Should cycling emulate football to a season-long narrative?
Cycling is living in interesting times. Once the pariah of world sport, the spotlight has finally shifted elsewhere thanks to the ongoing doping crisis in athletics. Stories of corruption outlined in the CIRC report look like small potatoes alongside the antics of Fifa. Bucking the trend of falling participation in sport as a whole and the woeful failure of the London Olympic legacy, cycling has seen the inexorable rise of the Mamil (middle-aged man in lycra). It has become the “new golf” and, if certain pressure groups within the professional sport have their way, cycling will soon be on its way to being the new NFL.
The solution to the endless chase for sponsorship is simple, according to Jonathan Vaughters, the former racer and current manager of the Cannondale-Garmin team. Cycling needs to take a leaf out of the NFL’s book and look to a closed franchise model that makes teams partners in a corporate enterprise based on the answers to two simple questions: who is the best rider in the world? And what is the best team? This model offers new fans a simple season-long narrative, with a considerably streamlined calendar.
The scent of those franchise riches are powerful and, with the backing of the recently minted Velon group, who are led by Graham Bartlett – formerly of Liverpool, Uefa and Nike – there is a potentially powerful lobby group of 11 World Tour teams who are eager to see the sport move in that direction
The fans, who turn out on the roadside in huge numbers for the showpiece events of the sport and pay nothing for the privilege. Unlike football supporters, they’re not used to paying £52 a ticket to watch their favourite riders flash. But there are ways to monetise that fleeting, glorious experience. Trek Factory Racing set up fanzones at major events to give fans the opportunity to watch the race on a big screen before snatching that all-important live glimpse. Most major teams have fanclubs that encourage a deeper engagement with the team through exclusive content and merchandising. Surely it’s not too great a stretch for major teams to establish a permanent base that sells everything from team-branded beverages to the latest kit and bikes?...
http://www.theguardian.com/sport/100-tours-100-tales/2015/sep/04/cycling-emulate-football-season-with-a-season-long-narrative
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No.
/threadTeam My Man 2018: David gaudu, Pierre Latour, Romain Bardet, Thibaut pinot, Alexandre Geniez, Florian Senechal, Warren Barguil, Benoit Cosnefroy0 -
Didn't we try this with the Pernod super prestige, the world cup and then the pro tour jersey? And nobody gave a toss so we stopped.
Micron really has a knack of consistently writing stuff that I diagram with almost completely"In many ways, my story was that of a raging, Christ-like figure who hauled himself off the cross, looked up at the Romans with blood in his eyes and said 'My turn, sock cookers'"
@gietvangent0 -
The problem with those rankings was they always focus on individuals. And individuals can't do all the races, let alone be competitive.[url=http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=19695486#p19695486]disgruntledgoat[/url] wrote:Didn't we try this with the Pernod super prestige, the world cup and then the pro tour jersey? And nobody gave a toss so we stopped.
But teams do them all. Right now on the UCI rankings, Movistar, Katusha and Sky are separated by just 28 points (of over 1400). This should be a big deal with a big prize at the end. But it's not. A great 'season long narrative' yet no-one cares.
As for individuals there are four narratives: the classics narrative (up to Roubaix), the Giro narrative, the Tour narrative and the post Tour muddle - the last one should be the end game in the team comp.Twitter: @RichN950 -
No because cycling is managing to maintain itself with sportsman who are impressive, likeable, and humble - like football had 30-40 years ago (and still does in the lower leagues) but singularly fails to have in the top leagues.0
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No because cycling is much more complex than football. Contador stopped racing just past halfway through the season - can you imagine if Cristiano Ronaldo did the same?0
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No because cycling is managing to maintain itself with sportsman who are impressive, likeable, and humble - like football had 30-40 years ago (and still does in the lower leagues) but singularly fails to have in the top leagues.
Good point.0 -
No because cycling is much more complex than football. Contador stopped racing just past halfway through the season - can you imagine if Cristiano Ronaldo did the same?
Yes. It would be great to see GC's in the three GT's, space the events more?0 -
For me, turning it into something resembling football would be a disaster.
What i would like to see is a general overhaul to how teams are supported financially so some consistency could be guaranteed to all the teams in terms of longevity and not having to fold when sponsorship dries up.
Maybe it could work within a spending budget bracket, so if a team like SKY wants to spend £25m a year to run, they have to give £1m to the UCI and this is then put into a pot. If you spend £15m a year to run a team you contribute £750k and so on.
At the end of the year the money is then dished out to all the teams but the smallest team gets a larger proportion of the handout on a sliding scale thats in reverse. So SKY might get £250k back at the end of the year. But teams that need it to keep going and don't have the budget get £3m and so forth. A bit like how American football works, the crapiest teams get the first draft pick the following season for the next best players, which keeps interest and balance going throughout the game.
This is just off the top of my head, so haven't thought it through properly, but you know what i mean (i hope)
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No because cycling is much more complex than football. Contador stopped racing just past halfway through the season - can you imagine if Cristiano Ronaldo did the same?
Yes. It would be great to see GC's in the three GT's, space the events more?
