Tuesday marked a significant day in the history of the team formerly known as Team Sky and Ineos Grenadiers, as the British squad unveiled a new major title sponsor in the form of the Danish IT firm, Netcompany.

The team will be known as Netcompany INEOS Cycling Team, and will race in a new kit, from the start of the Giro d’Italia on May 8.

Article continues below

You may like

The amount of cash to be contributed by Netcompany has not been disclosed, but officials did confirm that a five-year deal had been signed, taking the partnership into 2030. Cyclingnews previously reported that the deal is worth in the region of €20 million annually over a five-year contract.

The growing Danish digital company is set to provide a significant financial boost to the team that dominated the sport for the best part of a decade but have fallen behind the mega-bucks operations of the likes of Tadej Pogačar’s UAE Team Emirates-XRG.

Tour de France with a British rider for the first time, a goal that was ticked off as soon as 2012 when Bradley Wiggins won the yellow jersey.

That was swiftly followed by four titles for Chris Froome, and one apiece for Geraint Thomas and Egan Bernal as the team claimed seven yellow jerseys in eight years. But that 2019 triumph by Bernal remains their last.

Bernal actually won his Tour in Ineos colours, following the mid-season exit of Sky and the arrival of Ratcliffe’s petrochemicals empire, which was launching a wide-ranging sports sponsorship operation. However, as they rebranded to the Grenadiers in 2020 to promote a new SUV vehicle being developed by Ineos, Tour de France success dried up and the team more generally fell behind amid the rise of UAE Team Emirates and Visma-Lease a Bike, with those two teams sharing the past six yellow jerseys.

Winning an eighth Tour de France was stated repeatedly as a central ambition in this ‘new chapter’ under Netcompany, with Brailsford stating of the partnership: “Ultimately, it’s about creating the conditions to win the Tour de France.”

Ratcliffe, who is set to take his ownership of the team into a second decade by 2030, added: “I’m really pleased to welcome Netcompany to the cycling team, establishing a new long-term partnership that will help create the right conditions to deliver more success.

“This collaboration brings additional resource, technology and capability across performance and operations to give the team the ability to compete consistently at the highest level of the sport.”