Vaughters calls for caps on salaries and budgets

[just some guy]

JV

That's why ownership of a licence is the way forward.

At the end of the year your team needs x points or x % of the winning team with no dope issues and your on for next year. If you don't perform or riders are banned your out.

Team owners buy the licence. Riders points don't leave the team.

Much better system imo.

 

[Pantani_lives]

The fact that riders will take their points with them when they are transferred is a very good thing. That will make it impossible for the TdF to exclude someone like Menchov when he rides for a new team.

 

[JV1973]

JV

That's why ownership of a licence is the way forward.

At the end of the year your team needs x points or x % of the winning team with no dope issues and your on for next year. If you don't perform or riders are banned your out.

Team owners buy the licence. Riders points don't leave the team.

Much better system imo.

I totally agree...100%

 

[just some guy]

I totally agree...100%

Much more professional

what professional sports allow a people to buy players and enter in the next session ?

can you imagine say Bill Gates say I´m sick of giving my cash away. I contract whole NFL team and play for the superbowl.

Not going to happen - he can buy a licence of the Bills or whatever and if the league boss says its ok then the sale is on. Bill become the Bills owners and attempts to draft players , sign players out of contract for his superbowl winning team.

ps more Argyle in the team kit be a good idea as well .

Soccer the same thing.

Why the rider takes the points is crazy, team sport or not.

We all know who the best riders are, we know who the best climbers are, etc

A rider will get the money for what they are not how many points they have one.

A backwards system.

ps Good luck for the Giro JV I´m not a real Garmin fan - but you get enough grief thanks for coming on. What I would like is for Dave Millar throw his bike over the fence while on TV - maybe after he wins a stage if you prefer.

 

[Mambo95]

JV

That's why ownership of a licence is the way forward.

At the end of the year your team needs x points or x % of the winning team with no dope issues and your on for next year. If you don't perform or riders are banned your out.

Team owners buy the licence. Riders points don't leave the team.

Much better system imo.

Blimey, that's actually a good idea (if lacking detail). Something of a rarity on internet forums.

The problem with it is that if we persist with 18 licences, it makes it hard for well sponsored newcomers (like Katusha, Sky, Leopard, GreenEdge) to break in and still provide for wildcard teams. The solution (maybe) is fewer licences (14 or 15) and long term guarantees (5 years+) from sponsors.

 

[hrotha]

The thing is, that works with teams from other sports because they are stable: they have assets like a stadium or whatever, a hometown and a loyal fanbase. Even if they have sponsors, the identity of the team remains the same. If things went really bad, they could run on a debt or even be bailed out by official institutions. Cycling teams have nothing of that, they have no value by themselves and their only assets are their riders. The strength of a team is almost entirely determined by how many strong sponsors they can attract. I don't see how buying licences could work in cycling.

 

[just some guy]

The thing is, that works with teams from other sports because they are stable: they have assets like a stadium or whatever, a hometown and a loyal fanbase. Even if they have sponsors, the identity of the team remains the same. If things went really bad, they could run on a debt or even be bailed out by official institutions. Cycling teams have nothing of that, they have no value by themselves and their only assets are their riders. The strength of a team is almost entirely determined by how many strong sponsors they can attract. I don't see how buying licences could work in cycling.

I agree with the assets issue - but we are not talking of the same budgets and part of the licence money may be a bank guarantee.

But if we had a licence system we would not have had the Australian mess or the lux mass exodus. Things would have been much more in the open.

A luxenberg backed group would 1st Buy a licence and then people know the have to resign riders they want to keep.

Sponsors will know what they are getting so more money may come into the sport. Very few multinationals would sponsor a team on we may ride the Tour next year type of statements.

Having a licence system could also benefit in clinic areas as well.

we may get more super teams and less small Euro teams, but these teams as I said before should have a womens and Under 23 team as part of the licence.

Its got to be a better system than 70-80 people not knowing they have a job next year if 5-6 of the top riders move on.

 

[JV1973]

The thing is, that works with teams from other sports because they are stable: they have assets like a stadium or whatever, a hometown and a loyal fanbase. Even if they have sponsors, the identity of the team remains the same. If things went really bad, they could run on a debt or even be bailed out by official institutions. Cycling teams have nothing of that, they have no value by themselves and their only assets are their riders. The strength of a team is almost entirely determined by how many strong sponsors they can attract. I don't see how buying licences could work in cycling.

