The Second Tier Struggle

In 2014, there were 17 ProConinental teams coming out from 12 countries. Today, ten years later, we have the same amount of teams coming from just 9 countries, mostly from Europe. Today, the United States and Israel are the only non-European countries who host a ProTeam. Why the second tier of cycling is 'deglobalizing'? Why there is so much fall out over the years? and what can they do in the future? In this article, we go through the different causes and solutions.

The Global Decline

We see that Australia lost their only ProTeam, Colombia, Poland, South Africa and Russia don't have any professional team (Pro/WT) at all anymore today. The USA used to have 5 Professional teams. Nowadays they only have 3 left. 

Spain, Belgium and France have 4-6 professional teams nowadays. Half of those Spanish and Belgian squads survive as ProTeams for years now. France also has 4 teams at the World Tour level now, in comparing with just 2 in 2014. We see a heavy concentrating of remaining ProTeams within these nations.

It's not a coincidence that the most represented nations in this list have the monuments or grand tours at home soil. This makes that they almost always receive the wildcards and can guarantee yearly publicity for their sponsors. Not so for teams outside those countries.

It shows that cycling depends more & more on it's biggest races, where the biggest publicity is guaranteed. The decline of the North American calendar didn't motivate many local sponsors anymore either. Cycling needs to care more about the global needs to reverse this trend.

Missed opportunities

Cycling has never been more international then in the period 2005-2015. The time frame when the UCI replaced the old World Cup format by the UCI ProTour and later on, by the similar UCI WorldTour, to remark the global character of the competition. Unfortunatly, the UCI didn't use the potential to create a really representative cycling league. Instead of setting up strong World Tour events in countries with potential like Colombia, they rather accepted quick big money by concerning countries like China or the UAE with zero potential for the sport. A better focus on countries like Colombia or the USA would have allowed more local sponsor to gain enough publicity within the sport instead of depending on wildcards for overseas World Tour races that they rarely received. If you want to make at a certain location with potential, you should also trigger something to start with. Why would a Colombian sponsor keep investing in a team that fans can only watch in the Classica San Sebastian at a time that their potential customers are still sleeping? 

Cycling remains an European affair with all the highest publicity events being in Europe. An American or Japanese fan rarely will spontaneously encounter a top cycling race, as all top races are in Europe. There is no event where a North American or Asian sponsor can get big publicity at a decent viewing slot. Formula 1 has been able to host prestigious races outside Europe like in Japan or Brazil for example. Cycling could never do this.

The way(s) forward

The current sponsorships crisis in cycling should also be a wake-up call for the UCI. If they want their sport to stay competitive in the a more globalized sportsmarket, they have to take more iniatives to make cycling stronger outside the core countries. 

But another aspect is also the conservative approach by some cycling teams themselves. While some teams already innovated their fan intereaction by using new media like videos, merchandise or other publicity. Others stay quite conversative and don't post anything more then a few rosters and a few obligatory sponsor messages. By posting more engaging content, there will be more fan engagement and those increasing numbers will also benefit the sponsor. Budgets are sometimes limited but sometimes, by small innovations you can already win a lot and attract bigger sponsors after, who will provide more budgets overall for your team. 

The teams can also work collectively to make the sport grow more as a whole and make cycling more attractive in comparing with other sports. Making the sport more interesting as a product overall and creating a bigger return-on-investment for potential sponsors who want to step in or for current sponsors who are evaluating their impact. Many cycling teams already worked together for Velon or the Hammer Series, but disagreements made that those projects never could have a long & strong impact to make a real difference.