What stable revenue the races generate annually? As search pointed out, very few races make a considerable amount of money, and many of those organisers that run smaller and medium-sized events that serve as warmup races for bigger teams, tuneups and opportunities for ProTeams and Conti teams to get noticed, are reliant on being able to attract a few of the WorldTour level teams and riders in order to survive - which, if the top level is successfully locked off and reorganised in such a way that "all the big riders do all the big races" as proposed, means a lot of those races will be starved of their raison d'être. Below the very biggest races, there is no stable revenue generated annually by the races. Even ASO themselves have seen races they organise go to the wall for a variety of reasons, with races such as the Critérium International, the Tour of Qatar and the Tour de Yorkshire all examples. The US is hardly a country without money, but the Tours of California, Colorado and Utah have all gone belly-up in the last few years. The Spanish and Italian domestic calendars have been decimated and while a lot of the Spanish races that fell during the financial crisis have started back up, it's with considerable reduction of race days - Murcia and Rioja are now one-day races, Asturias is now 3 days having been 5 plus a standalone one-day race, Castilla y León has gone from a five day race with a pretty strong field for a 2.1 to a three day race with some very mediocre fields. Even races like the Vuelta al País Vasco and Volta a Catalunya struggled and had to be bailed out in the mid-2010s, while the GS Emilia who organise many of the Italian autumn one-dayers also have struggled for funding in recent years and have faced mad scrambles to get their races to take place.Equally between teams. If revenue generated goes into one pot, each team is working with the same amount of money. That’s not the case now.
Set aside for this conversation because you suggest teams can have too much power. As I can tell the teams want the stable revenue The races generate annually.
The suggestion of the Premier Leagueification where the teams share the TV revenues is all well and good, but didn't we just lose the biggest specialist broadcaster of the sport? It's a niche sport, and the teams have to get that into their head. Taking a huge injection of funding from the Saudis to spread among the teams won't suddenly make the sport self-sufficient if that funding is withdrawn, because it'll still be being shown on pay-to-air stations or obscure stations in any nations other than its traditional heartlands anyway. And with the Premier League gobbling up all of the support, sponsors, TV time and so on, a quick glance shows that financial problems have resulted in liquidation, administration or termination of a huge number of clubs lower down the pyramid, many of whom have gone completely defunct or have been replaced by a phoenix legal entity. Spending to stay in the Premier League has meant that a number of teams after being relegated have hit financial problems, even some long-term and stable clubs still competing at a high level. Since the implementation of the Premier League, Crystal Palace (twice), Portsmouth (three times), QPR, Bradford City, Leicester City, Derby County (twice), Ipswich Town, Leeds United, Southampton, Coventry City, Bolton Wanderers and Wigan Athletic have all entered administration or receivership at some point after relegation from the EPL. Cycling teams neither have the assets in terms of the stadium and facilities and things like that that football teams have, nor do they have the kind of cultural local impact that helps them survive or phoenix entities to be funded to replace their position in the league pyramid, so the chances are that in a closed off system where there is no longer the opportunity to use wildcards and Continental Tour races where you compete against many of the best teams anyway, falling out of the OneCycling Super League would be terminal for nearly any team afflicted by it.
In order to stop the rot, the Premier League offers significant "parachute payments" to teams that get relegated to help them survive with the debts they inevitably accrue from spending to try to survive in the top tier and avoid the enormous loss of income that comes with no longer being at the exclusive club - which has led to a number of clubs like Watford, Sheffield United and Norwich City frequently bouncing back and forth because they can budget better at the second tier level because they have those parachute payments, but they aren't willing to overspend on survival at the Premier League level. But those teams are usually cannon fodder in the EPL, because Nottingham Forest are showing just how much money needs to be spent to survive more than the occasional overperforming one-season wonder.
But it's also why, if locking the EPL off to the rest of the league pyramid was mooted, 20 teams would vote for it, and literally every other team would vote against. Teams like Chelsea, Manchester City, Liverpool, they'll vote for it because they're the 'haves' and it would prevent any more moneyed Johnny-come-latelies from joining the party and taking more of a share of the pie. And teams like Brentford or Bournemouth who are not historically at this level but are performing above their level will vote for it because it guarantees them status in perpetuity. And teams like Nottingham Forest, Luton Town and Sheffield United will vote for it because they're candidates for relegation and their board will be happy that it guarantees they get the income of the EPL TV deal even if they're losing every week for the next 20 years.