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Teams & Riders Team Visma - Lease a Bike

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https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/pl...ling-goals-pushes-for-f1-style-race-calendar/
create new revenue streams
So says Plugge, but how's he going to do that without making the cycling follower, that is you and me, pay more for the same (or worse if we think of GCN disappearing)? He's not going to get more eyeballs on the TV's if the price is upped to pay for more expensive TV-rights.
The worst thing seems to be they seem to be talking about having "criterium style racing" so more "5 star VIP" tents can be set up around the course. So toffs can throw Bolly at riders and boo, I suppose.
Or as the religious might say, "Oh Lord, save us from people who want to save us".
 
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Such suggestions would likely bring in more money. That is lets say replacing Logan Paul with Jonas to promote Prime. Jonas having a strong media presence enabling him to do that. But then again Jonas is a sport person and not an internet influencer. He hence can't really compete with Logans of the internet. If he ever could be, then likely cycling would be such a joke as Boxing could become. Considering Logans of the internet would actually become the champions of Boxing. Then there is large sums of "oil money" available from some excessive founds. All this are options, i guess, and the reality is it could likely work. But do we have the stomach for it? I don't. But hey, like with F1, they don't mind me and the feeling is mutual.
 
https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/pl...ling-goals-pushes-for-f1-style-race-calendar/

So says Plugge, but how's he going to do that without making the cycling follower, that is you and me, pay more for the same (or worse if we think of GCN disappearing)? He's not going to get more eyeballs on the TV's if the price is upped to pay for more expensive TV-rights.
The worst thing seems to be they seem to be talking about having "criterium style racing" so more "5 star VIP" tents can be set up around the course. So toffs can throw Bolly at riders and boo, I suppose.
Or as the religious might say, "Oh Lord, save us from people who want to save us".
The idea is that you will have more people watching it. Because the new format would be more entertaining, according to him and the studies they did.
 
Florentino Plugge is at it again.

"I've found a way to save cycling - it involves giving me a lot more money, but I promise, it will trickle down"
It is a fact that the current economic model of cycling is an absolute disaster, and the sport is dying a slow death. It's also a fact that the cycling world is too conservative to do anything about it. Personally I think it's a bit predictable and also a bit cheap to attack the messenger.

He could just sit back and run his own team and never have anything to do with all these French team managers and race organizers again, I can imagine there's more fun things to do than be in a meeting with these guys. He's eagerly misquoted by foreign cycling media because they know it's popular to hate on Plugge, but he doesn't really say anything that's very shocking or very self-centered.

Plugge and Visma are not making any friends at the moment with trying to nab Kron
https://cyclinguptodate.com/cycling...ly-attempted-a-uijtdebroeks-with-andreas-kron
Another instance where the Lotto manager just has to mention Visma and Plugge and know he will get a lot of sympathy. When a little reading suggests that it's the rider's agent who is at fault here, and not Visma. Rider contacts Visma, says he has a clause in his contract that would allow him to leave for a WT team. Visma does some investigating, finds out that Lotto doesn't agree, and then decides not to pursue. Result: Lotto are angry at Visma. Ridiculous... and again, very predictable.
 
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It is a fact that the current economic model of cycling is an absolute disaster, and the sport is dying a slow death.
It is?

I don't think you can pinpoint a relevant metric that shows that (I'm looking for an aggregate number, so Visma having difficulty in attracting a bigger sponsor than they ever had before is not a disaster). Viewership is going up. Revenues are going up (perhaps fastest ever). Wages are going up.

If this is a disaster, when was the economic model of cycling a success?
 
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It is?

I don't think you can pinpoint a relevant metric that shows that (I'm looking for an aggregate number, so Visma having difficulty in attracting a bigger sponsor than they ever had before is not a disaster). Viewership is going up. Revenues are going up (perhaps fastest ever). Wages are going up.

If this is a disaster, when was the economic model of cycling a success?
Viewership is going up? Where? Not in the traditional cycling nations it isn't. Perhaps in Denmark and Slovenia ;)
 
It doesn't look like as money is the real issue here.


