Got this through my F1 feed:

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/14...r-cycling-team

McLaren Teams up with Vincenzo Nibali

I've always been a fan and although recently their fortunes haven't been good, I believe they have some of the best engineering talent in the world.

I'm willing to wager serious money that Team Sky will not win the 2020 TDF.

Any takers?

Share the dope

I know people have strong opinions about Sky but its bad for cycling that they are ending. Hopefully somebody can pick up the team or another team. Hate to see any team dissolve.

the McLaren deal is really cool though. I think that will be a good deal for them. Looking forward to seeing that play out next year.

meh - I'll post what I posted in response to someone saying there has been value to sponsoring this sport in the past citing 7-Eleven/Motorola/Postal/ coors classic, tour de trump, etc. on the Velonews article about it :

"Won’t ever be mainstream and while licenses are slightly up this year (thanks to auto renewal) we’re down markedly again. 12% in racer days for the year. All that you mention Jon was popular 20-40 years ago. Even postal is over a decade gone.

While we all love the sport and some of us work on sustaining to growing it we have to face the reality that sponsorship of it is nothing short of charity from rich fans and it doesn’t hold any tangible marketing value at this point in our communities.

Count the teams that have folded and/or lost sponsorship in the last year or two. Look at the massive hemorrhaging of sponsors since Lance. It’s (currently) not an investment anyone at any company can justify with a straight face. Sorry."

Didn't McLaren do up a bike with Specialized at some point? I seem to recall seeing a McLaren Venge.

Cycling teams will come and go. No doubt the sport is evolving with new 21st century demands.

I wonder if they would do better with a FREE internet news feed.

Bring the money in with product placement. Who is riding a Colnago vs a Trek vs a Specialized.

What gear is needed to be a PRO?

They also did a Roubaix S-Works Edition in their papaya orange color. They in fact also helped on the Future Shock design.

As an interesting side commentary. On news.google.com the icon for the sports section is a road bike. Clicking on it never yields stories about bicycle sports. Just the usual football, soccer, golf, basketball, etc...

That is gorgeous.

Thanks Slick

So Vaughters is right. The model has to be changed or this slow death will simply continue. History tells us over and over again that this current benefactor business structure will not be sustainable.

I don't agree. Bascially you are predicting the demise of pro cycling. No. The business model doesn't have to evolve. It can remain at its current level of dysfunction. If teams don't survive over time it may not be a solid money making proposition. Rather, cycling will be sustained by passionate rich guys that want to win. Like sailing.
Teams will come and go as noted. A guy with deep pockets who knows a lot about the sport will come along and put together a team and try to win for the glory. The money he or she invested may have been given to charity but rather it is dedicated to pro cycling for passion of the sport. Not everybody that throws money at something has to grow their return. Their return maybe other than monetary.

Auto racing has the same problems, the same issues, the same lack of RoI ... and is still going strong.

Any sponsor would reach more people paying directly for TV advertising than sponsoring a sports team, but people like to own or sponsor sports teams for all kinds of reasons, not all logical or financially sound.

The joke in many forms of racing has long been, "How does one make a small fortune in racing? Start with a big fortune."

Think about it ... just a little ... here in a thread which is about a NEW Sponsor coming into the sport and starting a new team... people are saying "All the sponsors are leaving, all the teams are folding ... cycling is Doomed."

I guess the fact that one sponsor is leaving and closing down its team while another is entering and starting up a team proves ... what?

I agree with you guys. The sport may never grow to be huge like football (either kind) but I suspect it will exist, even at a potentially reduced form, without any major changes to it's financial structure. Most of the major races have existed for over 100 years. For the vast majority of that time, there was less money available than there currently is. Plenty of other sports exist without the top athletes making huge amounts of money.

I expect that pro cycling will continue to survive and incrementally evolve just as it has for the last ~125 years.

Fixed that for you.

I expect that Doping In pro SPORTS will continue to survive and incrementally evolve just as it has for the last ~125 years.

FIFY.

Well, you guys may be right - or not. Certainly, things are on a downward trajectory.
In its current form pro cycling certainly doesn't fit well with the profit-driven American business model. Welcome to cycling in the oil rich nations... Until they get bored with it, and move on to something else. But for now, it seems to be their perceived pathway to legitimization in the global eye. At least in part. How would you like to race with a team owned or sponsored by MBS?

There are a bunch of Saudi and other middle-Eastern teams in sports-car racing. Rich boys and toys ... and some of them drive really well, too. Nothing state-sponsored .... any more than Kazakhstann "officially" sponsors Team Astana. ("The current President, Nursultan Nazarbayev, has been leader of the country since then, and is characterised as authoritarian, with a government history of human rights abuses and suppression of political opposition. Kazakhstan has worked to develop its economy, especially its dominant hydrocarbon industry." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazahkstan))

Cycling might never catch on Really big in the U.S,. but frankly All sports, even NFL and NASCAR, are losing market share in the U.S. ... no one can compete with 157 channels ans multi-channel DVRs. For a lot of reasons, though ... rich guys like to own football and basketball teams .... pure money-losers ..... and some of them like to own racing teams in various speed sports.

As I mentioned above regarding advertising RoI, sponsoring sports teams is a loser. People do it for other reasons that making money.

(I just recalled a really big Russian bank sponsors some sports cars .... not that really big Russian banks are automatically associated with international money-laundering, supporting massively corrupt oligarchs, or financing what amounts to acts of cyber-war ...... )

It's the main sponsor of the biggest, most successful team over recent history (at least as far as grand tours, especially TdF are concerned). We're not talking about Jelly Belly folding here, it's SKY! I think that's a significant event.

Maybe Festina will get back into it.

I misread the thread title and thought it was about Thomas McClary.