Race organizers? Riders? Team employees? Other sponsors involved with the team?

Let's say I'm the organizer of ToC and we invited a team like RR to our event. We spend money promoting the event and build expectrations about the race we will deliver. If a team fails to show it hurts the organizer. It also hurts other teams.

If a team is invited to an event riders structure training, logistical commitments are made, other sponsors commit as well. If it falls through thr riders have wasted their training and have lost an opportunity, commitments made to local businesses fail to be met AND some other team that could have held up their end of the deal missed out on an oportunity.

Professional cycling is a business and , as in any other business, when a one member of the industry fails, it places a burden on the remaining members.

What happened at RR is not much different than what happened at Astana; The UCI was fearful that Astana couldn't meet it's financial obligations and this factored into their decision regarding licensing.

Do you think it would be different in any other sport? What if Buffalo wanted an NBA team but didn't have a stadium or any money to actually run a team? Is the NBA supposed to grant them a franchise just because they want one?

Thanks for pointing that out. I'm off to the apple store.