Cycling has the fans, it just needs to monetise them – Can a new style of events and engagement help to solve cycling's funding problem?

It is scorchingly hot at the Cheer Squad corner, five kilometres from the summit of Mont Ventoux. The Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift is due to pass through within the hour, and excitement is building. To the right, there is a screen where a cluster of people have gathered to watch the race; to the left, there is a sea of polka-dot-T-shirt-clad bodies dancing to Freed from Desire and waving flags which flutter in the blue sky. On the road itself, huge painted letters read: "WATCH THE FEMMES".

There are almost 200 people on this one corner, most of whom have cycled the first 15 kilometres up the mountain – and many, like me, have completed the 112-kilometre L'Étape du Tour de France Femmes the day before. Both L'Étape, which attracted a record 10,500 participants – up 70% on 2025 – and the Cheer Squad, organised by ex-pro Iris Slappendel, have helped to bring thousands of extra fans to the roadside to watch the stage, turning a day-long event into a full weekend.

The Tour de France, of course, is the biggest race in the sport – but not all races, particularly at lower levels, are experiencing the same turnout. The Tour de L'Avenir Femmes was put on hold this year, while the Tour de Romandie Féminin was postponed until 2027. This month, the women's Tour of Guangxi was cancelled and removed from the UCI calendar, its future uncertain. On the men's side, the Maryland Cycling Classic, Tour of Norway and first edition of a new stage race, Lyon-Turin, were all cancelled this year due to funding issues.

Cycling, which depends on sponsorship, has a precarious financial model, and with operational costs rising, teams and race organisers are scrambling to keep up. To advocacy organisation The Cyclists' Alliance (TCA), events like these are part of the solution.

"It is our view that the greatest untapped opportunity for both men's and women's cycling lies in generating revenue through festival-style events built around races," the organisation wrote in an open letter to the UCI in April. "The potential to increase revenue by enhancing and monetising the fan experience is substantial".

'Fan engagement' was one of the key areas of a UCI consultation earlier this year, and it is one of the five pillars the governing body recently laid out in its 'Future of Cycling' manifesto. 51% of respondents to the consultation touched on promotion, and ideas proposed in the manifesto included "new race formats for fan engagement: urban-circuit races, mixed-team time trials, combined road and gravel events, and formats linking professional races to mass-participation events."

Events can boost spectator appeal, generate income, raise sponsorship value and bring people to the destination for longer, which has a positive knock-on effect for the local authorities that provide funding. Fans, the TCA argued, are central to the sustainability of the sport: without them, it cannot survive.

The idea is not new. It re-emerged last year when there were discussions about whether parts of Alpe d'Huez should be ticketed at this year's Tour de France. Wout van Aert told De Tijd: "I think that fragility would be much less of an issue if, alongside sponsorship income, there were also revenues coming from the sport itself." In the end, race organisers ASO rejected the idea, telling Belgian newspaper Dernière Heure: "Cycling is free [for spectators] and bringing in a ticketing system is absolutely not on the current agenda."

"It's bizarre that a sport where so many people do it doesn't have a bigger fanbase," explains Deena Blacking, TCA's interim managing director. "In cycling, we just don't have the event venue, merchandise and loyalty to the team that they do in football. That was the point that we made in the letter: these things can be overcome if there's the will and the effort. You can still do a road cycling race outside, but you can put it on circuits, and you can have it finish in a velodrome so that you can ticket bits of the course. Or you can create a VIP experience, or a spectator experience that is objectively interesting - as opposed to subjectively appealing to the die-hard cycling fan."

So: what does it take to organise these kinds of fan events – and are they a way to make cycling more sustainable?

From grassroots fan events to race organisers harnessing their power

When we speak, Slappendel has spent the last two days up Ventoux in preparation for the Cheer Squad, painting the road under cover of darkness. "There's too much traffic [in the day]," she explains. "And of course it's not really legal, but nobody cares."

Slappendel, who retired from pro cycling in 2016 and now runs an apparel brand, started the Cheer Squad in 2024. Initially, the idea was to get people interested in women's racing, make it easier to watch, and to start a community around it. "When I was racing, there were not loads of people on the side of the road, but it's special when people cheer you on. I wanted to give that back to the peloton," she says. "I think the best way to support women's sport is to show up."

