Key Takeaways:<\/p>\n
\u00b7\u00a0New Financial Information For Visma-LAB<\/p>\n
\u00b7\u00a0Mystery Around (Former) Israel-Premier Tech Team<\/p>\n
\u00b7\u00a0AIOCC Elects a \u201cNew\u201d Boss<\/p>\n
\u00b7\u00a02026: Who Improved and Who Didn\u2019t<\/p>\n
\u00b7\u00a0WNBA Power Play: Will It Pay Off?<\/p>\n
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The\u00a0Money in Sport\u00a0Substack issued an\u00a0eye-opening report<\/a>\u00a0last week on the Visma Lease-a-Bike team\u2019s financial situation\u00a0that also provided considerable information on the WorldTour\u2019s economic health. The new Visma team owner is an entity called Yellow B Cycling Holding BV, which is itself co-owned by team director Richard Plugge and a Dutch billionaire named Robert van der Wallen. Plugge and his partner acquired the team in late 2023 for \u20ac8 million; the relative ownership of Yellow B Cycling was not revealed. (This is the first set of public numbers following the team\u2019s recent separation from its sister speed-skating team.) The report indicates Visma-LAB had an operating loss of \u20ac6.1 million in 2024 on revenues of \u20ac52 million. Although not specifying the exact source for its data, the report also lists the 2024 budgets for several other WT teams, including Quick-Step at \u20ac38 million, and in descending order down through Decathlon, Groupama, Uno-X, Movistar and Cofidis to Lotto, with a budget of \u20ac17 million. Curiously, total personnel costs (riders and all staff) for the different teams are reported to range all the way from 89% at Movistar to 37% at Uno-X, while most teams are in the 60%-70% range. (We surmise there may be some measurement or definitional differences, as this seems to represent an unrealistically wide range.) Visma is reported to have far more employees than any of the other teams, and\u00a0almost three times\u00a0as many as Uno-X.<\/p>\n Most of the teams are, unsurprisingly, shown to have either a tiny loss or a tiny profit in 2024.\u00a0Typically, a team will exhaust its sponsorship revenues, but will not have the financial capability to spend much more; most are, by necessity, more or less breakeven operations. However, Visma once again stands out in terms of the magnitude of its loss \u2013 which it can presumably stomach for at least one year due to the deeper pockets of its ownership. Notably, although numbers for Team UAE are not included in these comparisons, Visma management \u201cmust believe that this level of resources is what it takes to mount a credible challenge\u201d to Tadej Pogacar and his colleagues. The report concludes \u2013 as so many past analyses have \u2013 that the \u201cbroader question for professional cycling is whether elite-level competition can\u00a0ever\u00a0be financially sustainable, or whether it will\u00a0always\u00a0require wealthy benefactors willing to subsidize losses\u201d (our italics).<\/p>\n After weeks of rumors surrounding the fate of the Israel-Premier Tech team, developments this week revealed at least a partial \u201canswer\u201d \u2013 in the form of more questions.\u00a0The team\u00a0will\u00a0continue in 2026, but under a new identity \u2013 the NSN Cycling Team, described as a Swiss-based operation running out of Barcelona and Girona. But almost nothing about the team\u2019s future structure is clear beyond the name change. The joint announcement from NSN (Never Say Never) and Stoneweg, a Geneva-based investment firm, reads more like an exercise in obfuscation than a foundational relaunch. Even the most basic question \u2013 who actually owns the team now \u2013 is left conspicuously unanswered. Long-time team director Kjell Carlstr\u00f6m, who was never a public voice of the team at I-PT, was quoted in the press release, This, and the fact that longtime owner Sylvan Adams is not mentioned anywhere, raises the possibility that Adams has either sold the team or is intentionally being written out of the narrative. (The Outer Line\u00a0contacted both Carlstrom and the normally voluble Adams, but received no reply.) As Jonathan Kaplan of the\u00a0Riding With\u00a0newsletter\u00a0asked<\/a>, \u201cWhat did they actually buy? The license? The assets? The contracts? Is this a takeover or just a rebranding?\u201d<\/p>\n If the team has been sold and is under new ownership, one might ask why Carlstr\u00f6m is still in charge, with the same staff, riders, and previously linked sponsors?\u00a0The release claims NSN \u201cacquired the license,\u201d but then frames the relationship with Stoneweg as a \u201cjoint venture,\u201d without clarifying whether Stoneweg is a co-owner, minority investor, or merely a sponsor. And one would assume that if Adams can no longer use the team to promote the country of Israel and Israeli cycling, he probably won\u2019t be interested in continuing to fund the team; this however is not confirmed. Could any of these changes deflect the criticism and protest pressure that has been focused on the team? For example, the Gran Canaria Island Council\u00a0just backed out<\/a>\u00a0of a \u20ac6.5 million deal to host the final four stages of the 2026 Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a due to the planned participation from the team formerly known as I-PT. Hence, it is reasonable (at least at this stage) to ask: will the asset that NSN and Stoneweg somehow just acquired gain enough goodwill to race the biggest events on the calendar?