WHat company would have the money and desire to take over that sponsor ship?

Not that surprising, there has been a lot of negative publicity in the last couple of years despite all the on-road success. Think in the current climate they're going to struggle to find another sponsor prepared to fund at the levels they're used to. And they've got a pretty expensive roster with the likes of Froome, Thomas and Bernal being signed to quite long term deals.

I guess at least with a year's notice there is time for riders to look for new contracts (assuming Brailsford can't find the funding to continue the team). On the plus side, if he's still going strong in 2020 it would be fascinating to see what Froome is capable of without the Sky train. A Froome in his twilight years who has to fend for himself and take more risks could just help improve his popularity in a similar way to Contador's last few years.

.. US cable giant Comcast completed a £30bn takeover of Sky earlier this year ..

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___/\___/\___/\___ the s u r f b o a r d of the K u r p f a l z is the r o a d b i k e .. oSo >>

Another reason to dislike Sky.

Seriously though, it would be nice if this forced cycling to adopt a better revenue model. Teams should get a portion of the TV revenue. There is to much disparity in team budgets and the number of companies that are willing and able to bankroll a team is probably shrinking.

Money comes and money goes in the sport.....McLaren boosts Bahrain Merida
https://www.bbc.com/sport/cycling/46536013

<pink>

Didn't Lance made 10 billion on Uber

or

maybe the current Ironman world champion </pink> (Prince of Bahrain)

There's no pink there. He funds the Bahrain-Merida team. They are certain to be competing for the Sky riders as they come off contract.

yes, I know. The pink was for "current Ironman world champion"

Ah, gotcha.

I think he's talking about this champion :
http://m.gdnonline.com/...pion-in-his-category

Will this cutting ties influence broadcasting of the cycling? I mean, I assume sky is sky sport and that they amped up the coverage with thier boys dominating all day, not just tour De France but year round... That's less fun to broadcast when it's other sponsors

Its a shame that even after 10 years of prime sponsorship and top end racing without positives, it becomes another drug doubt story opportunity in the press. 10 years is a nice round number so could have been the original plan, and maybe the new sky investors aren't as big bike race enthusiasts.

Did the Sky article say someone signed a 5 year contract just in October? That would be an awful chain of events

What about British Rail? Do they have a team?

Egan Bernal

Team Walmart! They would of course wear Rapha.

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"It's good enough for who it's for" - Grandpa Wayne

Yes, because Comcast cares so much about negative publiccity.

Dominate year round? Not the cobbled classics or Ardenne classics. So the spring is out. Not the fall classics. Not the WC or Olympic RR. Wiggins and Froome do well in TT when they care. Other than that it's Grand Tours and GT tuneup stage races.

trail- your my cycling guy here on ST.

Has the team picked up a new sponsor? Does the new sponsor have "deep" pockets too? I'm shocked I didn't hear of this earlier, although my checking in on cycling news has dropped the last 5 years. And in the "off season" I dont think I've looked at cyclingnews once since mid Oct.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

I don't know any more than what's on the cycling news sites. There appears to be no new title sponsor(s) yet. They didn't appear to have had much advance warning either.

I think they'll have a very hard time matching their Sky sponsorship $ which is way above market average. It was a lucrative setup.

Nevermind it says 2019. I was thinking for some reason it was ending like right now based on the OP's thread title.

The big names will be fine. Atleast the young big names. It's riders 19-23 (and the low level workers) who really get "pinched" if teams truly do fold completely.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Sky as a great team around them and sure they will be able to find a new title sponsor.

Interesting resource to have as a sponsor.

I think it's likely the team sticks around in 2020 but it's extremely unlikely that Brailsford has a 35MM Euro budget to work with in 2020.

My opinions on this:
- Froome is a great GC rider but he has certainly benefited from having one of the greatest collection of domestiques ever assembled. Froome is not going to have million Euro guys getting him bottles anymore and his results will suffer.
- I'm uncertain of his contract terms, but it's likely that G Thomas is gone. Only a team with a massive budget can support both him and Froome. Someone is going to snap G up.
- Brailsford will pull out all the stops to keep Bernal. Bernal's on a five year contract but I think losing Sky as a sponsor puts him back in play. The guy is the future of GC and Brailsford is a Grand Tour GC guy. His top priority will be to keep Bernal.
- The Tour might actually become watchable again. One can only hope.

Yeah looking forward to the 2020 tour being a proper fair race and not the sky show.

