Womens Cycling

Because unfortunately, in general, it simply doesn't pay to sponsor a womens team.

Armitstead says to run a top-flight women's team would cost around 450, 000 euros a year - an amount she describes as "nothing".

Funny idea of what nothing means. So for a 3 year team you are looking at the best part of 1.4million Euros, to pay someone to cycle for a living. The thing that women need to do is persuade companies what do they get for paying out all that cash?

inkyfingers wrote:

LeicesterLad wrote:

Because unfortunately, in general, it simply doesn't pay to sponsor a womens team.

Exactly.

Women's cycling is caught in a vicious circle....

Hardly anybody watches it because it's not financially viable to promote it well enough. It's not financially viable to promote it so therefore hardly anybody watches it.

The only way it will change is if the UCI force mens teams to invest in women's teams (which I don't like the idea of) or the UCI has to risk some of it's cash and do a better job of promoting the women's sport itself, in the hope that in the long term it will gain from any success.

I see Lizzie A has been banging on about this, she's becoming a feisty little one, maybe aiming to fill Nicole Cooke's old role in that respect.

La Lizzie has - she's just gone off again in another interview with the Beeb - but her problem is that unlike Emma Pooley for example, she doesnt come across well. In almost every interview she comes across as moany and negative, rather than constructive. In her latest intervew she has a pop at the new Wiggle Honda team ahead of its official launch tomorrow, and says that even if Sky set up a womens team, she wouldnt go there anyway ('na na, na na na').

Final straw is her bemoaning that she'll have to race against Vos all of her career, and 'it's horrible.'

There's a difference between straight talking and moaning.

Richmond Racer wrote:

inkyfingers wrote:

LeicesterLad wrote:

Because unfortunately, in general, it simply doesn't pay to sponsor a womens team.

Exactly.

Women's cycling is caught in a vicious circle....

Hardly anybody watches it because it's not financially viable to promote it well enough. It's not financially viable to promote it so therefore hardly anybody watches it.

The only way it will change is if the UCI force mens teams to invest in women's teams (which I don't like the idea of) or the UCI has to risk some of it's cash and do a better job of promoting the women's sport itself, in the hope that in the long term it will gain from any success.

I see Lizzie A has been banging on about this, she's becoming a feisty little one, maybe aiming to fill Nicole Cooke's old role in that respect.

La Lizzie has - she's just gone off again in another interview with the Beeb - but her problem is that unlike Emma Pooley for example, she doesnt come across well. In almost every interview she comes across as moany and negative, rather than constructive. In her latest intervew she has a pop at the new Wiggle Honda team ahead of its official launch tomorrow, and says that even if Sky set up a womens team, she wouldnt go there anyway ('na na, na na na').

Final straw is her bemoaning that she'll have to race against Vos all of her career, and 'it's horrible.'

There's a difference between straight talking and moaning.

Totally disagree.

Perhaps in print interviews that might come across (naughty journos stirring it up a bit? Shurely not...), but on't telly I've only thought what a top lady she is (the opposite of what you say): positive and constructive. On top of that, she's been bright and funny.

In that BBC interview I assume you're referring to she says she's trying to be honest but positive.

Her comment about Vos came across as nothing but respectful, to me. What would you expect her to say - she's up against the Merckx of women's cycling?

OCDuPalais wrote:

Richmond Racer wrote:

inkyfingers wrote:

LeicesterLad wrote:

Because unfortunately, in general, it simply doesn't pay to sponsor a womens team.

Exactly.

Women's cycling is caught in a vicious circle....

Hardly anybody watches it because it's not financially viable to promote it well enough. It's not financially viable to promote it so therefore hardly anybody watches it.

The only way it will change is if the UCI force mens teams to invest in women's teams (which I don't like the idea of) or the UCI has to risk some of it's cash and do a better job of promoting the women's sport itself, in the hope that in the long term it will gain from any success.

I see Lizzie A has been banging on about this, she's becoming a feisty little one, maybe aiming to fill Nicole Cooke's old role in that respect.

La Lizzie has - she's just gone off again in another interview with the Beeb - but her problem is that unlike Emma Pooley for example, she doesnt come across well. In almost every interview she comes across as moany and negative, rather than constructive. In her latest intervew she has a pop at the new Wiggle Honda team ahead of its official launch tomorrow, and says that even if Sky set up a womens team, she wouldnt go there anyway ('na na, na na na').

Final straw is her bemoaning that she'll have to race against Vos all of her career, and 'it's horrible.'

There's a difference between straight talking and moaning.

Totally disagree.

Perhaps in print interviews that might come across (naughty journos stirring it up a bit? Shurely not...), but on't telly I've only thought what a top lady she is (the opposite of what you say): positive and constructive. On top of that, she's been bright and funny.

In that BBC interview I assume you're referring to she says she's trying to be honest but positive.

Her comment about Vos came across as nothing but respectful, to me. What would you expect her to say - she's up against the Merckx of women's cycling?

