Salaries Paid Out By Cycling Teams
 

1) Are there any official documentation on salaries/earnings for riders on the Pro Tour? Not endorsements, just salaries paid out by the teams.

2) Could anyone guide me in how I might be able to come across this information?

I've come accross a list of money (a few) teams budgeted but no definitive breakdown of those budgets.

Among other things, sports leagues in the U.S. disclose:
* The individual salaries athletes are paid.
* The earnings they win for placing in tournaments (i.e. World Series, Stanley Cup Playoffs ,etc.)

Internationally, earnings is common/public knowledge for tennis and golf as well.

Is this done in cycling in any form?

Aside from calling up the team-directors and asking, you'd have to figure it out from the media articles I guess. Wasn't Lemond paid something like 10-12mil for 3-seasons with ADR?

In the book Lance's War, the author breaks down both the average salaries for the workhorses of the professional teams as well as the sprinters and GC contenders. The domestiques make absolute peanuts, 20-30,000 a year.

Dave

Yes....there is a minimum salary in the Pro Tour. 40 000 euros or something...someone will correct

Below that....you get what you can. Usually not much by way of salary, prizemoney makes up a lot of a rider's earnings.

When salaries and team budgets are not public knowledge, it raises a red flag in my mind.

There appears to be a large discrepancy in:
* salaries for individuals
* budgets for teams.

It appears this is similar to European football leagues where they have no salary caps. I see T-Mobile, Rabobank, Discovery Channel & CSC have larger budgets.

Nonetheless, one of the nice aspects of being a spectator for Pro Tour cycling is we do not have to pay admission.

Forbes performed a study for fiscal (June 2003-June 2004) 2004. The study includes: include salaries, bonuses, prize money, endorsements and appearance fees. The salaries alone do not come close to major sports, obviously. Armstrong's 2003-2004 earnings are more than the T-Mobile budget for 2006.

http://www.forbes.com/lists/results....resultsStart=1

I believe the UCI minimum for the top dvision is 31,000 Euro. (If you look around ehnough you can find it on the UCI website) Salaries range from the minimum to a couple of million bucks for the very top riders.
I would bet that most riders fall closer to the bottom of the continum than the top.

I saw somewhere in an article on Floyd that when he was first picked up by a pro team... and was deeply in debt, they were paying him 250K. I think the team name started with M.

This is off the top of my head, so obvioulsly subject to verification.

I'm assuming that riders on Pro Tour squads have opportunities to make appearance fee money at lesser known races? Like, while the Tour de France is going on, do other riders on Discovery (or Rabo or T or...) get an opportunity to go ride the Criterium de Wherever and pocket some extra change just for showing up and glamourizing the field with a genuine Discovery Channel rider?

that has been the traditional model. There's a series of criteriums after the TDF. When the riders didn't get paid that much, the winner of the TDF used to cash in by riding a bunch of these and getting appearence fees.

Thanks for that link, it was an interesting article.

Been to a couple....great day out. Drunk, sunburnt, gorged on food and a 2-hour pro criterium!!

This has to be the only sport where the exhibition games happen after the biggest race.

Baseball, football, basketball and hockey all have "all star games" after the season.

In the US? Only Football has the Pro Bowl the weekend after the Super Bowl. MLB, NBA, and NHL all have All-Star Games mid season.

My mistake. (not to self: finish coffee before posting)

no worries...

:)

I read or heard on OLN that Landis makes about $1-million a year with Phonak and gets a $2.5 million bonus if he wins the tour. (if thats not a helluva incentive I don't know what is).

dp

Last week I finally started getting paid to ride. The first ride felt great! I knew I got paid for it!

Actually, it was a dollar on the side of the road. Though I was on a big climb and my heart was jumpin outta my chest, I didnt stop to get it.

However, I claimed it so It was mine so now I am a paid cyclist lol

;)

according to today's NY Times, Landis has a $700k annual contract which was renewed for another year by Team Phonak. (the signing was "pre-positive-test") so who knows what Landis would make next year, and who knows whether Phonak would come after him for the salary already paid to him.