"One Cycling" - is it really going to change professional cycling?

Here’s a piece I co-wrote for The Outer Line about the “One Cycling” project that is currently the subject of much speculation. It’s quite a long read, but it’s a complex subject. Have a look.

https://theouterline.substack.com/p/special-issue-one-cycling-and-the

Special Issue: "One Cycling"- and the Path to Real Change

By Steve Maxwell and Brian Cookson

The vague and mysterious “One Cycling” initiative to reinvent cycling has generated considerable media speculation over the past several months. Back in October, Reuters reported that plans were being explored to “create a new competitive league,” with the global management consulting firm EY (formerly Ernst and Young) assisting the group in seeking investors. The project was referred to as a new “champion’s league,” or a “super league” – with claims that it would revolutionize the sport, and that it would be “highly lucrative” to the teams and organizers. It was variously suggested that this transformative venture would be unveiled on the eve of the 2025 Tour de France, or perhaps at the outset of the 2026 season.

The program is loosely attributed to a handful of the larger teams (consistently rumored to include Visma, EF, Ineos, Bora, Lidl-Trek and Quickstep) or to the AIGCP teams’ organization. While Visma team boss Richard Plugge seems to be the primary spokesman, momentum behind the effort has also been variously attributed to Zdenek Bakala (owner of the Soudal-QuickStep team), Tomas van den Spiegel (CEO of Flanders Classics) and the Education First corporate offices. UCI President David Lappartient has – somewhat surprisingly – been described as supportive of the concept. Secret project documents have reportedly been shared around the sport under strict non-disclosure agreements, though some team managers dispute this.

Supposedly interested investors have included the huge CVC private equity firm – which has sunk billions of dollars in a number of sporting rights and initiatives, including Formula 1, Indian cricket, rugby union, tennis and Moto GP. Without citing any hard evidence, other reports suggested a potential interest by the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund, or one of its related funding arms, which has recently invested huge sums to disrupt and reinvent other sports like professional golf and soccer. The Reuters report went so far as to suggest that indications of interest from investors would be due in late October of 2023.

While some group of players clearly has some kind of plan in mind, beyond that everything is still highly speculative. Nonetheless, the media has jumped on this story with a vengeance, imagining various sorts of secret plans, clandestine meetings with eager investors, and so on. At one point, we were told that Saudi Arabia was on the cusp of taking over the sport – indeed, that it was inevitable! Yet nothing has happened since all those wild stories circulated in the late fall, and recently, Plugge himself has come out and confirmed that essentially nothing is happening. Although it seemed to go unnoticed, even the original Reuters article cautioned that “an agreement is not imminent and a deal may not proceed.”

So, let’s step back and examine all this hype and speculation from a more dispassionate perspective.

The objectives of the project reportedly include things like a consolidated and more logical calendar, more circuit races to enable ticket revenue, the best racers competing against each other in the biggest races, a stronger and more understandable season-long narrative, more focus on a coherent overall points system, and consolidation of the media rights package – making the sport more profitable and more accessible to both new and existing fans.

First, virtually all of these ideas have been extensively researched, discussed and promoted in the past; few of the supposed goals and objectives of One Cycling are anything new or revolutionary. For example, recall the general objectives of Velon, or the World Series of Cycling that was promoted more than ten years ago. What has always been lacking in cycling is the ability of key stakeholders to uniformly back these ideas or agree on a way to actually implement them. Even relatively modest reforms, like those proposed by the UCI back in 2016, were fiercely resisted by powerful vested interests. 

Second, there seems to be little evidence of any real external financial interest in this plan, despite all the media hype. There has been an explosion of well-documented investor interest in other sporting properties over the last few years – with vast amounts of money being poured into the acquisition of sports teams, event organizers, and the rights to stream and televise major sporting events. But this investment trend in other sports in no way constitutes “evidence” that cycling will be next to see a massive inflow of new dollars.

What most of the media misses here is that there has to be a clear ability to make a return on investment before any of these fat hedge funds or venture capitalists are likely to spend a dime. At least so far, cycling hasn’t been able to demonstrate that kind clear path to general profitability – let alone the high returns that these firms typically target. Pro cycling has traditionally been a marketing, vanity, or even a charity project – where virtually all of the funds to operate the sport come from external sponsors. Until cycling can consolidate and market its TV rights on a more profitable basis and derive revenues from ticket and merchandise sales – or from other internal sources – there is not much way for an external investor to make a return. With a few exceptions, most cycling events cost money rather than make money.