The first year, around 50 people turned up on La Redoute. Last year, on the Col du Granier, there were around 80. And this year, on Ventoux, there were some 180. In future, she wants a Cheer Squad at every stage of the Tour de France Femmes, as well as at different races.

"Every year we see more people coming," says Slappendel, who is being pulled away for a Eurosport segment. "It's important for the riders, but also for the organisers, the broadcasters – it's good that everyone sees that there's an appetite for it. People show up; they travel to fucking Mont Ventoux because they love to watch the women's race."

In-person fan events are growing throughout the sport. TNT Sports aired The Breakaway live from London for the first time during this year's Giro d'Italia, while events like LeBlanq's Joyride Festival, where fans can rub shoulders with cycling greats, have exploded in popularity. Teams like Visma-Lease a Bike, EF Education-Cannondale and Lidl-Trek sell hospitality and travel packages which offer access to the riders, or VIP race experiences.

Riders are even hosting their own events: Rigoberto Uran started the Giro de Rigo in 2018; Canyon-SRAM rider Tiffany Cromwell has founded a series of gravel events, and Soudal Quick-Step's Gianmarco Garofoli runs 'Gianmarco Garofoli Day' in his hometown, featuring a ride, lunch and a prize draw. Clearly, there is community – and potentially revenue – to be gained from gathering people in-person.

No race organiser knows this better than Flanders Classics, which took over the running of races like Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Dwars door Vlaanderen and the Tour of Flanders in 2009. In 2023, Flanders Classics became a shareholder of Cycling Unlimited, which runs the Tour de Suisse, and in 2025, Amstel Gold also came under their umbrella.

"The general idea was to bundle rights, governance and commercial opportunities to protect the spring Classics," says CEO Tomas Van Den Spiegel. "It's easy to organise the Tour of Flanders every year because it's super popular and everyone wants to be there, but there were a couple of other races that were trying to find their place in the international calendar, and maybe on the verge of losing importance. Bundling them with the Tour of Flanders and [Gent-]Welvelgem, for example, gave the other races an extra boost and helped them to be the races that they are today."

The company rejigged some of the courses to maximise the spectator experience – "we tried to create experiences where cycling fans have something to look forward to all day, not just 30 seconds" – and now runs up to 70 cycling events a year. This includes amateur races, rides and sportives, hospitality packages and free fan villages at key points like the Oude Kwaremont, Paterberg and Koppenberg. Flanders Classics co-organises a dance festival, Démarrage, alongside the Tour of Flanders, with food trucks, big screens and DJs. This year, it introduced the FLCS Clubhouse in Ghent, with a five-day programme of talks, rides, runs and events to entice a newer, younger and "hipper" cycling audience. "It was more of an experiment," says Van Den Spiegel. "We will do it again next spring."

Many of these events are free, with hospitality packages costing between €150 and around €500, says Van Den Spiegel. "The fact that cycling is so tangible, so close to the people – and that it's free – gives it its popularity. That's something you cannot touch," he says. "The major part of cycling will always remain free."

Nevertheless, running these kinds of events is expensive. "It's not as simple as just throwing up a festival. It's something that we had to build, and it requires investment first," says Van Den Spiegel. Even with ticketing, it is hard to cover the costs of organisation. "We don't have stadiums or permanent set-ups, so you always have to start from scratch. You cannot underestimate the investment that you have to make to build festival-like fan zones."

Monetising fandom

In 2025, some 2.45 million people attended the 10 Classics races under the organisation's charge, with 1.1 million people turning up for the Tour of Flanders. Races like Dwars door Vlaanderen and De Brabantse Pijl attracted 80,000 and 85,000 fans respectively. With these numbers, having designated fan zones can help with crowd control, dispersing spectators along the route.

"The popularity of our races has multiplied. If you look at TV images of the early days and you compare them to today, there's no comparison," says Van Den Spiegel. "Some of these standalone races would be struggling today, [but] this type of platform allows them to be part of something bigger, and that's why they're still there."

Not only do tourists stick around for longer, but the races bring visitors to Flanders year-round. According to Van Den Spiegel, Kluisbergen, the municipality where the Kwaremont and Paterberg are located, has 600 more tourist beds than in 2016. The local population is just 7,000.

"Some of these municipalities are small, but they give us all of the logistical support needed and they really embrace the races. Some of the bigger cities support us financially as well," he says. "I think everyone's seeing the added value that embracing the spring Classics has given them."

