women in decades, and the change stemming from just this one race has been impossible to ignore. 

By all accounts, the financial standing of the sport has skyrocketed in the last few years, with sponsors investing more money, team budgets growing, and riders earning more than ever. More money is coming into the sport, and more is being spent within it, as increased professionalism means higher costs for teams and race organisers. 

The headline figures all seem positive, but just how significant has the impact of the Tour been? What else has changed since 2022? Are there any negatives hidden behind the positives? 

It’s a complex and wide-ranging topic in the sport, but the one recurring theme for all stakeholders - teams, races, sponsors, riders - is always visibility. 

“The impact for all the teams that participate in the Tour de France is really important,” FDJ-SUEZ team manager Stephen Delcourt told us. “For me, close to 60 per cent of my visibility revenue is during the Tour de France - it could be 50 one year, 70 another depending on the results - but that is the impact.”

For riders, the stature of the Tour offered new opportunities, new ambitions. According to her partner and manager Jan de Voogd, defending champion Demi Vollering’s Tour goals began to form when they saw how impactful its precursor, La Course, was. 

“Demi came third [in La Course 2020] and she was on the podium with Lizzie Deignan and Marianne Vos. And we were like ‘hey, this is cool, you see the Tour de France logo’, and then immediately Demi dreamt of the Tour,” De Voogd explained. 

“Then the year after in 2021 for SD Worx, she won it. And that was the first time we thought ‘okay, this is big’ because if you win something to do with the Tour de France, that’s the thing everyone in the world knows. A lot of people don’t know much about cycling, and certainly not about women’s cycling, but everyone knows the Tour de France.”

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The next year, the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift came, and things began to change, with more eyes on women’s cycling than ever before. 

“The broadcast perspective was why it was so important that the Tour de France Femmes came back,” De Voogd added. “It should be broadcast, there should be live coverage, and if it is to be seen by more people, then the brands and the money will follow, not the other way around.”

Bigger teams, bigger budgets

 By all accounts, a lot of brands and a lot of money has followed since the news of the relaunch of the Tour de France Femmes. In FDJ-SUEZ’s case, the numbers speak for themselves. In 2014, they had a budget of just under €400,000, Delcourt told us. In 2020, the year the first women’s Paris-Roubaix was planned, that was €1.2 million, and in 2024 it’s €3.8 million. The growth in ten years has been huge, and Delcourt believes “100%” that the team would not be where it is if not for the Tour de France Femmes. 

“Ten or 15 years ago, it was impossible to think about where we are now,” he said. “At the beginning of the team and for the first ten years, it was only volunteers on the team working around the riders. We talked about professional teams, but that was only in name, because the riders were not professional. But step by step we invested more, we looked for more budget, and now FDJ-SUEZ has more than 40 full-time employees, staff and riders, we have more than 120 sponsors.”

Though we don’t know all the specifics for every team, it appears that the trend is similar across the board. Teams are constantly gaining new sponsors, team closures have been rare, and rosters are steadily growing. In 2020, the average size of a WorldTour team was 13.7 riders, this year, it’s 16.3. Teams are also spending more on altitude camps, equipment, media teams, the list goes on. 

Things were changing before the Tour, but the launch of that race, and the accompanying broadcast deals, social media campaigns and general visibility has skyrocketed things. 

“Now the speed is really, really fast,” Delcourt said. 

The only question is if everything is moving at the same velocity. Most teams appear to be riding the wave well, but there are concerns. Rider salaries are one: riders and agents know that teams have bigger budgets, and know they are racing more professionally, so some are asking for more compensation, but it’s a tricky balance of budgets for team managers. 

“It's a human reaction to always want more. Everybody wants more. We invest a lot in altitude camps, nutrition, material testing, et cetera, which they need because they work a lot. After, for the salary, it's hard with the expectations because the market [this year] was crazy with a high number of top riders without contracts for 2025, and on the other side we need to be really vigilant about the price, because the cost of everything is crazy. And I think it can be hard to understand why the costs increase like this,” Delcourt said.

“It's easy to say 'okay, I want to increase this rider's salary or that rider's salary' because another team is offering more money or something, but we have a lot of really bad examples when teams want to follow the market without securing their revenue and without calculating and evaluating the cost of every race, and then they get to the end of the season and they're not able to finish it or continue the year after. So that is my first job, to make sure we have the budget to continue.”

Are races stepping up?

As more money is being invested into riders, teams and the big-ticket races, one area that is perhaps overlooked is the races themselves.

Thanks to their status as the biggest race organisers in cycling, plus the sponsorship they have secured for the women’s race, ASO can put a lot of money into the Tour de France Femmes. Other races, especially ones who only have a women’s race, do not have this luxury, and the difficulties are beginning to show. 

