And of course, the increased cost of jetsetting will price a lot of teams out of business. Can teams like Lotto and Euskaltel really afford on their budgets to jetset all over the world for historyless, meaningless races (most of which won't suit them, since they keep putting them in areas with really dull terrain), and still maintain their presence in the local races that are so important to them and their sponsors? How many sponsors are willing to up their financial commitment in economic times like these? Why would you?
If you up the financial commitment required to participate, you find the balance of power shifts into the hands of a few. Like football. Who can realistically win La Liga? 2 teams. Who can realistically win the Premier League? 2, maybe 3 teams. Everybody else is there to make numbers up.
Pat McQuaid seems to believe cycling is like Formula 1. He can afford to kill off storied, historic and traditional races and venues, because those fans will travel. Bernie Ecclestone can kill off the French GP because the French fans will still go to Belgium or Spain for their racing fix, runs the theory. And then he can move an ever-increasing part of the calendar to money-rich countries with government-sponsored white elephants that sit unused for 362 days of the year, because they pay well and it's evidence of globalisation. But those races have little tradition, little reason for fans to attend (Turkey sold just 7,000 tickets to the 2009 race, China has bussed people in to fill stands and Bahrain actually resorted to importing spectators for free to give the illusion of a fanbase at one point), and the sport's heart (including all its feeder series) is in Europe. But what Bernie says goes, because he has control. And as long as a flat, sterile autodrome in the middle of the desert will give him better hospitality than a privateer-owned circuit in a motorsport hotbed, he'll continue to go there.
F1, in reality, is like sportscars. The FIA has its series, but there are a number of fixed national calendars (in Japan, the US, and Europe in particular), which sometimes the big guns show up in, sometimes they don't. Entries are by invite, though many agreements are in place vis-à-vis automatic invites. The FIA periodically try to hamstring sportscars in case they start to challenge F1. But ultimately, they posture and they promote new markets and take their series abroad... but everybody REALLY wants to win one legendary long event in France. The ACO administer that, not the FIA. And as long as that race remains the most important, the FIA have to take care to see how their rules stand within ACO rules, because many teams do not want to pass up the opportunity to race at Le Mans. And ACO regulations have been used as the basis for a number of other events and series. And Le Mans is the ONLY time where the world's eyes are on sportscars and not other motorsport.
The ASO and RCS (and to a lesser extent Unipublic given ASO's controlling stake of course) are the ones that hold the power here, as long as they're united. In the eyes of the sponsors, the Tour de France is more important than all of McQuaid's poxy little expansion races put together, and so threatening to overrule McQuaid on whatever team, rider or race they want is a message the teams and riders will understand. When they stood up to McQuaid in 2008, it seemed they understood, but recently they've been getting rather cosy together (seemingly speaking on RCS' behalf with the World Tour agreement, recalling Zomegnan's complaints at the time - and this disunity among the GT organisers probably sealed the power struggle in McQuaid's favour); but by owning the most important races, the power system is such that it shouldn't be the UCI holding the sport to ransom, it should be the ASO and RCS holding the UCI to ransom. The sooner they remember this the better.