Flanders Classics' events calendar is an important part of its business model, creating a strong brand, providing opportunities for sponsors and partners – and generating income. Most revenue from events and hospitality goes towards covering the cost of running the races.

"We're trying to build an A-brand, and eventually we will attract A-brands," says Van Den Spiegel. "The reality today is that we are quite stable. The fact that we have built these identities around these races and projects, and that people know what to expect, helps when you're selling your story."

It is not just race organisers taking this approach. For the Unibet Rose Rockets, physical fan events are part of the team's DNA. In 2021, when co-founders Bas Tietema, Devin van der Wiel and Josse Wester ran the Tour de Tietema YouTube channel, they signed Wester up for his first amateur race in a 500-inhabitant village in the Netherlands.

"At 10am on a Sunday morning, 2,000 people showed up to see Josse racing his first race," says Van der Wiel. "You can call it the first event of the whole project. We saw that there wasn't something like this in cycling, where fans show up during the race to support the team."

When the Rockets was founded in 2023, therefore, they hosted their first team presentation with a circus tent, DJs, games and quizzes. "There were like 300 people there for a Conti team before we even had a race," says Van der Wiel.

Nowadays, the team runs around four big fan events per year. They held coffee rides before Omloop het Nieuwsblad and the Tour of Flanders, ran ticketed bus trips to Paris-Roubaix and set up a Rockets Corner at Amstel Gold Race. This had a barbecue, stage with DJs, bands and singers, a quiz, partner and merch stalls, and a big screen. During the race's own amateur ride the day before, they set up a barber shop with Philips OneBlade, one of their sponsors, for riders to shave their legs. The Rockets Corner drew some 2,000 attendees, who cheered the team's breakaway rider on the race's first passage – evidence, says Van der Wiel, that "cycling can be more than just cheering for the winner".

"I don't think the [race] organisers expected that amount of people," he says. "We were by far the smallest team at the race, but we had the biggest fan event. In big races, you see groups supporting a rider, but you don't see that much with a team. We want to build a community around the team, and events, of course, are a big part of that. Physical events are the things that you don't forget as a kid."

Like with Flanders Classics, the Rockets' events are mostly free for fans to attend, which requires a "long-term investment". Although it provides an opportunity for partners to connect with their core audience, these events are less about directly monetizing the fanbase, and more about community building. "You invest in your fans; you invest in a connection with people that want to follow you, that trust you, that want to be part of the team and the journey. In the long-term, that can be really valuable for partners as well," he explains. "[We want to be] more than just a cycling team."

Fan events, of course, are only one part of cycling's ecosystem – but, clearly, they hold power. "It's a jigsaw puzzle that needs to be addressed in tandem," says Blacking. "It has to be part of the overall modernisation of the fan experience, which includes the broadcast as well."

"Everything starts with course design," adds Van Den Spiegel. Circuits, or loops where parts of the course are repeated – ideally at least three times – can help to keep spectators entertained all day, he says. "We focus on giving each race its own identity – different landmarks, different fan zones – to make sure that we don't cannibalize what we have today, and to keep those races as high on the cycling fans' calendar as possible."

Can fan events help to solve cycling's funding problem, then? "I would say yes, but only if it's part of a bigger fan experience," says Van der Wiel. Improvements in broadcasting are still due, he argues, and cycling needs to be easier to follow and more accessible. "I think sport is something you do for the fans. You do it for people to enjoy; to inspire people; to make people care about you. Playing football in empty stadiums is boring – we experienced it during Covid. Cycling is fun if we win a race and cheer with our own team, but it's better if you can celebrate it with the whole fan group that are following you."

Back on Ventoux, the race is approaching. There is a cheer running up the mountain, getting louder. When Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney comes into view, solo ahead of Demi Vollering and Marlen Reusser, it erupts into a cacophony: flags waving, cowbells rattling, screaming. It is infectious. The crowd is still cheering when the peloton emerges a few minutes later. Anouska Koster gestures for us to shout louder. Puck Pieterse, wearing her polkadot skinsuit, wheelies through the corner. Alison Jackson takes a hamburger from a fan and holds it triumphantly in the air.

With so many people here in the same place, all for the same thing, there is an energy in the air: a crackling connection between fans and athletes that is different from other sports. This bald corner of Mont Ventoux has come alive. And it is certainly more memorable than watching on TV.