“How is it possible to accept that for the Giro and Vuelta, they pay for only five staff?” Delcourt asked. “It is impossible to accept that. When you have seven riders, two cars in the race, the minimum is two sports directors with the UCI licence, then you need two mechanics - well, now all the big teams have a bus and a big mechanics truck, so you need a minimum of three mechanics, really three sports directors minimum, and then you need other assistants. In the Giro when it was really hot, you need at least five people to help in the feed zone and with water and ice. 

“So we have a minimum of fifteen staff. In my team, it was 23, because we have the communication teams et cetera, but the organiser pays for only twelve people [riders included],” he explained.

At the Giro, this meant that FDJ spent an additional €12,000 of their own money just to be at the race. At the Tour de France, the organisers will pay for nine staff members, and an extra  €5,000. There’s still a gap that the team have to cover, but it’s a very different proposition.

As well as making it more difficult for teams to get the most out of smaller races, this one example shows how different parts of the sport are not growing at the same rate. Teams are bigger and more professional and asking for more, and the races can’t yet match that. 

It’s clear already that races are struggling to keep up in the post-Tour de France Femmes world. Though now revived, the Women’s Tour was the first victim, a long-standing women’s race that nearly disappeared after its organisers folded, but was saved by British Cycling. Ronde van Drenthe, another long-running event, will not be returning in 2025, as the calendar becomes weighted towards races with men’s equivalents. 

For women’s cycling to really progress and professionalise, one could argue that a culling of the races that can’t meet the new standards is needed. And this might be right, but it’s proof that the Tour de France effect is not a universal positive for all, only those that can keep up with the rapidly rising expectations.

The million Euro question

If the Tour de France Femmes was a watershed moment for women’s cycling, the sport had another earlier this year when rumours started to swirl that Tour de France winner Demi Vollering had been offered a €1 million contract from UAE Team ADQ at the end of 2023. 

Now, it’s important to note that the veracity of this rumour has never been confirmed by any of the parties involved, and Stephen Delcourt - the boss of the team who is heavily linked with Vollering for 2025 - said at the time, and maintains now, that no team could feasibly afford such a salary.

So it may have been just that, a rumour, even a negotiating tool. But the fact that it felt believable, and could well have been a possibility at some point, speaks volumes to where women’s cycling is right now. The idea of a Tour de France winner earning seven figures seems within reach, and not outlandish, as it may have been a few years ago.

The big question is: how did we get to this point, where a million euros for Vollering felt plausible? Why is it the Dutchwoman who is likely to be the highest-paid rider in the peloton? Why her instead of world champion Lotte Kopecky, or probable greatest of all time Marianne Vos? The obvious answer is that Vollering has won the Tour once, and is the favourite to do it again in 2024, so she is at the centre of all the heightened visibility and commercial value that the Tour brings.

However, according to De Voogd, there’s another thing that has helped Vollering to get where she is: her image and her brand. Conversely, that never meant harnessing sponsorship wherever possible, but being careful, considered and not driven by money.

“After Demi’s early successes, we immediately started to get attention from brands, just small ones, but we always had a strategy or a vision that we wouldn’t do that, because it distracts from her business, and her business is to be the best in the world. For Demi it was like ‘I want to become the best rider in the world and be myself. I'm authentic, and I am being me. I will not be an influencer, recommending different products. And that was authentic, I think, special and at the same time so normal. Big brands recognise this and look for these authentic characters with their strong, engaged following.”

This image, as authentic as it may be, is definitely curated. On Vollering’s Instagram, where she has 244,000 followers, you’ll see a carefully chosen selection of moments. Yoga, hiking with her dog, camping, her personal hashtag at the bottom of most captions. What she posts feels deliberate, and it is. She has taken the visibility that comes with winning the Tour and grown it into an even bigger personal brand.

“People started to like it and started to follow her,” De Voogd added. “So we saw that she got more attention and more following. But you have to do it, you have to post. I know a lot of women - and men, but it’s maybe less important for them because they have a big audience and broadcasting - but I know a lot of women who are doing amazing, interesting stuff, but they don’t post it. I don’t think social media should be your life, but it is a tool you should use to get that wider audience and attention, and most importantly to tell your story. 

The news that really cemented Vollering’s status as not just an athlete but as a star and sporting personality was her announcement as a Nike athlete earlier this year. This is something she and De Voogd had dreamt of for a long time, turning down other possibilities to hold out for Nike. They played the long game and ended up securing one of the most important sponsorship deals in recent years – a real first for women’s cycling, and a symbol of just how much the sport’s standing has changed.