^This.
If we could see a video of the interview I'm pretty sure she would have been smiling/laughing when making the "it's horrible" remark.

Anyway Lucy Garner's going to take over as the most prominent and successul Brit woman roadie within the next 3 years. I think it'll be her really taking it to Vos, and Barker..well, be interesting to see how she develops.

EDIT:

In interest of keeping it affable, I'll withdraw before I get branded as perpetrating a Lizzie witch-hunt

I'm sure she's a lovely, happy-go-lucky all-round great girl

(just her print interviews suck a little)

OCDuPalais wrote:

In an indirect way the DTPC Honda Team this year is kind of Sky linked- ish... as in lots of the young BC/Sky backed stars of the Olympic Team GB, backing from the Wiggo Foundation, etc.

I think Sky have got one more year of excuses and looking the other way in terms of not properly backing a women's team. But they may have missed a trick this year - the problem they might have next year is that many of the best GB riders might be tied up in 2 year+ contracts, so they might not even be able to get a team off the ground until end of 2014 (assuming they'd want to make the most of the Olympic stars and double junior World Champ Lucy Garner, etc).
Co-sponsoring could happen; but then maybe that doesn't fit with the Sky style?

Not sure, what happens after a year if sky don't start sponsoring a team? I also wouldn't particularly describe what they're doing as making excuses. There just isn't a business case that I can see for sponsoring a team, it might cost x times less, but it gets 0 times as much coverage.

As opposed to being sponsored by the drink 'Pussy'

bdu98252 wrote:

Women in general are not viewers of sport. Men are and it could be argued that they are already fairly well catered for.

English men like watching other men - something about the quality of the game. In France the main viewer demographic of the TdF is housewives, in Italy it is men that watch the Giro Donne, I guess they are less interested in the level of sportmanship.

It seems to have emerged as some level of support and involvement with the new Wiggle Honda team (with BC name involved rather than Sky)

I think they're also getting the Girls GB Academy thing going again but in a different format - but I'm sure someone else will put me right on that.

Not enough women are interested* in racing regularly at grassroots level. If you discount the elites living and racing abroad, there are only 300 or so E123 category women with full racing licenses in the UK. Maybe they looked at the situation and thought that's not a big enough pool to trawl for talent good enough to attract serious sponsors without simply poaching riders from other teams.


*It's a "chicken & egg" situation because without races set up to attract interest they aren't going to have to opportunity to race regularly, get hooked on the competitive side and so add to the numbers.

RonB wrote:

I can't help thinking that race calendar alignment could help. Have the majority of the races roughly coinciding with the men. That might help with recognition. Seems to work for women's tennis, for example.

Maybe stage length, logistics and so on and so forth will be seen as problems here, but not insurmountable ones surely? Or has this already been attempted before and failed?

One of the problems is sheer economics. So many men's races of long-standing are disappearing from French, Spanish Portuguese and Italian calendars - or at hanging on by a thread, reducing the numbers of stages in an effort not to disappear altogether.

On the other hand..thinking of a race like G-W last year - the womens was held in the morning, before the men's, so it got spectators...Was it the same with F-W and Flanders, anyone?

EPO Delivery Man wrote:

IWomen like Cooke can ring their bells and bleat all they want about Armstrong and how he supposedly, single-handedly, ruined womens cycling, but we all know thats got feck all to do with it and comes down to the cash, and if you are a major marketing director at a big company you aren't going to park the best part of your million pound budget on the backs of lycra-clad women not on tv. Its got feck all to do with how good the racing is, its purely about exposure.

And Cooke of all people should know this, afterall, she spent many hours at the front of the peloton just plugging the team shirt sponsor.

Cooke didn't say anything like that. She made the point that Armstrong had denied clean riders of a living and then cited examples of how clean riders in the women's peloton lost their jobs because they wouldn't dope. She also pointed out that when she started out in cycling women's racing was on the increase but that there were a few drug scandals that didn't exactly help encourage sponsors which are already difficult to get (for the various reasons you have mentioned). She wasn't blaming everything on Lance or even doping in general but pointing that it has been another nail in the coffin.

Creating a Women's Team Sky or Wiggle-Honda does not solve the problems that women's cycling has, and I think that's the essence of what Lizzie A was getting at.

The issue for the sport is to put in the infrastructure to film standalone women's races is very expensive and therefore race organisers aren't particularly motivated to do it. Therefore the single biggest impact the UCI could have on Women's cycling is to dictate to race organisers of the World Tour single day races that they have to run a Women's pro race on the same day, as currently happens with Flanders & Flèche. The additional cost to the race organisers is minimal as all the infrastructure is in place for the men's race, and I know for a fact Eurosport will take the broadcast and give it decent airtime. Clearly once more women's racing is broadcast it makes it far easier for teams to generate sponsorship revenue which means they can start paying riders proper salaries.

Having been at the Wiggle-Honda launch yesterday what Rochelle Gilmore has created is extraordinary bearing in mind she can't guarantee sponsors coverage for their brand(s) at present.