It looks like it's more about distribution of the money and control. And somewhere down the line i guess about a vision of some possible future.
50 million really isn't a lot if you want to grow the sport into something really big
 
50 million really isn't a lot if you want to grow the sport into something really big

A quick calculation from the graph and we are at roughly half a billion, annually. And already the teams outside of top 4 complain it's hard to keep up. So likely the idea is to go for an even billion, for now, cut the team number to lets say 10. For that cycling would likely need one or two more oil/sugar/alcohol/ ... producers as new sponsors.

It's doable.
 
Is bike racing broke or broken?
I don't think so, it's been going for a long time and keeps working and will likely continue to do so.
Many think the grass is greener elsewhere, but it ain't, most of the other sports I follow have money problems or the teams I am interested in do.
Bike racing has lots of problems, but the majority relate to the bigger world, global warming, individual countries economies, increased road traffic and many others. Big changes and sponsor money will not solve these.
 
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It's likely more about attracting kids, future viewers, that is on why Plugge mentioned Logan Paul. Basically on how to make current star riders internet influencers. Personally i don't feel that is a good idea as it would likely backfire and kids could start perceiving cycling as a joke. On top of that cycling stars in my opinion don't want to be bothered with it in the first place. In general. For kids there is Pogi, potentially Remco ... If they can't do it then nothing will save future of cycling anyway.

Where i do agree is cycling teams should give up some partial interests and present themself, to the outside world, as unit. This would allow for more money to be collected, selling sport.

For kids, there in my opinion the most you can do is more involvement in local cycling clubs. That is the only real guarantee this sport has a future.
 
This is too vague. You mean the total viewership worldwide? Then the question remains: where, because it's not in Europe. The population of the world is also growing so it could be that the viewership increases but the percentage decreases. In other words: it needs a little more detail.




Evok Advertising
https://evokad.com › growing-u-s-v...
Growing U.S. Viewership of the Tour de France
 
A quick calculation from the graph and we are at roughly half a billion, annually. And already the teams outside of top 4 complain it's hard to keep up. So likely the idea is to go for an even billion, for now, cut the team number to lets say 10. For that cycling would likely need one or two more oil/sugar/alcohol/ ... producers as new sponsors.

It's doable.
I don't find 500mil a lot.

Other competitions in revenue:
NFL - 10B
NBA - 8B
MLB - 10B
Premier League alone - 6B

Note that this isn't the value of a competition, because that's way higher. Dallas Cowboys is worth 9B.

So no, 50M for a budget isn't that much, imo. And Plugge is just aiming for more, and something bigger. I hope he is able to get cycling there without losing what makes cycling great.
 
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Is bike racing broke or broken?
I don't think so, it's been going for a long time and keeps working and will likely continue to do so.
Many think the grass is greener elsewhere, but it ain't, most of the other sports I follow have money problems or the teams I am interested in do.
Bike racing has lots of problems, but the majority relate to the bigger world, global warming, individual countries economies, increased road traffic and many others. Big changes and sponsor money will not solve these.
Well, if I speak for the Netherlands, the problems cycling faces has to do with none of these things. There's an aging audience, young people don't care for cycling, minorities (who make up a growing part of the population) don't either. The casual fan watches a bit of the Tour and doesn't know or understand most of the rest of the calendar. I think Plugge has the added problem that among the youngsters who do watch cyling his team isn't necessarily very popular, they prefer MVDP and Pogacar. But in the grand scheme of things he's not wrong.

I think it's logical that he looks a little jealously at F1 which gained huge popularity among young people all over the world with the Netflix series, and which has a simple structure of the calendar that everybody understands. As a sport it's not necessarily more entertaining, the athletes aren't more charismatic either, but the marketing is infinitely better.
 
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Well, if I speak for the Netherlands, the problems cycling faces has to do with none of these things. There's an aging audience, young people don't care for cycling, minorities (who make up a growing part of the population) don't either. The casual fan watches a bit of the Tour and doesn't know or understand most of the rest of the calendar. I think Plugge has the added problem that among the youngsters who do watch cyling his team isn't necessarily very popular, they prefer MVDP and Pogacar. But in the grand scheme of things he's not wrong.

I think it's logical that he looks a little jealously at F1 which gained huge popularity among young people all over the world with the Netflix series, and which has a simple structure of the calendar that everybody understands. As a sport it's not necessarily more entertaining, the athletes aren't more charismatic either, but the marketing is infinitely better.
Let's grant that Dutch cycling is a failure, and Plugge's search for sponsors in particular is (though only arguendo, as his team has never had a bigger budget).

