Christian Prudhomme, the race director of the Tour de France, has said that he is in favour of a salary cap for professional cycling teams in order to foster “real competition” in the peloton.
In a wide-ranging interview with Andy McGrath for The Athletic, Prudhomme lifts the lid on his 20-year tenure as the Tour race director and planning for the event, but was also asked about wider issues in the sport, including a salary cap.
Proposed by many as a way to regulate spending in the peloton and narrow the gap between the richest teams and everyone else, a salary cap could place a limit on the salaries individual riders can be paid, or the total sum that a team can spend on salaries.
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Salary caps are implemented in the NFL and in various forms in several North American sports leagues, alongside the common draft system. In Europe they are less common, but are seen in sports like rugby. Capping salaries has been proposed but not widely implemented in European football, though financial fair play rules do attempt to govern spending by clubs.
So whilst it would not be a new thing in sport to regulate team spending and salaries, it remains fairly uncommon in Europe, still the heartlands of cycling. But one of the sport’s most influential figures has said that he and Tour organisers ASO would back such a cap to try to foster more equal competition in races like the Tour.
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“Us, we’re clearly favourable,” Prudhomme said to The Athletic. “It exists in French rugby. There are discussions in effect with the UCI, the riders, teams and us.”
The French rugby league, the Top 14, imposes a total salary cap of €10.7 million to be spent across more than 30 players, with some room for adjustments around bonuses and international status of certain players.
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In cycling, the average men’s WorldTour team budget was around €33 million in 2025, though it is hard to say how much of that is allocated to rider salaries. Tadej Pogačar, the highest-paid rider in the peloton, is estimated to earn around €8 million per year from his team salary, whilst other top male riders earn between €2 million and €6 million per year.
The reason to cap salaries or regulate team spending would be to try to prevent ultra rich teams from effectively hoarding all of the best riders due to their unmatched paying power. This can have a negative impact on the spread of talent and lead to a small number of dominant teams – which is a familiar image in cycling right now.
“At the moment, the three or four richest teams hoover up all the best young riders,” Prudhomme said. “So that there is real competition, the most promising cyclists need to go to numerous, different teams.”
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The question around budgets and caps is already rearing its head at this year’s Tour de France, where the peloton’s richest team, UAE Team Emirates-XRG, have already scooped up three stage wins and put Pogačar in the lead, something they’re able to do by having a team that features multiple Grand Tour podium finishers – not something many other teams can afford.
“They have the means to buy the best riders every year,” Prudhomme said when asked about UAE specifically. “So it is necessary to rebalance that. But I cannot say whether a solution will be found in the coming years.”
The solution is complicated, as there are pros and cons to salary caps, and a balance has to be found to ensure enough money is still coming into the sport, as Prudhomme pointed out.
“Private entrepreneurs in businesses need to be able to still invest,” he said. “Without that, it’s too expensive… it’s very important for the future of cycling.”
Other arguments against salary caps include the fact that riders and teams may still find a way around them with personal sponsorships, and that they effectively limit the free market economics of the peloton where success and investment often drive each other.
However, as debate continues around Pogačar, his early grip on this year’s Tour de France and the dwindling level of suspense in the calendar’s biggest races, the questions around how to redress the balance and bring back some of that competition will only grow, and salary caps to appear to be one effective option.
With the backing of one of the sport’s most influential people in Prudhomme, the idea could well go from a hypothetical to a seriously considered regulation.
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