Project Avignon

mr_poll
mr_poll Posts: 1,547
edited February 2014 in Pro race
A breakaway that might go the distance? Seems the UCI are giving them some rope.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/exclusive-teams-create-project-avignon-to-revolutionise-professional-cycling

Comments

  • No_Ta_Doctor
    No_Ta_Doctor Posts: 13,199
    Interesting stuff.

    Are there any details of UCI plans for the 2015 WT?
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  • Anonymous
    Anonymous Posts: 79,667
    Interesting, It could lead somewhere, but we have seen in other sports where teams have said they will breakoff to make a more level playing ground only to fail and come back to a worse deal: see Scottish football and setanta tv rights.
  • mr_poll
    mr_poll Posts: 1,547
    Interesting stuff.

    Are there any details of UCI plans for the 2015 WT?

    I think INRNG posted something of a mocked up calendar with what had been leaked but all quite since then. No big surprise as I would expect Cookson is dealing with things like the T&R committee and also making structural changes to the UCI (like dismissing legal advisors that Pat and Hein had in place).

    Also if this does have legs and the UCI are being consulted then the plans for the 2015 reforms may be null and void.
  • No_Ta_Doctor
    No_Ta_Doctor Posts: 13,199
    sjmclean wrote:
    Interesting, It could lead somewhere, but we have seen in other sports where teams have said they will breakoff to make a more level playing ground only to fail and come back to a worse deal: see Scottish football and setanta tv rights.

    Wasn't that because Setanta went bust though? I can't remember the details.

    The two main breakaways (or threats) that succeeded in spinning up huge amounts of money were the Premier League and the Champions League. The Champions League was established by UEFA in direct response to the threat of a breakaway European league, backed by Berlusconi. The structures set in place to ensure the big clubs remain part of it (club and country based seeding, direct qualification of multiple teams from the big nations, qualifying rounds for champions of smaller nations, group stages rather than knockout in earlier parts - the second group stage (now thankfully abandoned)) were all designed to keep the threat of a breakaway down.

    The knock on effects of the CL have been manifold: distillation of financial power to the big clubs, down prioritisation of all other competitions (Cup winners cup killed off, lack of interest in the UEFA cup or whatever it's called now, domestic cups dying on their arses). Everyone just wants that CL place and the golden egg it comes with.
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  • frenchfighter
    frenchfighter Posts: 30,642
    I liked the ideas coming from this when I originally read about it.
    Contador is the Greatest
  • dougzz
    dougzz Posts: 1,833
    Structural changes like this are never for the benefit of the sport, they're for the benefit of one part of it. The CL and PL examples provided earlier reflect this, top end gets richer, everyone else gets poorer. Any sort of Pro Cycling breakaway will be for the benefit of a number of top end teams, it won't benefit cycling at all levels. This is not necessarily a bad thing though, sometimes to survive you need to drop what doesn't work.
  • Macaloon
    Macaloon Posts: 5,545
    The knock on effects of the CL have been manifold: distillation of financial power to the big clubs...

    Providing a beautifully apt metaphor for the obscene concentration of wealth in the top 1%. Cycling would love to have this problem.
    ...a rare 100% loyal Pro Race poster. A poster boy for the community.
  • No_Ta_Doctor
    No_Ta_Doctor Posts: 13,199
    Of course, comparing cycling to football is massively problematic, as the two sports have so little in common - especially wrt business model.

    Football teams have multiple revenue streams: tv rights income, merchandising deals, sponsorship deals and matchday revenue. It's difficult to understate the importance of the last of these - everyone looks at the boom in TV money, yet for most clubs matchday income was by far the biggest earner.

    Cycling teams, by contrast, tend to have only sponsorship for income (other than those with a rich benefactor). This doesn't give them a lot of stability, sponsors come and go, and makes them massively reliant on factors outside their control in trying to put together a sales pitch to a potential sponsor. Their revenue stream is entirely dependent on being able to present a marketable cycling product that guarantees exposure - which is controlled entirely by the race organisers and the UCI.
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  • Anonymous
    Anonymous Posts: 79,667
    sjmclean wrote:
    Interesting, It could lead somewhere, but we have seen in other sports where teams have said they will breakoff to make a more level playing ground only to fail and come back to a worse deal: see Scottish football and setanta tv rights.

    Wasn't that because Setanta went bust though? I can't remember the details.

    The two main breakaways (or threats) that succeeded in spinning up huge amounts of money were the Premier League and the Champions League. The Champions League was established by UEFA in direct response to the threat of a breakaway European league, backed by Berlusconi. The structures set in place to ensure the big clubs remain part of it (club and country based seeding, direct qualification of multiple teams from the big nations, qualifying rounds for champions of smaller nations, group stages rather than knockout in earlier parts - the second group stage (now thankfully abandoned)) were all designed to keep the threat of a breakaway down.

    The knock on effects of the CL have been manifold: distillation of financial power to the big clubs, down prioritisation of all other competitions (Cup winners cup killed off, lack of interest in the UEFA cup or whatever it's called now, domestic cups dying on their arses). Everyone just wants that CL place and the golden egg it comes with.

    Yeah but what happened was Sky were offering a great package but Setanta said we'll give you more over a longer period but no one had really checked it out enough to know what was going on. The clubs got greedy went for the impossible deal and had to grovel back to Sky after Setanta went under, at a lesser deal. I think the Scottish teams get <£1 million in tv money but English teams make closer to £10