How is that a failure of cycling's business model? Clearly others are doing just fine. Which is why your argument would be a whole lot more persuasive if you could pinpoint a time when the business model succeeded to a greater degree by a specific aggregate metric.
 
Well, if I speak for the Netherlands, the problems cycling faces has to do with none of these things. There's an aging audience, young people don't care for cycling, minorities (who make up a growing part of the population) don't either. The casual fan watches a bit of the Tour and doesn't know or understand most of the rest of the calendar. I think Plugge has the added problem that among the youngsters who do watch cyling his team isn't necessarily very popular, they prefer MVDP and Pogacar. But in the grand scheme of things he's not wrong.

well I don't know how many people could warm to Skeletor. Sepp Kuss is more liked and Jumbo nailed it with getting him the Vuelta win
 
Let's grant that Dutch cycling is a failure, and Plugge's search for sponsors in particular is (though only arguendo, as his team has never had a bigger budget).

How is that a failure of cycling's business model? Clearly others are doing just fine. Which is why your argument would be a whole lot more persuasive if you could pinpoint a time when the business model succeeded to a greater degree by a specific aggregate metric.
Which others are doing just fine? In which country does cycling really live up to its potential? Colombia maybe.

Why do I have to provide a time when the business model did succeed when my point is that it's inherently flawed and doesn't work?

It's disingenuous to suggest he's merely the messenger. He's someone with a vested interest trying to make cash
And so trying to grow the sport is by definition self-centered and greedy? If he didn't have an interest in cycling he also wouldn't have as much clout, as you also wouldn't have Cyclingnews Google translating every single interview he did and nobody would care what he had to say about changing the sport.
 
I feel that we are talking about at least three different things here.

@Berniece for example provided some data, about American sports and annual revenues, of i guess some sport leagues. Basically organizations behind some sports. This in my opinion isn't all that related to European sport. For example football was exploring a what seemed like a more American approach to it. Europe straight up said no, for now.

@theyoungest hence believes current cycling model is broken and as such cycling can't live to it's full potential.

@Plugge is thinking on ways to bring more money into cycling.

So first thing i guess is to recognize European cycling likely isn't as broken as one might believe. That is are there currently any more successful models used in the world? AFAIK no. So killing it altogether likely seems a bit premature.

As for American viewership. Here we need to be realistic. Look what they are doing to football, they even call it soccer. The best thing here likely would be to make a deal with some national broadcaster and to broadcast cycling over there, for free. In lets say the next decade.

As for bringing more money into cycling and in general. Here i agree that European cycling should likely structure itself better then it is structured now. Maybe more like UEFA. And in Europe every village to have its own cycling club.

P.S. More short term goals are possible too in regards to making more money. But usually more shady.
 
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Well, if I speak for the Netherlands, the problems cycling faces has to do with none of these things. There's an aging audience, young people don't care for cycling, minorities (who make up a growing part of the population) don't either. The casual fan watches a bit of the Tour and doesn't know or understand most of the rest of the calendar. I think Plugge has the added problem that among the youngsters who do watch cyling his team isn't necessarily very popular, they prefer MVDP and Pogacar. But in the grand scheme of things he's not wrong.

I think it's logical that he looks a little jealously at F1 which gained huge popularity among young people all over the world with the Netflix series, and which has a simple structure of the calendar that everybody understands. As a sport it's not necessarily more entertaining, the athletes aren't more charismatic either, but the marketing is infinitely better.
The problems that you describe aren't a recent phenomenon, the Tour has always been the pivotal moment where suddenly all of the Netherlands is sucked to the sport. Ever since early 00s when I started following the sport as a kiddo this has been the case.

In fact, the TdF viewing rates in the Netherlands has been historically high in 2022 and were very good in 2023 as well. Also, other races like Flanders and Roubaix are attracting very decent viewing rates and the cycling related media ecosystem has become quite more varied with a nice diversity of magazines, podcasts. The problem of cycling in general, and Dutch cycling especially has always been a lack of a sustainable revenue model, not a lack of attention. In that regard I fully understand Plugge's remarks, although him being a central figure in the sports make me a bit weary about his motives.

Btw, the lauded F1 is suffering the last two seasons from plummeting viewing rates and even long-time sport fanatics are complaining about the boredom and lack of competition.

 
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