I guess they didn't have too much faith in the younger Britons after all.
"A major sponsor leaving the sport" is not a good thing, but it isn't, of itself, a bad thing. Especially when that major sponsor has enabled a team to become a marketplace killer which has had a detrimental effect on the spectacle to the extent that fans are turned away.
I think we ought to be more sad if a team like Lotto or Movistar, which have been around since the 1980s, folded, rather than a bunch of moneyed Johnny-Come-Latelys whose business model is based on pricing everybody else out of the game and repeating corporate jargon mantras running the risk of not having quite as much of a financial advantage anymore. HTC fell not because no backers could be found, but because no backers at the level Stapleton wanted, to keep the team going in its previous pre-eminent position in the péloton, could be found. It depends how keen Brailsford is to keep things going, and we will learn how toxic his brand has become - his PR may have taken a few blows but he's managed to rally it before. He may have to take a lower budget (and we'll see if his ego is willing to let this happen) or hold out longer than he'd like if he wants to find a backer that puts in sufficient funds to keep the team in their current pre-eminent position, but if the team take a lower budget and have to disperse some of the talent to other teams, that would create more competitive match-ups all over the cycling calendar and introduce brand new rivalries and oppositions that we've never seen before.
Or, another way, if the Emirati backers decided to leave Manchester City and instead sold it to another oligarch whose wealth was more like Abramovich's, would that really be that bad for the EPL? After all, they'd still have great players, they'd still have Guardiola, they'd just have a transfer budget more in line with everybody else. But more matches would likely be competitive as they'd not be able to just wave big bucks under the noses of other people's star players and buy whoever they want whenever they want. Would that really be a bad thing?
"A major sponsor leaving the sport" is not a good thing, but it isn't, of itself, a bad thing. Especially when that major sponsor has enabled a team to become a marketplace killer which has had a detrimental effect on the spectacle to the extent that fans are turned away.
I think we ought to be more sad if a team like Lotto or Movistar, which have been around since the 1980s, folded, rather than a bunch of moneyed Johnny-Come-Latelys whose business model is based on pricing everybody else out of the game and repeating corporate jargon mantras running the risk of not having quite as much of a financial advantage anymore. HTC fell not because no backers could be found, but because no backers at the level Stapleton wanted, to keep the team going in its previous pre-eminent position in the péloton, could be found. It depends how keen Brailsford is to keep things going, and we will learn how toxic his brand has become - his PR may have taken a few blows but he's managed to rally it before. He may have to take a lower budget (and we'll see if his ego is willing to let this happen) or hold out longer than he'd like if he wants to find a backer that puts in sufficient funds to keep the team in their current pre-eminent position, but if the team take a lower budget and have to disperse some of the talent to other teams, that would create more competitive match-ups all over the cycling calendar and introduce brand new rivalries and oppositions that we've never seen before.
Or, another way, if the Emirati backers decided to leave Manchester City and instead sold it to another oligarch whose wealth was more like Abramovich's, would that really be that bad for the EPL? After all, they'd still have great players, they'd still have Guardiola, they'd just have a transfer budget more in line with everybody else. But more matches would likely be competitive as they'd not be able to just wave big bucks under the noses of other people's star players and buy whoever they want whenever they want. Would that really be a bad thing?