In a nutshell:
Giro - cant run it earlier than May as it will encounter even more weather disruption in the mountains including closed mountain passes than it does already. Unless of course RCS wave goodbye to the high mountains. But who wants that?
Tour - aint ever gonna be moved - Jul, holiday time in France, 11 million roadside etc
Vuelta - cant make it later cos of Worlds0 -
^All good valid reasons why it can't be done.0
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Hopefully none of their ideas will work and I don't think they will. People don't support cycling teams in the way they support football teams, nobody wants a season long narrative and paying to watch live cycling is always going to appeal to a tiny minority when you can stand down the road and watch for free.[Castle Donington Ladies FC - going up in '22]0
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Football can just get in the bin.
So no.Napoleon, don't be jealous that I've been chatting online with babes all day. Besides, we both know that I'm training to be a cage fighter.0 -
The sport has a seasonal narrative anyway, which follows the, you know, seasons. The high passes tend to be impassible early in the year and I doubt that any grand tour would work later in the season than the Vuelta is now, because most riders would be too knackered and the weather in the mountains is worsening (the Giro often seems to reach the Dolomites a week or two earlier than it should). For what it's worth the Worlds is now too late in the season IMHO, but at least that guarantees quality fields for the Vuelta and ToB.0
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No,No,No,
Pay to watch at the roadside is ridiculas, although the Tour of Flanders have moved that way with their finish circuits.
The trend therefore is those mickey mouse USA/Oz finish circuits so people can get their moneys worth or shut the mountain to allow only ticket holders to go up. The plus side to that is, control of the morons in fancy dress running alongside the riders.
NFL :- there is not another sport outside the USA with so much control of their product and this GB Football Premier League is trying to emulate it but Salaries have to be Capped to match the NFL system.
Pro Cycle teams being capped, I don't think so.
The USA Internal sports (you know the ones that are World Champions for only USA teams) are only just "Really" getting to grips with PED's as they realise the effect this complacency has been in their other sports like Athletics.Organiser, National Championship 50 mile Time Trial 19720 -
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[url=http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=19695562#p19695562]Richmond Racer 2[/url] wrote:No because cycling is much more complex than football. Contador stopped racing just past halfway through the season - can you imagine if Cristiano Ronaldo did the same?
Yes. It would be great to see GC's in the three GT's, space the events more?
In a nutshell:
Giro - cant run it earlier than May as it will encounter even more weather disruption in the mountains including closed mountain passes than it does already. Unless of course RCS wave goodbye to the high mountains. But who wants that?
Tour - aint ever gonna be moved - Jul, holiday time in France, 11 million roadside etc
Vuelta - cant make it later cos of Worlds
Move the Worlds. Either the week before the Tour, or two or three weeks after.0 -
I don't think there's any harm in having a season leader's jersey of some sort, but I don't think it's ever going to be taken all that seriously. The idea of a season long team competition is anathema to me, I just can't see how supporting a team works. I don't even know who won the team comp at this years Tour. There are teams I like and teams I dislike, but none of them will ever have the deep-seated connection that a football team has, which is likely rooted in over a century of continuity and a physical local presence. The closest any teams get to that for me personally are Qhubeka, Sky, Orica and Garmin - in that order - for their "value statements" and their riders. Change the riders or change the values and I'll swap in the blink of an eye.
A season long narrative about individual riders is broken from the start though, purely because it's impossible to compare a classics rider (or types of classics rider, cobbles V Ardennes) with a stage rider.
So the whole idea is premised on attracting new fans, who don't understand the differences, the histories, the traditions, by offering them something so drastically oversimplified that it adds nothing to the sport for anyone but children.Warning No formatter is installed for the format0 -
That's an excellent post. Nails it.
And of course football is played on pretty much standardised pitches. The main variable is the weather but we don't see specialist rain strikers or hot weather centre-backs.Napoleon, don't be jealous that I've been chatting online with babes all day. Besides, we both know that I'm training to be a cage fighter.0 -
No because cycling is much more complex than football. Contador stopped racing just past halfway through the season - can you imagine if Cristiano Ronaldo did the same?
I dunno. Balotelli managed to go all season like that.
Seriously though let's not compare cycling to the moronic drivel that is 2015 football. I used to love the game but haven't watched any all season. Interviews are pointless, insight is non-existent, same old same old...and population by the world's thickest and most arrogant millionaires.0 -
That's an excellent post. Nails it.
And of course football is played on pretty much standardised pitches. The main variable is the weather but we don't see specialist rain strikers or hot weather centre-backs.
Ah, but you do see cold-weather headless chickens and hot potatoes. Every time a World Cup is played.0 -
An individual season's leader doesn't work because Froome never races against Kristoff. And contenders can only do a certain amount of races. There's no conflict. But a team competition works because teams are all racing against each other, always.I don't think there's any harm in having a season leader's jersey of some sort, but I don't think it's ever going to be taken all that seriously. The idea of a season long team competition is anathema to me, I just can't see how supporting a team works.
