Normally pro cycling teams struggle to win a major Tour, esp the TdF. Many fall by the wayside during the course of that struggle when they fall short.
But how often does a pro cycling team win a major tour, esp. the TdF, and then immediately disband losing all the adverrtising benefit of the success.
Then, how often has a team won the TdF 8 out of 9 years and then disbanded? Was the US Postal-Discovery team and Tailwind Sprots too successful?
Something seems wrong here in a major way! Poor choice of sponsors? such that they don’t receive any advertising benefit from cycling success. Poor advertising departments or partners such that they are unable to pyramid cycling success into product sales? What gives?
Don’t profess that it is drugs in the sport. When one looks ot other sports and the influence of drugs in those sports there has not been a significant decline in spectators or revenue, take baseball for instance.
Even with all the “drama” surrounding each day of the TdF there was no shortage of spectators along the route. So don’t say that no one is interested in the sport or the riders. It looks like there is significant interest in the sport and the riders whether the sport is clean or not.
Now lets have some well reasoned responses and not just a short off the cuff retort, i.e., its the drugs.
US Postal walked while Lance was still winning. The whole Discovery Channel thing was the making of ONE man who was really into cycling. Discovery walked well before this year’s victory. It’s a matter of no one wanting to take ON the team in the atmoshpere of the sport now. And I’m pretty sure they were wanting to keep it an American based sponsor but I could be wrong. Seems pretty simple, really.
The only benefit of sponsoring a pro team is brand recognition. USPS made sense, as the post office wanted to increase their brand in Europe. Discovery really never made sense to me – as it’s mainly a US cable station. So in thinking of new sponsors – you would need to find a company that is looking to increase their brand awareness in Europe. Potential sponsors then need to decide if spending 45M over three years on a pro team is the best way to do it. Given where the sport is at this point – that is a hard sell.
Alright, two good responses, but still I see a team with unparralled success in the TdF in recent years. Both coaches, director sportif and riders, yet no one wants to take over this team. What an opportunity that is lost.
This is not to say that the coaches, director sportif, and riders won’t do well on their own or on other teams, just that this winning combination will be dissolved and likely never, at least for the foreseeable future, exist again.
If you had big bucks and wanted brand or name recognition in Europe it seems like this is just an unbelievable opportunity that is just squandered. No corporate entity out there recognizes this? It just escapes my ability to comprehend this.
Why mess up a good thing, winning combination, when one can let it collapse and fall by the wayside?
I believe that the UCI/WADA etc was getting close to the doping structure within Discovery/USPS/Tailwind. Before all of the great victories are undone, it makes sense that they would disband the team - they can retire on top rather than have the culture explode when a raid uncovers the unique drug induced performances.
The question is: who on the team will be the first to die of a heart attack!?
All I know is something “ain’t” right with this situation…I don’t know what it is, but something definitely “ain’t” right.
If you had a sponsor 90% committed as Lance claims, how would it possibly hurt Tailwind to go ahead with it? Or why not get the sponsor agreement and attempt to sell the team to another sports marketing company? There’s got to be tons of sports marketing companies like IMG that would be salivating over an opportunity like this.
Saeco won the Giro in 2003 and 2004 and didn’t prolong in 2005.
MAPEI - won Roubaix 5 times inc. its last year, the world the year before they leave, Tour of Flanders etc. They left in 2002, with 94 wins just this year alone.
The sun has been setting on the Armstrong phenomenon for the last two years. Eventually, the man could win no more Tours de France. From a business perspective, the sponsors who were involved understand the upside and downsides of the marketing campaign. For most of the sponsors involved the Armstrong era was a boon. He was the “teflon rider” in a way that we’ve had “Teflon Presidents”- nothing people said about him could stick.
It makes sense for Discovery networks to walk away. The relationship ran its course and it is time to move on to other marketing venues for Discovery. Their ecclectic programming and subscription rates continue to help their bottom line. They have used the services of sports marketing and are done.
There may be some ancillary fall out from three bad years in the Tour given the controversies, but there is something to Ted Nugent’s axiom that there is no such thing as bad publicity… within reason.
