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The Patrick Lefevere Depreciation Thread

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What's pedantic about stating that PL said A and not B?

If you (and any other member of this forum) want to dislike PL, would you rather base yourself on what he actually said, or rather on something that somebody has invented (for whatever reason, be it not capable of deciphering PL his mumble, or, on purpose, misinterpreting his mumble)?
It's quite hilaric that you are directing your energy towards me, someone who merely pointed out that CN misinterpreted / mis-translated PL his words. Don't shoot the messenger.

All I am saying is, and this is applicable to all media (and science): check your original sources before you get infuriated reading secondary and tertiary sources, especially if those sources seem to develop a certain agenda.
You might consider looking up for a moment from this thing you seem fixated on and reread the title of this thread? What else do you expect people to be saying in a depreciation thread?
 
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Surely if your main focus is to make money, you shouldn't be involved with sports anyway and certainly not cycling.

To run a business you have to make money and have it coming in or you will go bankrupt. Whether it be from sponsors, endorsements, tv-rights, tickets, fans, merchandise and a bunch of others revenues you could think of. There would be no professional sport without money.

A professional team or franchise in any sport operates like any other company that employees people.
 
You might consider looking up for a moment from this thing you seem fixated on and reread the title of this thread? What else do you expect people to be saying in a depreciation thread?
I (naively) expected that depreciation is based on someone's words and acts, not on something that's invented.
It actually weakens the whole story why PL is an old dinosaur that doesn't belong (anymore) in the position he is in at the moment.
 
To run a business you have to make money and have it coming in or you will go bankrupt. Whether it be from sponsors, endorsements, tv-rights, tickets, fans, merchandise and a bunch of others revenues you could think of. There would be no professional sport without money.

A professional team or franchise in any sport operates like any other company that employees people.

I'm not claiming otherwise, but in sports you're lucky if you break-even.
 
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While Lefevere maybe drinks too much, Cipollini is much worse than Lefevere.
He's a violent character.

He throws bidons without getting DSQ'd.

He smokes cigarettes. Imagine if you would do that in a race after 2010:
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Oh wait!
534


Lefevere is only running a succesful team where forbidden substances have been (and are being?) used, without Lefevere or the team ever getting involved.
 
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Sadly it has to be said that the lack of TV coverage makes female cycling a lot less attractive for sponsors, once there is more TV coverage/live coverage for all the big races you will probably get more big sponsor entering women's cycling.

I think this is a good discussion point.

Cross and XCO have less dificulties in achieving equal coverage for men's and women's because the races are shorter. As a cross fan and a MTB fan I don't have problems in setting aside 2 hours of my day/weekend to watch both races (cross) or 3 hours (XCO) and in both of this cases I look forward most to the women's race because it's most of the times more competitive and surprising than the man's.

But on the road, at least for me, it isn't that easy. Most of the races, specially the biggest ones, have coverages that stretch for 3 or more hours. If you want to fully watch a woman's race on the same day with equal coverage you would need to set aside almost half of your awake hours of the day to watch cycling. How many of the viewers would be willing to do that? Would it be better to have the monuments taking place in different days? Women's Ronde/Roubaix/LBL on saturday and Men's Ronde/Roubaix/LBL on sunday?

And I admit I'm part of the problem, because while in XCO I prefer following Kate Courtney/Neff/Rissveds/Richards over Schurter/Fluckiger/etc. and in cross I'm more willing to watch a Alvarado/Brand/Worst/Betsema fight over VDP doing a sunday stroll through the fields or over an Iserbyt vs. Aerts duel, I don't have the same disposition to do that on the road.
 
Quite telling that a Lefevere defender is trying to portray Cipollini as some sort of a harmless jokester
Who is defending Lefevere here? Or Cipollini? I feel you are pointing at me, as I was the first here to mention Cipollini, as another (worse) example of someone macho who is toxic with regards to women and should never be in a position to lead a women's team.
If you have any reading comprehension, you would have seen that I don't see Cipollini as some sort of a harmless jokester.

While both Lefevere and Cippolini are toxic characters, Cipollini mostly harms his personal circle (I don't know what he did with the women in his team (and out of his team), but it wouldn't surprise me if he did something wrong there either).

Lefevere... It's a different case. He really is the Don. The untouchable one. To become the Don, you have to have some talent (and he has talent to manage a team). But the worst part about Lefevere is that he has too much power. He would, without hesitation, trample others to keep his reputation clean, and he made too many people in Belgian cycling and journalism complicit. He's a bit too big to fail like some banks. If he falls, guys like Boonen fall. Journalists (and riders) won't try to do that. Because if it doesn't work (tearing him down), you are the one falling / losing your job / career / future. If you try to tear him down, like CN desperately tries to do with stories about Bennett and women cyclism, sorry but those attempts are laughable as they pick the wrong subjects, because DQS sponsors don't care about Bennett or a women team too much. If you want to hurt Lefevere, you have to dig into the past. That's all for now.
 
Genuine question because I pay zero attention to teams finances….you don’t think the big super teams make much of a profit?

I'm guessing the teams serve mainly as advertisements for their sponsors products. Financing a team that'll be at the TdF is basically like buying a load of prime slot advertising for them. The teams themselves probably don't make much money but the sponsors will likely keep paying for them as long as they deem their profit margins are benefiting from the advertisement.

I'd imagine someone like BORA has definitely seen a big bottom line increase since their investment in cycling..... Although, as in most companies, someone will eventually come in to restructure the company's overheads and deem it an unnecessary expense.
 