The assset would be a license gaining access to top events. That's a real asset, if it has a long enough term. This would generate stability and potential for real investors, not just donors.

JV

 

[zigmeister]

The US professional sports have kind of solved this to a point, but it still doesn't completely make the field level.

Two words: Franchise Rider.

Then some salary caps...and the tops riders would get picked up and paid very well, then the best supporting riders would be spread about to stay under the cap and hopefully level the field somewhat. But this system is still a mess. The top guys would get 10yr $110M contracts...to stay under the cap, they just spread it out over a long period of time.

But, saying somebody can only earn so much money as a professional, or on any level/job is kind of stupid and socialist. Heck, look at US politics, what did Obama spend for his presidential campaign? Nearly a billion USD?

Since they are a private organization, I guess they could try to come up with something, but it still won't be perfect by any means.

 

[JV1973]

Blimey, that's actually a good idea (if lacking detail). Something of a rarity on internet forums.

The problem with it is that if we persist with 18 licences, it makes it hard for well sponsored newcomers (like Katusha, Sky, Leopard, GreenEdge) to break in and still provide for wildcard teams. The solution (maybe) is fewer licences (14 or 15) and long term guarantees (5 years+) from sponsors.

YES!!! This is what I've been proposing to the UCI for 2 yrs now.

See? I'm not such a selfishly evil *******.

 

[ergmonkey]

Re: salary caps

I don't particularly like the idea of keeping money out of cycling.

Great cyclists are among the best performance athletes in my opinion, but they certainly aren't the best paid. If a team can afford to pay a top rider 5 Million Euros and they choose to do so, great, I'm happy for the rider (even if it's a rider I don't particularly like).

Also, aside from the Lance era, I don't see one or two teams totally dominating the sport because they're the richest. So, I don't really see the need for a salary cap right now.

In fact, being rich seems to have little to do with success right now. In recent years, Saxo Bank, Quickstep, and Omega Pharma-Lotto have not been rich teams and they have won Classics and/or grand tours. Gianni Savio's boys always get results, too. Sky, Astana, and Katusha, on the other hand, are very rich and very good but they hardly steamroll the competition.

Vaughters needs to accept what other good talent scouts like Madiot, Bruyneel, and Riis have known for a long time: when your young stars on small salaries start to produce big results, you should expect them to be hard to keep (for example: Gilbert, Devolder, Boonen, Goss).

 

[ergmonkey]

Also, I completely agree with those who posted that good results should always be good business. This nonsense about shelving top riders who might leave strikes me as silly.

Score big results. Earn maximum positive media exposure for your main sponsors. Prove to the sponsors that you build a successful outfit, and they will be more likely to finance re-signing your best producers with pay raises and/or buying up the riders you want to use to fill vacancies.

 

[Oldman]

The assset would be a license gaining access to top events. That's a real asset, if it has a long enough term. This would generate stability and potential for real investors, not just donors.

JV

The equivalent of a franchise is what teams have needed. Right now the events themselves seem to constitute the sum total of a franchise operation to the exclusion of the actual cyclists.
Throw in some high-profile wild card race events that reward emerging teams on performance (and exclude non-performing teams and the promoter's "selection process") and you've got a near-playoff style that might generate some team loyalty in the fan base as well.

 

[Oldman]

Re: salary caps

I don't particularly like the idea of keeping money out of cycling.

Great cyclists are among the best performance athletes in my opinion, but they certainly aren't the best paid. If a team can afford to pay a top rider 5 Million Euros and they choose to do so, great, I'm happy for the rider (even if it's a rider I don't particularly like).

Also, aside from the Lance era, I don't see one or two teams totally dominating the sport because they're the richest. So, I don't really see the need for a salary cap right now.

In fact, being rich seems to have little to do with success right now. In recent years, Saxo Bank, Quickstep, and Omega Pharma-Lotto have not been rich teams and they have won Classics and/or grand tours. Gianni Savio's boys always get results, too. Sky, Astana, and Katusha, on the other hand, are very rich and very good but they hardly steamroll the competition.

