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The Tour De France Is Mystifying; So

Is The Business Of Cycling
Chris Deubert Contributor
I am an attorney specializing in Follow
sports, litigation, and labor and…
employment.
0 Jun 24, 2024, 05:47am EDT

Updated Jun 27, 2024, 09:51am EDT

Photo by Tim de Waele/Getty Images GETTY IMAGES

The Tour de France, the most elite bike race in the

world, kicks off this Saturday, when 176 of the best
cyclists in the world will race nearly 2,200 miles across
21 stages and climb over 170,000 feet of elevation into
the clouds of the highest mountains in the Pyrenees and
Alps. The effort involved can be mind-boggling. So can
the business side of cycling.

Cycling’s Regulator and the Promoter

There are numerous actors and entities involved in

professional cycling and their complex interrelationships
underlie races like the Tour.

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The sport of cycling is regulated by the Union Cycliste

Internationale (UCI), a non-governmental, non-profit
association, based in Switzerland, which is recognized by
the International Olympic Committee as the governing
body for cycling. The UCI, like all international
governing bodies in sports, is governed by a complex
hierarchy of committees and executives from around the
world.

The UCI is responsible for organizing, regulating, and

sanctioning cycling events of various kinds for both men
and women of different ages all over the world. The
WorldTour is the UCI’s elite professional men’s road
cycling tour. Teams and riders participate in races on the
WorldTour calendar and earn points and are ranked
based on their performance. The Tour de France, as one
would expect, is a major contributor to those rankings.

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The Tour itself is put on by the Amaury Sport

Organisation (ASO), a French sports marketing and
event management organization. The ASO’s crown jewel
is the Tour de France but it organizes 29 other cycling
events, including several important preparatory races for
the Tour (such as the Critérium du Dauphiné), the
Vuelta a España (another Grand Tour), as well as the
Paris Marathon. It also operates the week-long Tour de
France Femmes for women in August.

To be clear, the ASO and UCI are separate entities with

sometimes divergent interests. The ASO organizes nine
of the 35 races on the WorldTour calendar and
understandably seeks to maximize interest and revenue
associated with its events, most of which take place in
France. Of particular note, the ASO controls and sells the
broadcast rights to the Tour to networks around the
world. While the specifics of those deals are not clear,
they certainly bring in tens of millions of dollars a year
to the ASO. Perhaps not surprisingly, the ASO and UCI
have long-standing disputes over who controls the sport
and reaps any related financial benefits.

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Aside from the Tour, the remaining WorldTour events

are organized by a variety of parties, including the UCI
and organizers in the many countries where races take
place.

The WorldTour calendar does not include any events in

the United States. The Tour of Utah (2004-19), Tour of
California (2006-19), and USA Pro Cycling Challenge in
Colorado (2011-15) were former races that attracted
some of the best riders in the world. Nevertheless, the
organizers ultimately found them financially
unsustainable.

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The Teams

The next group worth mentioning are the teams. To the

uninitiated, it might be confusing that cycling has teams,
since only a single rider can win a race. However, teams
are just as essential to victory in cycling as they are in
soccer, football, or any other team sport.

Professional cycling teams consist of approximately 30

riders, eight of whom are chosen to be a part of the Tour
de France roster. The composition of that roster will
depend on the team’s goals. A handful of teams will have
a rider they believe capable of winning the Tour de
France’s General Classification (GC), signified by the
yellow jersey. So the roster will be constructed toward
that goal, including by stocking the roster with elite
climbers and other riders (collectively known as
domestiques) who can support the leader in a variety of
ways.

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The best teams protect their elite riders by encircling

them and keeping them near the front of the race to
minimize the chances of crashes. Elite domestiques will
lead their stars up the mountains, breaking the wind and
chasing down any attacks from competitors.

Other teams are formed around sprinters who try to win

flat stages and win the green (points) jersey. Here too
the team is tremendously important. In the closing miles
of flat stages, the teams with the best sprinters push to
the front, often hitting speeds of 40-50 miles per hour.
The team’s riders will “lead-out” the sprinter by giving
their maximum effort before dropping off and
unleashing the sprinter toward the finish line. The Manx
sprinter Mark Cavendish has 34 Tour de France stage
wins, tied for the most all time, in large part due to the
incredible lead-out teams he has had in his career.

If your team has neither a GC rider or a sprinter, it might

try to win the King of the Mountains polka dot jersey or
to win individual stages via creative and aggressive
racing strategies.

There are 18 WorldTour teams and 17 ProTour teams.

ProTour teams have smaller budgets, staffs, and
schedules than their WorldTour counterparts. Beginning
with the 2022 season, every three years the two lowest
performing WorldTour teams are relegated to the
ProTour and the top two ProTour teams are promoted to
the WorldTour.

The idea of a “team” though is often remarkably in flux.

Teams are identified by their corporate sponsors, which
fund the vast majority of a team’s budget, ranging from
about $10 to $40 million. Sponsorship contracts with
teams are often only one or two years and renewals are
closely tied to team performance. Consequently, on an
annual basis, some teams are desperately looking to
retain or find new sponsors in order to keep the team
going another year or to avoid being relegated.
Inevitably, some teams fold or merge with other teams.
Team finances have historically been so shaky that the
UCI Regulations require each WorldTour team to obtain
a guarantee from a bank to fund its operations.

Additionally, the teams conduct some joint efforts

through an organization known as the Association
Internationale des Groupes Cyclistes Professionnels
(AIGCP), discussed further below. Nevertheless, the
AIGCP has no role in organizing races and has minimal
influence. Moreover, teams operate out of numerous
countries and thus often have cultural differences of
opinion on various issues (doping being a notable
historical example).

The Riders

Finally, we get to the riders. Cyclists are represented by

the Cyclistes Professionnels Associés (CPA), a non-profit
association, but not a labor union under the law of any
country.

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The CPA negotiates “Joint Agreements” with the AIGCP

setting forth some minimum terms and conditions of
employment, including various insurance coverages.
Cycling is a physically grueling sport, where the term
“suffering” is a point of pride. Unfortunately, most
cyclists are not terribly well-paid for their efforts.

The current agreement sets the 2024 minimum salary

for a WorldTeam rider at €68,957 (about $74,300) for
veterans and € 55,793 ($60,100) for rookies. ProTeam
veterans and rookies are entitled to a minimum of €
55,279 ($59,600) and € 46,234 ($49,800), respectively.

Of course, the stars of the sport make considerably more.

Two-time Tour de France winner Tadej Pogačar earns a
reported € 6 million ($6.47 million) from his team, UAE
Team Emirates.

Yet, like the AIGCP, the CPA has little control over the
sport, with minimal leverage to negotiate with the ASO
or UCI. Indeed, the height of rider authority has been
the occasional instance in which the riders “neutralize” a
race stage due to unsafe conditions, meaning that they
collectively agree to ride to the finish line at a moderate
pace without contest.

Pogačar is favored to win this year’s Tour, with steep

competition expected from fellow Slovenian Primoz
Roglic of Bora-Hansgrohe and Denmark’s Jonas
Vingegaard (also a two-time Tour winner) of Visma-
Lease a Bike, if he is able to overcome recent injuries.
Otherwise, some of those involved in the Tour will win
more than others.

Chris Deubert Follow

I am Senior Counsel in the Boston office of Constangy,

Brooks, Smith & Prophete LLP, a national... Read More

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