It's not going anywhere and cycling is not a sleeping giant.
If anything it's amazing how it has expanded its base over the last 40 years.
Tour de France winners from the UK? Nobody in his right mind would have believed that 40 years ago. Or 20. Or 15. Hell, I still refuse to believe the prologue specialist (that mostly only managed top 3 and not wins) Wiggins managed to win the Tour. Australia now is a cycling country that develops talent regularly. We have Eritreans, we have Slovenians winning (although they announced they were coming pretty soon after independence) bunch of New Zealanders.. Ecuadorian Olympic Champion. The french are left with Gaudu, Italians with Zana and Masnada...
While the UCI like any sports organization of course is corrupt, at times clueless, have to give them credit, they didn't prevent cycling from going global, or almost. Asia is missing.
Breakaway leagues, it's all about the money, teams wanting to get their funding through income sharing. Same as the World Tour, ProTour, whatever it's called nowadays was originally made with the plan to get money from ASO. Yes, cycling becoming global has made it more difficult to get sponsors, while in the 80es basically local sponsors (Supermercati Brianzoli anyone?) , could still fund a top team, now you really need big companies, international companies. Or states, UAE, Bahrain.. so yes, seems harder to get and keep a sponsor, simply costs way more than it used to., but still cheaper than sponsoring a football team.
But can some breakaway league actually get more sponsors to come? It all seems just another attempts to get into ASO's panties and get some action. Organizing cycling races isn't cheap, and for the most part hardly profitable I suspect, see the consolidation that has happened over the last 40 years. ASO getting Paris-Nice, Liège, the Flèche, Dauphiné... Flanders Classics, for sure they didn't organize all those races years ago, Omlop Het Volk certainly was not organized by the same people as the Ronde, it was founded as the "anti-Ronde". So it's not like the money for organizing races just drops from the sky somehow, any breakaway league would need to bring in sponsors that are ready to actually organize these alternative races.. and since nobody knows how long Microsoft or whatever company would sponsor this, would be ok to sponsor the money losing breakaway league...
It will never happen succesfully. it's just another try hoping to get ASO and to a lesser degree RCS and Flanders Classics to hand over some money, giving job security to people like Plugge etc. Yes, cycling's way of financing itself is weird, but it has somehow worked so far, while looking for other additional ways to generate income, everybody is simply better of sticking with the UCI and ASO, not in some breakaway that risks to end up depending on a single sponsor/organizer, and blow up the moment the plug is pulled, leaving Plugge unplugged basically.
Not worth anybody's time (says the guy who just spent way to much time on a post...)