Vaughters needs to accept what other good talent scouts like Madiot, Bruyneel, and Riis have known for a long time: when your young stars on small salaries start to produce big results, you should expect them to be hard to keep (for example: Gilbert, Devolder, Boonen, Goss).

What you could end up with is a Big Name rider keeping the team within the cap for deferred ownership incentives or something that sustains loyalty.

 

[hrotha]

The assset would be a license gaining access to top events. That's a real asset, if it has a long enough term. This would generate stability and potential for real investors, not just donors.

JV

Yes, but invitations to those events are one of the assets of the organizers. It's different in football/soccer, because the organizers are not part of the equation there: it's either the FIFA/UEFA (read, the UCI), or the national leagues (read, the AIGCP). I never saw what was in this for the organizers, at least for the big ones (and by "this" I mean all the way back to the first incarnation of the UCI Pro Tour). Sure, the ENECO Tour and the Tour of Poland stand to gain a lot from such a long-term deal with the teams, but how are you going to win over ASO and RCS? What's in it for them?

 

[ergmonkey]

What you could end up with is a Big Name rider keeping the team within the cap for deferred ownership incentives or something that sustains loyalty.

"Deferred ownership" only works as compensation/incentives when there is a relatively reliable, valuable ownership interest to offer.

In some sports, ownership or even just future payment streams off of trademark and tv rights in a franchise may be worth a lot (ex. Manchester United; New York Yankees; Dallas Cowboys).

In cycling, however, this so-called incentive seems a lot more hypothetical than real to me. Just how profitable do you think Riis Cycling A/S is? If someone were offering to pay me in deferred interests in that as opposed to cash I would not be amused. It's even a relatively fair assumption in cycling that many of the team management companies might not even exist in 5-10 years.

Furthermore, as long as cycling has no idea what it plans to do with regards to tv rights and profit sharing between race organizers, teams, and the UCI, it seems like an awfully big stretch to think that riders will be excited about contingent future interests in their teams any time soon.

 

[Ryo Hazuki]

Caps have never worked, All that happens is a big budget gets split to Two teams that work together - look to NASCAr as an example. I agree with JV that the new points system is a bad problem - there is an old business saying "you get what you inspect, not what you expect".

Before testing for EPO, there was a rule for hemocrit levels, nobody was allowed over 50, so what happened..... Everybody was suddenly at 49.5. Even those with norms of 41-43 ( that is the average norm BTW).... So JV's comments are important to listen to on this subject. But limits to spending in the sport are not a solution

wow, this has asbolutely NOTHING to do with this subject.

 

[Ryo Hazuki]

Sounds like Vaughters is having sponsor issues.

exactly

.

 

[AussieGoddess]

I actually think a salary cap might be a good idea .... but if we are doing that to try and maintain competition and structure - there would also need to be a cap on expenditure as well.

The team that spends the most on bikes, masseurs, top trainers, training camps, better accommodation, a better team bus etc .... will do far better than a team struggling to get together the $ for the salary cap.

In other sports such as football / soccer etc where a salary cap works now, the quality of the equipment isnt such an issue. Accommodation isnt such an issue when you play one game and go home. A three week bike race is different.

In a sport like cycling, where having specialised TT bikes, and having a $25,000 bike versus having a $10,000 bike makes a difference of winning everything or coming 10th .... its a different story.

There is more to competition here than just rider salaries.

 

[BenbeN]

Jack B

My wife just told me to callm down, but before I perhaps over react and catch a plane to Italy to punch JV in the head is Jack B out of the Giro over the GreenEdge links or because of injury/other racing reason.

I just read the http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/millar-giro-so-hard-that-it-might-neutralise-the-race article and hadn't picked up[ previously he'd been pulled.

My first post - motivated by a high level of annoyance so please be nice!

Ben

 

[JV1973]

No, Jack was no selected for 3 reasons: 1. The Giro is a mountain bike race this year, Jack has 3 weeks of road training after being on the track most of the spring, that's not good for the most mountainous Giro, ever. 2. Tom Peterson was the race leader and finished 4th overall at Tour of Turkey, he was also in it for the last spot at the Giro.. 3. Jack was placed on the long list for the Tour and Vuelta, as both of these events will give him more time to adjust to the road.

If I was going to mess with Greededge, I'd pull Cam, right? I'm not doing that. They both havent signed for Greeedge yet. So, first things first.