Much has been said about the sustainability (or otherwise) of professional road racing in recent months, but according to ex-racer David Millar, the situation could be far worse than many think.
Speaking exclusively to BikeRadar, Millar says: “There is no business model to professional cycling.”
With One Cycling – a Saudi-backed initiative that aims to create a new ‘super league’ for pro road racing – said to be launching imminently, many believe road cycling could be set to change significantly.
Millar, though, isn’t sure the project will be able to achieve economic and logistical reform.
“One big problem with professional cycling is that the Tour de France is professional cycling," he says "and the Tour de France is owned by ASO [the Amaury Sport Organisation] and effectively ASO owns the sport.”
“ASO have a great business model and they’re not going to share it”
When asked whether the current business model of professional cycling was sustainable, or good for the brands that sponsor WorldTour teams, Millar cited the lack of any clear return on investment as a key issue.
“It's wild that a team can spend 40 million [Euros] and have no revenue. I don’t think there’s another sport like that, except the America’s Cup, maybe.”
Millar thinks prising cycling’s biggest asset (the Tour) from the hands of a private company won’t be so easy, though.
“All these high plans, these big money races and one day’s [races], we saw Velon try… If you haven’t got ASO on board, and the Tour de France, then the business model doesn’t change.”
The fundamental problem, according to Millar, is that “ASO have a great business model and they’re not going to share it”.
If a project such as One Cycling were to succeed, Millar says, the teams would need to take a unified stance against the ASO, were it not to agree to these reforms – although he doesn’t think this is likely to happen.
“It would take a unified, almost Major League Baseball-kind of strike to maybe force some action,” he adds.
“But again, the business model is so bad in cycling, and it’s so antagonistic between team directors, etc, that you’d never have a unified WorldTour… you’d always have two or three teams that wouldn’t do it, and ASO would always take them.”
ASO is the boss dog
More problematically, Millar notes the significant differences between cycling and sports such as golf or Formula 1, which have seen calendar and business-model reforms in recent years.
“You can’t just put new races on in cycling,” Millar says. “What makes cycling so special is that you have Paris-Roubaix, the Tour of Flanders, the Giro d’Italia, the Tour de France – these are cultural, national events – and free, you know, you can’t recreate that.
“You could go and do a race in New York and put $1 million [of prize money up] – it would last three years.
“The Tour of Flanders, the Tour de France – they are the sport, that is what makes it. It’s this historical, cultural, irreplaceable way of doing things.
“And that’s the rub – it does mean we’re effectively tied to these events, and if those events are the boss, then the boss dog is the ASO and the Tour de France.”
The issue of local support
Even if One Cycling, or another initiative, manages to convince the ASO to sign up and sell the Tour and its other assets (such as Paris-Roubaix and the Vuelta a España) to a unified project, Millar predicts it may not be plain sailing from there, because races are run on public roads and therefore rely on support from local governments.
“A lot of these races are dependent on government support – for the Tour de France, they have ministerial road closures,” he points out.
“If it was a foreign-owned commercial venture, are you going to get road closures? I don’t think so.
“It’s the same with a lot of these events – they’re almost nationally owned commodities if you like, and so the moment it becomes a profit-making business, are you going to get governmental support and local authorities closing down their roads and giving you police support? I’m not so sure.”
