The future of cycling sponsorship
I've been thinking about this a bit since the Saxo, Milram and Caisse annoucements of stopping their involvement in cycling. In the case of the 2 banks, it's not a lack of funds because both of them are moving their sponsorship money into other areas rather than cycling.
Neil Browne posted something on his blog which is interesting
http://neilbrowne.com/2010/01/looking-b ... #more-1796
Ok, Burke's got the greatest name ever, but he's hardly a big name. But how about Contador? Signed with Specialized for 3 years so regardless of where he goes he'll be on a Spesh.
We've got the teams from the traditional cycling nations who have sponsors who are interesting to the home markets (French and Italian teams especially), quasi-national teams like Rabo, Sky, Astana and Katusha, the "vanity" projects run by rich men like HTC, Garmin, BMC and Cervelo (although only really BMC remains in this camp) and then things like Radioshack who are funding a team to be associated with Lance.
There's talk of an Oz "national" team coming along.
So, today's question is what will the sponsorship model look like going forward? Big multinationals aren't really stepping up the sport. Germany showed us how a country can fall out of love with the sport quickly and in dramatic fashion.
Neil Browne posted something on his blog which is interesting
http://neilbrowne.com/2010/01/looking-b ... #more-1796
Ok, Burke's got the greatest name ever, but he's hardly a big name. But how about Contador? Signed with Specialized for 3 years so regardless of where he goes he'll be on a Spesh.
We've got the teams from the traditional cycling nations who have sponsors who are interesting to the home markets (French and Italian teams especially), quasi-national teams like Rabo, Sky, Astana and Katusha, the "vanity" projects run by rich men like HTC, Garmin, BMC and Cervelo (although only really BMC remains in this camp) and then things like Radioshack who are funding a team to be associated with Lance.
There's talk of an Oz "national" team coming along.
So, today's question is what will the sponsorship model look like going forward? Big multinationals aren't really stepping up the sport. Germany showed us how a country can fall out of love with the sport quickly and in dramatic fashion.
Fckin' Quintana … that creep can roll, man.
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Comments
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Whilst the current trend isn't encouraging, with the likes of Sky starting up I think it will force others to re-examine their marketing budgets. Cycling is still very cheap as a 'sponsorship'medium in comparison to other sports e.g. F1, football or golf - combined with the fact that the tradtional cycling demographic is changing from a blue-collar, working man's sport to professionals - if you consider the significant growth in bike sales is to ABs with significant disposable income, it would be obvious for the marketing men to jump on the increased interest in the sport. My worry is the UCI who have shown themselves to be totally incapable of running the sport responsibly and therefore could be the biggest risk.Make mine an Italian, with Campagnolo on the side..0