I would bet money against it. More cycling sponsors are leaving the sport than are coming in. Every year there are UCI level teams that are either desperately searching for a new sponsor, folding, or combining with other teams. Which then leaves room for minor sponsors or pro continental teams to step in. You never see headlines that the biggest teams get "bought out" by big sponsors in a bidding war because they are such great investments.

Factor in that Sky's budget is astronomical, they do have a few riders tied up long term, and that they are built with a very niche focus on Grand Tours. Not ever sponsor is going to find that appealing, especially when you consider national interests. Highly unlikely that a major company with strong roots and customer base in Spain, France, Italy, Belgium, or Germany are going to want to back Froome, Thomas, and Bernal as their poster boys.

My guess is that after 2019, Sky will be dismantled as they are today. Another team will step in, and the riders will get picked up. Very similar to what happened to Tinkoff.

is it classics season yet?

I think Sky's search for a new sponsor is basically an unprecedented case and nobody really knows whether they'll find one willing to fund at the same level.

They're the most expensive team in the world, with a budget so much bigger than everyone else that it's produced a years-long call for some sort of (always ill-defined) cycling salary cap. They're also the best team in the world, and with not only Froome, Thomas, and Bernal, but also maybe the best collection of grand tour domestiques in the history of cycling, they have the tools to dominate grand tours for years to come.

If you step in as Sky's title sponsor, you're not buying a baseball team, you're buying the Yankees. And not just any Yankees team, but the 1920s era Murderers Row Yankees. Or the 1990s Chicago Bulls, or the 1980s Showtime Lakers.

The market for "strap your corporate logo on a basically guaranteed Tour de France winner" has to be a little different than the market for a regular world tour team.

But there are also good reasons to think there won't be a huge line of sponsors waiting their turn to pony up $40+ million for Brailsford. First, nobody else's budget is even close to Sky's. Anyone who might want to step in as the new Sky sponsor could have stepped in last year to sponsor some other team and spent $40 million (or $50 million or $60 million) to put together their own superteam to win the Tour. (They would have had to compete with Sky, but they could have tried and they didn't.) And Sky's press obviously hasn't been all positive, between the doping scandals and many cycling fans' antipathy toward Sky's predictable, race-strangling tactics.

This is uncharted waters, and, unless someone's in meetings with Brailsford, it seems impossible to know what this market looks like.

for past precedents we can look at:
htc-columbia back in the day was pretty well the top team around when they folded (based on winning sprints with cav, griepel plus some other contributions rather than GC dominance)
BMC with GVA pretty dominant in the classics plus porte as a gc guy, dennis in TTs - survived but only just, after losing most of the top riders
quick step overall dominant in classics, nearly folded, also lost a number of top riders

but none of them have been able to virtually guarantee a TDF win and we know for better or worse that it what counts to most outside of core cycling fans. it is quite a unique situation but i think sponsors like confidence in an outcome. one of cycling's issues is that there is too much risk for sponsors - crashes, poor form/health, drug scandals, heck outside of the WT you're not sure what races your team will even get to ride! with sky you know they will be riding the big races and they have a track record of delivering reliable results. i think that could be worth the higher cost - for many global organisations even sky's budget is minuscule in relation to their marketing budget

as a fan the most interesting thing would be to see the riders distributed around other teams to see how they perform outside of the sky train

will cause chaos on the transfer market if sky do fold, release of that much talent onto the market at the same time is also unprecedented.
one interesting aspect i haven't seen clarified is whether there is any obligation on the team to honour ongoing rider contracts

2 great analysis. It seems Sky with their budget can afford every detail while other teams are mucking around in the weeds. Money affords you the attention to detail that others simply can’t deal with.

So I don’t think any sponsor is going to come in and it be Sky 2.0. It should be more exciting for the sport overall and may even “clean up” the image in that Sky’s big budget almost seemed to let them skirt the issues.

And no I don’t mean it actually clean cycling. I mean more the smugness sky seemed to have regarding some of their policies. It only seemed like their riders could get away with things they got away with.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Except that when you BUY the Yankees, you are essentially buying a company that has huge revenue streams and operates in a massive market where winning actually breeds more revenue. Those come in the form of ticket and merchandise sales, TV contracts, and licensing deals...among other things. As a potential owner, what businesses you currently are involved in, or how you made your money is of little relevance...you just need to have enough of it and a desire to make more by running a pro franchise. That's why when major pro teams go up for sale, there is usually a bidding war and the price gets driven up over the current estimated value of the franchise. The long term ROI is very easy to justify regardless of who you are.

