Jonathan Vaughters agrees that the current cost structure for teams within professional cycling was one of the factors that drove Oleg Tinkov to decide to leave professional cycling. However the Cannondale-Garmin team manager added that the Russian oligarch helped manipulate a worrying trend in which teams cannot sustain their longevity with the sport.
Tinkov announced last week, in an exclusive interview with Cyclingnews, that 2016 would be the final season of his involvement and that he was looking to sell his WorldTour squad which will be known simply as Tinkoff in 2016. The Russian cited the lack of return on his investment since he re-entered the sport and bought his current team from Bjarne Riis, as well as the slow level of progress shown in areas such as revenue sharing and the setting up of a franchise-style scheme. He also added that the sponsorship activation his team had created had been a success, therefore hinting that an extension of his role in investing in cycling was no longer required.
“I’m not surprised he decided to do this. He was putting a lot into the team. I think it was around 60 million. No matter how wealthy you are that’s a lot of money to lose as an owner when you don’t have any way of recouping that money in the current way cycling is structured. Essentially you’re not actually investing the money, you’re donating it. He was effectively donating money to the ‘save the Alberto Contador salary fund’,” Vaughters told Cyclingnews.
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However, like Tinkov, Vaughters echoed his counterpart’s issues with how the sport lacks a model of sponsorship and investment that encourages long term growth. BMC Racing recently announced that their future was secure for the future, however a number of teams including Tinkoff and Cannondale only have one year left to run on their existing WorldTour licenses.
The argument made for some time is that team would be more stable if the ASO released television revenue to the WorldTour teams, therefore creating influx of capital for squads to build foundations and offset their expensive running costs. However Vaughters argues that television revenue sharing is not the answer to cycling’s problems.
“There’s got to be some fundamental changes if we want a more sustainable system. Everyone talks about getting their hands on ASO’s television revenue, however I don't agree with this. It's premature. We need to add value to their events, before we dive into their profits. Which we can do! But it will take time. In the meantime, if you simply cut a cheque from TV revenues it’s not going to sustain a team. And imagine you get that cheque, so does everyone else, all it would do would be to inflate the salary market of the very few top riders in bidding wars. The money would be burnt through and it wouldn’t add anything to the context of stability. While revenue sharing is good, it doesn’t work on its own. What has to happen is cycling has to get control of its cost structure and create a financial fairness among all the teams, then we can discuss revenue sharing in the context of stability.”
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