Many teams do have supporters. Over the years the likes of Rabobank, Euskatel, Sky, US Postal, Cafe de Colombia, Orica, T-Mobile, CSC, Astana etc have tapped into a national audience. And just because you don't support anyone it doesn't mean it has no interest for you. Most people who watch the Champions League don't support any of them as their number one team. If you give a big prize and a big trophy, it becomes important to riders and fans.
Consider this:
Right now the WT rankings - including all riders, not just the top five as the official rankings do, stands like this:
1388 Sky
1381 Movistar
1343 Katusha
1166 Etixx-QS
1030 BMC
Look at those top three. Isn't that a thriller?
The best game of football I ever saw was Sunderland v Charlton in a promotion play-off. I don't support either or care about either. It was the drama that made it, not my support.Twitter: @RichN950 -
An individual season's leader doesn't work because Froome never races against Kristoff. And contenders can only do a certain amount of races. There's no conflict. But a team competition works because teams are all racing against each other, always.I don't think there's any harm in having a season leader's jersey of some sort, but I don't think it's ever going to be taken all that seriously. The idea of a season long team competition is anathema to me, I just can't see how supporting a team works.
Many teams do have supporters. Over the years the likes of Rabobank, Euskatel, Sky, US Postal, Cafe de Colombia, Orica, T-Mobile, CSC, Astana etc have tapped into a national audience. And just because you don't support anyone it doesn't mean it has no interest for you. Most people who watch the Champions League don't support any of them as their number one team. If you give a big prize and a big trophy, it becomes important to riders and fans.
Consider this:
Right now the WT rankings - including all riders, not just the top five as the official rankings do, stands like this:
1388 Sky
1381 Movistar
1343 Katusha
1166 Etixx-QS
1030 BMC
Look at those top three. Isn't that a thriller?
The best game of football I ever saw was Sunderland v Charlton in a promotion play-off. I don't support either or care about either. It was the drama that made it, not my support.
But that's just it - cups and playoffs generate excitement because it's a knockout competition. One of Sunderland and Charlton had to win, and the other had to lose.
League competitions, rarely live up to the same standard, freak occurrences such as Arsenal at Anfield in 89 aside.
Imagine it's that tight going into the last race, and of the three top teams one wins the race, another takes 2nd and 3rd place, and the third gets pretty much its entire team into the top twenty. You wouldn't even know who'd won the season until you'd got the calculator out. You need to be able to see the winning happening, and you can't. If you then find out it was the team that didn't make the podium that won overall - either for the season or just that race, then you have a narrative that's difficult to explain and difficult to engage with. Worse still, if a season long team prize were taken seriously then at some point it would start interfering with race tactics - breaks full of nobodies would be chased down because they had a team X rider in, and in a three up sprint you'd be more bothered about beating the team x rider than trying to beat the team y guy who's stronger than you both.
A better idea would be to keep the prizes individual, but have different categories - one for stage races, one for one days.Warning No formatter is installed for the format0 -
It would be good to have a situation where it was normal for GC riders to do all three grand tours. But even if you ignore other events just the weather makes that almost impossible, unless you move one of them outside of Europe, which isn't going to happen.
Moving the Vuelta a month later would help but Contador has shown the Giro Tour double is still too difficult.0 -
That sentence made me shudder with the thought of Kirby having something to repeat and repeat and even when the leaders jersey is of the back. The concentration would be on the Jersey and not the race.I don't think there's any harm in having a season leader's jersey of some sort,Organiser, National Championship 50 mile Time Trial 19720 -
Cycling is fairly unique sport in terms of the team/individual split (it's an individual sport but arranged by teams) and that thoughout any race alliances between riders and teams are formed and disbanded depending on objectives.
Combine that with the inequality between races means that you can't shoehorn it into any existing sport formula. Prestige in cycling is so so much based on historical precedent, which explains why things like the pro tour never worked. Anything season long becomes incidental because the old big races already shape the calendar.
The format is broadly fine from my perspective. There could be a few calendar rejigs but broadly speaking that's it.
What's wrong with it as it is? I get that some involved in the sport envy bigger & wealthier sports but cycling has been like that for the last 50 years and will continue to be so.0 -
I'd be happy if they just put the Muur back in FlandersNapoleon, don't be jealous that I've been chatting online with babes all day. Besides, we both know that I'm training to be a cage fighter.0
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Now that is a bigger issue.
You want to follow the money? Flanders is an example of how that can go wrong.0 -
Exactly.Now that is a bigger issue.
You want to follow the money? Flanders is an example of how that can go wrong.
I get why they did it. But it's made the race a shadow of what it was. Sense may prevail at some point.Napoleon, don't be jealous that I've been chatting online with babes all day. Besides, we both know that I'm training to be a cage fighter.0 -
Now that is a bigger issue.
You want to follow the money? Flanders is an example of how that can go wrong.
Amen to that0 -
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Exactly my point earlier in the thread.No,No,No,
Pay to watch at the roadside is ridiculas, although the Tour of Flanders have moved that way with their finish circuits.Organiser, National Championship 50 mile Time Trial 19720