When you SPONSOR a pro cycling team...you're putting up money with no direct revenue in return. Those millions of fans that line the roads cheering for your team...how much of those ticket sales do you get from them (sarcasm)? What about the TV deals with Eurosport, NBC, etc? How about those MASSIVE prize checks that are awarded when your team wins all the races...how much of that goes directly back to the sponsors? There needs to be a clear and direct connection between the sponsor and the team. Simply having $40 million to spend on advertising and marketing brings no guarantees that you'll see a positive ROI even if the team is successful.

Will the right sponsor come along that see's value in the team as is? Possibly...but I doubt it.

Not quite. Sky’s domesticates are in many cases leaders on other teams. Then factor that younger guns like Geoghegan Hart come cheap(er) on rookie contract than guys Poels and Henao, so it will trickle down and impact market.

Bernal will demand a huge contract anywhere regardless of what happens at Sky.

“Van Garderen Q&A: ‘The only thing I want to do is ball’”

Does he mean cry? Just wondering...

Not sure what I said that was different? The ones that are going to be the most difficult will be the final "bottom" guys on Sky. Those and the team workers that no one sees are the one's that get "pinched" in these cases.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

You're exactly right. Many big-time teams are largely vanity projects. Bahrain, Tinkoff, Astana, formerly BMC, Sky. Sure I'm missing some They all have/had huge super-wealthy personalities behind the sponsorship. The ROI is winning and reputation. Not answering to a board of directors about revenue.

that would be bawl... i assumed this was a 'merican thing

IMO you are on to the real issue.

The current model does not work from a pure sponsorship perspective. When you run out of rich individuals or companies that like cycling that "sponsorship deal is over".

These "Teams" need to be more like the NFL. Established teams owned by an individual or group that participates in the TV, home race T-shirts, drinks and hot dogs etc. revenue. A team that has a home identification race. Baseball, Football, world version Football - they all do very well year on year. Maybe even an F1 type model where the team can sell sponsorship but the team has multiple revenue sources.

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Dan Kennison

facebook: @triPremierBike
http://www.PremierBike.com
http://www.PositionOneSports.com

and the guys on other teams with contracts expiring next year, any up and comers looking to break into the world tour, even the pro conti level will be impacted as it trickles down - the impact of this is not limited to sky riders. everyone will likely see their pay cheques reduced though, even froome and thomas
not to mention the team staff which sky have a lot of

But then there's Quickstep. Sponsored by a pretty marginal flooring company (marginal as in how large they are as an international enterprise, they may be pretty big in the Euro flooring industry, don't know), but with pretty a solid Belgian culture, and a very well defined objective: killin' it in the early season classics. I'm going to assume they have a pretty healthy budget, but probably nothing excessive. Bora-Hansgrohe is the same in Germany (objective: make Sagan awesome). Movistar in Spain of course.

Interestingly there's Lotto NL Jumbo and Lotto Soudal, sponsored by the Dutch and Belgian national lotteries, which in a way are comparable to the Bahrains and Astanas of the world: somewhat associated to the government but with enough revenue and at a long enough arms length that a slush fund targeted at a cycling team doesn't attract too much attention.

If we're comparing cycling teams to NFL franchises, there's a number of them that are like the Patriots or the Packers: solid management, most years good to very good. This is Sky, Movistar, and Quickstep, and maybe Lotto NL Jumbo now the Rabobank stink has mostly washed off. Then there's a bunch of them that may have good years depending on the quarterback they drafted (Bora with Sagan, Sunweb with Dumoulin, Bahrain with Nibali), but that go to shit if they don't have one (EF Drapac, Katusha, Astana). The rest is marginal, and can only hope for the occasional lucky strike.

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Citizen of the world, former drunkard. Resident Traumatic Brain Injury advocate.

Now you’re just pedalling the same myths that most others pedal. Yes, sky does have the largest budget but there are other teams that are close. Until Andy Rihs died BMC was just behind as are katusha. Bahrain Mehrida don’t do too badly either. Just because Cannondale can’t rub two pennies together doesn’t mean sky are to blame. But don’t let facts get in the way of a good narrative.

International producers of cans of worms, the makers of jiffy bags, GlaxoSmithKline. That would be quite a big budget right there.

Oh, and now it seems makers of dildos everywhere would also be interested in their business.

Don't write off Sky 2.0 it seems the mega budget and all the superstars may still be present in the peloton for years to come. watch this space.

https://cyclingtips.com/2019/01/specialized-recalls-roubaix-a-sky-saviour-paris-nice-route-daily-news-digest/