Sometimes the best business moves are just walking away from a potential opportunity. I think that sponsoring a US cycling team was no longer that good an opportunity for US companies, primarily because Lance Armstrong was done, not because of problems with doping. While lots of people that post here might be impressed with Cantador’s efforts, very few Americans care tha a Spaniard won the TDF while riding for an American sponsored and owned team. They would care if an American racing for someone else won. But, even there, not nearly as much as before because Americans have won so many TDFs in the last 20 years so it’s not that newsworthy an event.
I am not too sure what Disco was doing as a sponsor or for that matter the USPS either. When they had the Lance show maybe they got something out of it, but how do you market your TV network when you don’t have any programs about cycling?. I bet they could do some serious ratings changes if they were involved in NASCAR or all Bullriding all the time Networking.
I think is is junk that that happend, but they gave a year notice and stuck to it. Other companies have yanked it with no notice.
I think that all sponsors are temporary for the most part.It is not uncommon for a 3-5 year contract and then they move on. This happens in Triathlon as well ex. Tri Dubai. It is quite unusual for a team to reach the top of the sport and disband. This season might have clearly been the best season Tailwind has had but I think they are not attractive to an American company because they really do not have a dominant rider. While I think the world of Levi as a GC rider he needs to have the race of his life to reach the result he had this year and he had luck on his side. The state of the sport does not make a team attractive at this point in time for a company that does not have a cycling background. From what I have read in the past year Thomas Weisel has been intrested in refocusing his funding to other areas of the sport USA cycling but the comment from Armstrong “You have not seen the last of us in this sport” leads a lot to the imigination because while there is no proof Contador and the Basso mess did not help secure a sponsor and they are running oput of time because riders are in their free agent period and sigining with teams that are sponsored for next year. At this point the pool of riders are decreasing and with that so does the success next year. Tailwind will not settle for marginal results.
Walking away now is a good business decision. Plain & simple. Cycling in Europe is like a like 2-engine plane that just lost both engines – it’s going down. Lance & crew just so happened to grab the first parachute and decided to get off before it crashes. After the flames of the crash die out, cycling will reinvent itself and don’t be surprised if you see the same crew (Lance & company) back in the mix. It might be a few years…and who knows, maybe it’s in a different format (i.e. US based circuit), but they’ll be back. At the end of the day, it’s about protecting the ‘Lance’ brand, and why tarnish that brand by associating with a sport that’s imploding.
There was definitely something funny going on behind the scenes. Sponsors come and go, and I would think it would be unusual for a main sponsor to stick for much more than 4-5 years, as they would reach a marketing saturation point, and bang for buck would be reduced after a few years. I am sure sponsorship is only a minor factor. Having the team infra-structure and licences all set-up would be the main assets - and quite hard to rebuild from scratch I would have thought. Selling that as a going concern would also have been relatively easy, even if it went to Europe? If a car manufacturer thought that there was going to be a market down turn for the next 2-4 years, would they just disband the company and possibly start from scratch again? Given there is a significant capital investment difference, not many successful businesses just disband when the market gets a bit tough. They may need to re-invent themselves to remain competitive, but not just shut up shop…
The thing people don’t get is that a cycling team is really nothing more then some equipment and a PT license. People talk as if dropping the team is dumping hundreds of millions of assets down the drain.
I'm pretty sure the French government is in negotiations to buy the entire team, staff, and grant honorary citizenship to Johan and Lance so that they can be there to guide a team member to the first "French" victory in 230 years.
I agree that the drug issue seems to have little impact on the average fans enthusiam. It seems to have more impact on the real keeners and the people that have a passing interest. That being said, big corporations of the kind that get involved at this level of sponsorship tend to be rather conservitive when it comes to their marketing spend. Even the possibility of bad press can have them running in the opposite direction.
End of an era. Armstrong’s retired. Bruyneel says he’s stepping down. And perhaps the rest of the braintrust at Tailwind has just become tired of it all. Time to move onto something else.
My sense is that the road bike business and participation numbers may have peaked and may even be heading down in the U.S.( I have been told that Trek’s Road Bike sales last year were way down!) Unlike in Europe where you have both participant and non-participant fans that add up to the hundreds of millions, in the U.S. my hunch is that the fan base is mostly on the participant side and if those numbers start to slide, then sponsors will not be as keen to get on board. They will want to put there money in a sport or activity that is showing growth not a decline.