And third – as is well-known to anyone who has ever thought for more than five minutes about modernizing cycling – none of these sorts of reform packages will go anywhere without the support of the ASO – the oligopolistic owner of the Tour de France. Most media sources have acknowledged this obvious fact – indeed some have reported that ASO is in fact not on board – but have not let that stop rampant speculation. Nothing will happen without the participation of ASO, and at the moment, there is no evidence that such support is forthcoming.

We support most of the presumed objectives and plans of the One Cycling project. Many of these proposed changes and modernizations are long overdue. At the same time, we have to recognize that there are risks or potential downsides to consider as well.

For example, if the calendar is to be simplified with overlapping and conflicting race dates totally removed, then it’s unavoidable that some long-established events will disappear or be downgraded. This will not be a comfortable process for all parties involved. For example, a 2016 suggestion that the Vuelta be reduced to two weeks was met with the threat of legal action from the race organizer. Likewise, when a small number of events in new countries were added to the WorldTour, there was criticism from the bigger organizers who felt their events would be diluted. The leaders of One Cycling must take care to ensure that the potential discontinuation or downsizing of certain popular or traditional events doesn’t drive fans away.

We often hear suggestions that cycling should model itself after Formula 1 – and the concept that all of the best riders should compete in all the top events. While a more logical and understandable calendar is certainly desirable, the F1 objective is not one that should be taken literally. One of the things that makes cycling unique is the fact that teams have different types of riders focused on different types of races, who can choose race programs to meet different objectives. This nuanced and multi-faceted nature of the sport leads to a degree of unpredictability that often makes cycling more interesting over the course of a season’s narrative.

These are just a couple of the complexities or finer nuances that any serious restructuring effort should be aware of. The focus should be on determining how to best take the next step in sustainably building a complex sporting ecosystem – not just how to attract funding from some wealthy investors for a few years.

And while we do believe that cycling leaders like Plugge, Bakala and Van den Spiegel have the background and experience to develop such a transformative plan, the bigger requirement is the organizational or political skills to secure widespread support from all the key stakeholders. As pointed out above, in the past, many of these parties have clearly been reluctant to risk damaging their position in the status quo.  And there are already cracks at the seams – how can a movement to reform cycling only have the reputed support of only its top six teams?

All of this said, cycling is sitting atop big potential upsides, and now would be an optimal time to attempt to implement some of these changes. In order to be successful, the leaders of One Cycling must successfully address two difficult but clearly prerequisite objectives.

First, they must build an unwavering unity of purpose amongst the teams and their riders. The teams and the riders are the sport, but they will never be able to exert any kind of leverage or enable transformative change unless they act as a unit.  And unfortunately, the teams never seem to be able to accomplish this; there are already reports of internal team bickering currently. Many teams – the French-affiliated teams in particular – always seem to be reticent to align with the other teams, perhaps for fear of jeopardizing their relationship with ASO. But if the teams could learn to speak with a single unified voice, that could be a very loud voice indeed.

And second, One Cycling would then need to utilize the strength and power of team and rider unity as levers to encourage ASO’s cooperation – to square its weight behind a new model for cycling. Any initiative must present a bullet-proof case to ASO that its participation will not only accelerate the objectives, but also increase the overall size of the overall pie and preserve ASO’s position as the sport’s dominant organizer. This is, of course, the rock on which previous efforts have always been shipwrecked – and by virtue of the Tour’s market position, ASO has always considered itself to be the most important element in the sport. 

If these critical (and never-before-achieved) reforms can be implemented, then cycling might truly be in a position to begin to exploit its hidden and untapped potential – increasing both its global accessibility and audience, and improving the financial sustainability of all stakeholders. Any changes must be good for everyone, and particularly for the fans, without whom there is ultimately no sport at all. But – no matter the level of current speculation – unless there is unanimous collaboration and cohesion among all the key stakeholders, One Cycling is likely to suffer the same outcome as previous attempts to reform and modernize the sport.

(Steve Maxwell is the Co-Editor of The Outer Line. Brian Cookson OBE, is the past President of the UCI and of British Cycling.)