Re:
Alex Simmons/RST said:
Well one issue is that cycling, even just the world tour, is not available for broadcast as one package deal. It's a hodgepodge of promoters and media. See a race on one free to air channel today, but on a different channel tomorrow, next week it's only view able via a restricted cable channel, week after that it's only view able via some dodgy pirate webcast.
This mess lessens its value significantly as well as there is no consistency in how and where it is broadcast. No common theme for promotion, nothing to tie races together in a marketing and promotional sense. It's not a season with a build up, or grand finals. Why would any international company be interested in sponsoring such crummy piecemeal offering?
Cycling doesn't have a league controlling it all. It's run by a wide range of individual promoters. The UCI are just the custodians of the rules, and not a lot more.
This is very true.
There seems to be some consternation that I am suggesting that the Tour is majorly underselling the value of its TV/media/digital rights. But seriously, how can it be that the sport’s biggest race, a global event, is only making as much from TV deals as an Australian broadcaster alone pays for comparable events in other sports, just to show them to the small Australian audience? Is the sport really so marginal and decayed that this is considered to be acceptable, even expected?
The problem is that the governance of cycling is a shambles, largely the result of a bunch of random historical circumstances, and what leadership there is lacks ambition, vision and strong organisational skills. We have a sport that is based on what must be close to the most popular recreational pastime and form of exercise in the world, that is cheap to do and easy to follow, and yet it is mired in provincialism, hopelessly disjointed administration, a scandal-ridden past and teams that for the most part are constantly struggling just to stay afloat. The result is things like the complete mish-mash of TV coverage and resultant loss of potential value as Alex has described. Cycling is still largely in the mindset that F1 was before the Bernie Ecclestone revolution – a mostly European sport with limited TV coverage or interest, limited ambition, and a small target audience.
But it could be far more. Indeed with a clean slate I’d run it much closer to the modern F1 model, but without the capitalist excesses of the late Ecclestone era and the bias towards and excessive influence of the top manufacturer teams. The UCI would have complete control of the sport at the pro level, and would either own all broadcast and commercial rights to the sport, or would have these reside in one body, and one only, as is the case with Liberty Media in F1. The World Tour, including all the big races, would be one package, with teams selected and licensed purely by the UCI, all judicial decisions made by them, and a fair budget cap applicable to all teams. Broadcast and other content rights would be sold as a package, including rights to show all World Tour races, and more focus on digital/online content, and there would be ‘premium’ sponsors who get signage etc. at all WT events. The humanity, personalities and nationalities of the riders would be given increased focus and promotion, and increased stability for teams would enhance their ability to create more profitable, marketable, desirable 'brand value'. Women’s events would be run side-by-side, where possible, with the men’s, and given a proper billing as equal parts of the World Tour. Bodies like the ASO would be race promoters and organisers only – responsible for the operation and local promotion of their races, with UCI assistance, and for finding local sponsors. The World Tour would be a true world tour, with important races in Europe, SE Asia, the Middle East, Australia, the Americas, and hopefully even Africa, while acknowledging that that GT heart of cycling will always be Europe. No more ‘token’ efforts like the Japan Cup.
The big challenge with cycling is the revenue hole created by there being very little money from spectators, apart from a few corporate tickets. The model in F1, where the governing body actually charges promoters exorbitant fees for the right to host races, wouldn’t work in cycling in this aspect (it barely works in F1!). It’s why broadcast rights, sponsors and whatever government money can be obtained are especially critical. The UCI would have to look at and work carefully with the local promoters, to see how much they can make from local sponsorship, and most likely the UCI or its commercial partner would have to chip in, on a fair scale for all races, to make sure that they are all profitable or at least deemed ‘worth it’, allowing for ancillary benefits from increased tourism, economic boost to local trade etc.
All revenues obtained by the UCI, or the UCI and its commercial partner, would of course first cover their own costs, and any obligations to shareholders/stakeholders, and remaining revenue would then be distributed to the promoters as outlined above, amongst the teams both as prize money and as a flat sum paid to all teams equally as a fixed percentage of revenue for each year, and to help grow and develop the grass roots of the sport, and the smaller races below WT level.
For all this to really work, I readily acknowledge that there would need to be more money and more interest in the sport than there is today, and it would take time to really build. But the potential is there – there are still massive largely untapped markets where cycling could easily be far bigger than it currently is, and more that could be done even in the ones where it already has a significant presence. Cycling will never have the same financial potential as F1 was able to leverage off the auto industry and the massive tobacco sponsorship wave that it rode to riches, but there are still ways of making it a much more attractive and interesting prospect for investors and fans alike. For one simple example, apart from the team cars and camera bikes, it's a clean, healthy, green sport in a world where this is becoming ever more important and desirable, but no-one seems to have thought of pushing and marketing that angle. As a whole, once things are trending upward in value, they positively reinforce each other.
Of course, of course, there is no clean slate, and recent-ish attempts to increase the standing of the World Tour have all mostly failed. The owners of the races, the ASO in particular, have far too much power, and the UCI too little, and what it does have it too often misuses. Getting the ASO to hand over any of the rights to the Tour is never going to happen. As it stands, serious reform is dependent on convincing the ASO that it has a stake in the overall growth and global health of the sport when it really has no reason to beyond a very basic level of retaining interest in the key markets and making sure that there are enough decent teams turn up each year. Tough ask.
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