I'm guessing the teams serve mainly as advertisements for their sponsors products. Financing a team that'll be at the TdF is basically like buying a load of prime slot advertising for them. The teams themselves probably don't make much money but the sponsors will likely keep paying for them as long as they deem their profit margins are benefiting from the advertisement.
Sure….and so I suppose it’s not so much a question of “can I have a woman’s team?….will I make any profit from it?“

Either your sponsors want a womans team and they will fully fund it or they don’t want one and there is nothing the team manager can do about it anyways.

So really Lefevere could have just shut up.
 
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By sports, you catually mean "this sport", correct? Cause aint no way someone like Kroenke for example buys like 8 sports teams for billions just for fun. It was an investment at the beginning for sure but now all these clubs make massive cash for him.

Not this sport exclusively, but if you want to make money through sports, it definitely helps to have plenty of it to begin with.
 
Sure….and so I suppose it’s not so much a question of “can I have a woman’s team?….will I make any profit from it?“

Either your sponsors want a womans team and they will fully fund it or they don’t want one and there is nothing the team manager can do about it anyways.

So really Lefevere could have just shut up.
Lefevere’s sponsors have already asked him / talked about the idea of a women’s team. Lefevere said he doesn’t see enough return on investment, based on previous experiences, current riders in the market, … so his sponsors don’t push the idea as they rely on Lefevere’s opinion. A team like alpecin on the other hand, has indicated they will do something in the coming year (Christophe Roodhooft said they have something coming in Vive le velo (Belgian tv show). So wether a female DQS team will come in the near future depends, at the moment, on Lefevere, not so much the sponsors.
 
Lefevere’s sponsors have already asked him / talked about the idea of a women’s team. Lefevere said he doesn’t see enough return on investment, based on previous experiences, current riders in the market, … so his sponsors don’t push the idea as they rely on Lefevere’s opinion. A team like alpecin on the other hand, has indicated they will do something in the coming year (Christophe Roodhooft said they have something coming in Vive le velo (Belgian tv show). So wether a female DQS team will come in the near future depends, at the moment, on Lefevere, not so much the sponsors.
It’s the same with WNBA or Woman’s Football(Soccer), they don’t have the revenue brought in like the male side. Heck the NBA has been supporting the WNBA for years.
 
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Lefevere’s sponsors have already asked him / talked about the idea of a women’s team. Lefevere said he doesn’t see enough return on investment, based on previous experiences, current riders in the market, … so his sponsors don’t push the idea as they rely on Lefevere’s opinion. A team like alpecin on the other hand, has indicated they will do something in the coming year (Christophe Roodhooft said they have something coming in Vive le velo (Belgian tv show). So wether a female DQS team will come in the near future depends, at the moment, on Lefevere, not so much the sponsors.

But what if they at some point got a sponsor, who felt like they could afford sponsoring two teams? Surely, Lefevere couldn't prevent the sponsors from also sponsoring a women's team; said team just wouldn't be the female version of "DQ", or Quickstep-Alpha Vinul, or whatever name the team's gonna have at that point.
 
But what if they at some point got a sponsor, who felt like they could afford sponsoring two teams? Surely, Lefevere couldn't prevent the sponsors from also sponsoring a women's team; said team just wouldn't be the female version of "DQ", or Quickstep-Alpha Vinul, or whatever name the team's gonna have at that point.
In that case (and also at this moment): Lefevere is in charge and he decides. His sponsors trust on him.
So you could say that it’s mainly Lefevere’s “fault” that DQS doesn’t have a woman’s team. But eg they also don’t have a CX team. It’s much more a business decision than that Lefevere doesn’t like (or fully appreciate) woman’s cycling.
 
In that case (and also at this moment): Lefevere is in charge and he decides. His sponsors trust on him.
So you could say that it’s mainly Lefevere’s “fault” that DQS doesn’t have a woman’s team. But eg they also don’t have a CX team. It’s much more a business decision than that Lefevere doesn’t like (or fully appreciate) woman’s cycling.

Sure, he's in charge of the men's WT team. I'm talking about a sponsor also sponsoring a team that has nothing - apart from sharing a sponsor - to do with the team lead by Lefevere. You know, a bit like FDJ.
 
If the current sponsor trusts Lefevere and his opinion, then they will just stay put. He probably do have a case about it not being a good investment right now. That might change in the future though if the women cycling sport grows a bit more. More races being broadcasted and so on. Viewers and more money in general coming into the sport etc.

It is still a relatively young sport for women and it is up to others to elevate it, he might think or feel. Does not mean he is against women cycling.

It will probably take a lot of time to grow the sport, but I think it is good that they are creating more races for the women. At least in Belgium with women racing Flanders, Omloop, Scheldeprijs... just to mention a few.

Then Lefevere has said some stuff that make his views on women in general a bit questionable to say the least. He is what they say of the old guard or school. Luckily, there aint that many of them left hopefully in the future.
 
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Sure, he's in charge of the men's WT team. I'm talking about a sponsor also sponsoring a team that has nothing - apart from sharing a sponsor - to do with the team lead by Lefevere. You know, a bit like FDJ.
I guess that's on the sponsor: FDJ and Movistar are examples, in Belgium you have e.g. Lotto, but they aren't very ambitious it seems.
DQS sponsors are seemingly not interested (enough) in that scenario, but I also feel they could be pushed more if they had someone else than Lefevere in charge.
 

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