just some guy said:
Except when he is not being paid what he thinks he is worth - remember the interviews from earlier in the year re HTC and his wages
And there is the problem, Cavendish wants to be paid what he thinks he is worth, and he wants that amount to increase in certain situations. for example he was getting paid the same at htc after winning five stages of the tour as he was before it (although assumedly there were bonus's)
The sponsors and bikes are a small part of it. Ultimately it should make little difference to cavendish what bike he rides, except for the fact that Spec are happy to pay him a lot of money to ride theirs. If he rides pinarello he loses out on that money, so can pinarello compensate him. Glasses and shoes arent an issue.
The big argument is over image rights. Sky want full image rights, in other words they (and their sponsors) want to retain the right to use Cav's image as they please. Cavendish wants to retain his own image rights so he can choose how and when his image is used (and get financial recompense for it), with sky only able to use his image in joint commercial deals with the team, ie, website, team advertising etc.
If sky own his image rights he can no longer advertise nike, specialized etc. If he retains them, he can still do adverts for nike wearing nike shirts, shorts etc he just cant race in them. This of course goes against most teams policy of riders wearing team kit all the time, when training etc etc. The likely comprimise on kit would be that Cav could wear his own kit in personal things etc and wear non sky nike branded kit when training.
Sky offered 2.5m with them retaining naming rights, which honestly, is a bit of a mickey take, they are asking for too much, and hoping that Cav will join based on nationality etc. Quickstep were happy to offer 4m but wether or not he retained his naming rights in that situation I dont know.
Compromise will be reached. Cav will wear Adidas kit on the bike, but do commercials for nike, and maybe even wear nike branding for non-team functions etc. But id be willing to bet he will have to take less than the 2.5m on offer. The bike issue will be harder, its not about what bike he rides (so branding a spec as a pinarello wont work), its about what the branding is on his bike. That will be down to pinarello to stump up the cash to get cavendish on board. The other option is for Adidas to cough up the cash that Nike currently do, but if that happens, Cav wants that to be a personal sponsorship from Adidas for which he is paid, outside of their sponsorship of the team. Adidas if they have any sense will do the deal. Its fairly common for people to switch brands, Nani and Alves is football both switched from Nike to Adidas last year, there was a hoo hah a few years ago when several college football teams switched allegiance.
cavendish has the right idea in principle after being underpaid at HTC, but he also has to be careful he doesnt join the wrong team on the basis of personal sponsors.
My hunch is hes been talking to and taking advice from Armstrong.
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