Trickle down economics or a widening gap?

While big salaries, expanded budgets and high-profile races are something to be celebrated, it’s also patently clear that at the moment, the biggest financial gains are limited to just a few riders, races and teams.

Commercial interest from brands and sponsors is growing, but it remains about commercial value - so exposure and profit. Brands want to invest their money in the teams and races that will give the most return. That means big races, well-known names, and successful teams. Whilst some companies have been incredibly generous with their support of women’s cycling, even when it was not where it is now, sports sponsorship is not a charitable pursuit, and most companies will follow where the profit or benefit is - which is the top of the pyramid.

While the WorldTour teams seem more stable than ever, Continental outfits are still scrambling from year to year, relying on little money and unpredictable race invites. Lifeplus-Wahoo, for example, lost their Trek sponsorship when the brand moved over to launch the Trek-Segafredo team, and this year missed out on Tour selection, which they told Cycling Weekly immediately meant hard conversations with sponsors. 

In some ways, the poor visibility of women’s cycling a decade ago was a leveller. So little racing was broadcast, it meant everyone was on a similar playing field in terms of visibility. Now, if you’re a team doing a program of largely non-televised, non-WorldTour races, it’s hard to see how you could attract interest from a brand that could invest elsewhere, and see their logo broadcast to the world during the Tour de France Femmes.

A brand like Canyon, for example, funnels a lot of money into women’s cycling, supporting three WorldTour teams, the most of any bike brand. “We are striving for a balance in our investments in male and female pro sports,” the brand’s VP Corporate Communications, Tina Hunstein-Glasl, said. But, that is focused at the top.

“We focus on highly competitive teams and athletes, which also includes encouraging new talents and upcoming stars,” Hunstein-Glasl said. “For example with CANYON-SRAM Generation and the Fenix-Deceuninck Development team we are able to support a diverse group of highly ambitious women who are willing to invest in their future and the future of cycling by breaking new grounds, hopefully developing into talents for future female WorldTour teams.”

There is an argument to be made that money coming into the sport at any level can be good for the whole pyramid, directly or not.

“People will say ‘it’s so unfair for the bottom’ but I don’t think so,” De Voogd said. “If there is more at the top, more will also go to the bottom. A Nike deal for women’s cycling is great, because it will get more attention, a bigger audience, and it will only lift athletes higher. I think a lot of women in the peloton know that, and they think ‘yeah, this is great for us’ and they only will lift up their game’.”

When whispers of a possible €1 million contract first emerged, it was met in certain corners with almost criticism, as some argued that if there’s money like that in the sport, it should be shared around more equally - why should so many struggle whilst wealth accrues at the top? 

The idea of one rider earning such a figure whilst others are paid so little does bristle, but it’s an inequality and disparity we see in men’s sport, with much less consternation. 

“I would say it was like sexism in a way,” De Voogd said of the negative discussion around a possible million-euro contract. “Pogačar could renegotiate his contract and it could come out that he was making, say, €20 million a year, I don’t know, but he’s certainly worth it, and compared to other sports, you could say he’s still not earning enough. But then they are surprised that a woman could make a million in a year. Why should that ever be a problem?”

The reality for the bottom of the pyramid

In theory, De Voogd’s question is fair, and the assertion that it should help everyone is accurate. Rumours of million-euro salaries make the sport look serious, professional and valuable, which it is, and that should benefit the sport as a whole. The problem is, the materialisation of that can be slow. Trickle-down economics can work, but those at the bottom can find themselves waiting a long time for the trickle to reach them.

While sponsors, races and teams like to shout about the big and promising numbers, organisations like The Cyclists’ Alliance are doing the hard work to uncover the less shiny truths. In 2023, their annual survey revealed some concerning numbers.

WorldTour riders received a mandated minimum salary in 2023, but at Continental level, the financial situation is concerning. Forty per cent of riders in Continental teams received no salary at all at the time of the survey, and most of those that did received less than €10,000 a year, in the season when the WorldTour minimum wage grew to over €30,000. The number of riders receiving no salary was up on the 2022 figures, at a time when things are meant to be getting better, not worse. In the TCA’s own words: “The disparities between riders in the World Tour and riders outside the World Tour continue to grow wider.” The benefits are not yet trickling down the pyramid. 

Since the introduction of WorldTour level, the launch of the Tour de France Femmes, and the rumours of huge deals and salaries, we’ve been told that this will all benefit the sport as a whole. In 2022, the Tour did change everything, and many teams and riders have felt a huge boost, while those outside of the upper echelon have been promised better is coming.

It may be on its way, but in 2024, the bottom rung of women’s cycling is still very much waiting for that supposed benefit to arrive. 

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