<\/p>\n The AIOCC \u2013 the association of cycling race organizers \u2013\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0Javier Guillen as its new president last week.\u00a0Guillen, head of the (ASO-owned) Vuelta took over after a fifteen-year term by (ASO-owned) Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme. This transition will probably change very little, and once again underlines the Amaury Sports Organization\u2019s (ASO) headlock on professional cycling. Guillen immediately reinforced the status quo, saying \u201c it\u2019s not about sharing the cake we have, it\u2019s about sharing what we have to do all together to try to find new incomes.\u201d And in a double verification effort, the majority of the other officers elected for the group were also ASO employees. (Interestingly, there is\u00a0no\u00a0representation on the board for RCS \u2013 the owner of the Giro.) Factually, AIOCC is now little more than a subsidiary unit of the ASO. And as any even casual observer knows, ASO has for years been\u00a0accused<\/a>\u00a0of protecting its own control over the small sport of cycling, versus undertaking modernization or innovations to grow the size of the cake for everyone \u2013 including itself. As if to sum things up, Guillen added, \u201cif we share what we have, nobody\u2019s stronger.\u201d And thus, as The Who said back in 1971 \u2013 \u201cmeet the new boss, same as the old boss.\u201d<\/p>\n A few trends we caught onto at the end of the 2025 men\u2019s racing season deserve a deeper look as we turn towards 2026.\u00a0Which riders \u2013 outside of the top stars \u2013 most meaningfully shifted their career trajectories in 2025? A wave of genuine breakthroughs landed on the positive side of the ledger, especially Isaac del Toro joining cycling\u2019s inner circle with 19 wins and a near-miss Giro campaign. Ben Healy translated years of promise into marquee stage victories at the Tour and Basque Country. Jay Vine transformed from super-domestique into a stealth GC threat with wins on mountain terrain and strong performances against the best in flat time trials. Rising French talent and Ineos newcomer K\u00e9vin Vauquelin delivered a Tour de France top ten and podium at Suisse despite limited resources, hence Ineos\u2019 investment for 2026. And Germany\u2019s Florian Lipowitz\u2019s rapid GC ascent, capped by a Tour podium, now forces Red Bull\u2013Bora-Hansgrohe to rethink its leadership hierarchy for the years ahead, even as it brings on highly-paid star Remco Evenepoel.<\/p>\n But the modern WorldTour has become unforgiving, and a number of high-flyers slid sharply in 2025,\u00a0underscoring how narrow the margins now are between contention and irrelevance. Maxim van Gils never found his footing despite a high-profile and big-money mid-contract move to Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe from Lotto, and now faces even stiffer competition for leadership in hilly one-day races with Evenepoel\u2019s arrival. David Gaudu and Valentin Madouas steeply regressed and Groupama-FDJ now enters 2026 with two well-paid leaders in need of reinvention. Matej Mohori\u010d\u2019s lack of luck and form contributed to his multi-year slide, while Ben O\u2019Connor\u2019s return to mid-level GC form validated concerns about his consistency despite flashes of brilliance. Even Enric Mas, long one of the Vuelta\u2019s most reliable podium finishers, will face internal leadership pressure in the Spanish Movistar team from Belgian Cian Uijtdebroeks, and \u2013 like many others \u2013 could be squeezed out by an influx of generational GC talent. Riders who fail to evolve \u2013 even those seemingly at the top end of the performance curve \u2013 risk getting left behind, while those who manage to level up consistently can find themselves reshaping the competitive landscape in just a few seasons. (Look for a more detailed report on these topics in our sister publication\u00a0Beyond the Peloton\u00a0in the near future.)<\/p>\n In a power-move that could reshape women\u2019s sports, the WNBA and the league\u2019s player\u2019s association have restarted negotiations on a collective bargaining agreement (CBA)\u00a0\u2013and despite a proposed increase in maximum salaries, the\u00a0WNBPA (the player\u2019s association) is poised to reject<\/a>\u00a0the offer. And other key concessions have not yet been offered by the league in a substantial way, particularly with regards to profit sharing from the league\u2019s media partnerships. (It\u2019s worth noting that successful CBAs in other sports typically have revenue-sharing mechanisms of one sort or another.) Both sides are playing a dangerous gambit here; a newly proposed league called\u00a0Project B<\/a>\u00a0that will start up in 2026 is reportedly already offering higher minimum and maximum salaries, as well as profit sharing boosts. If WNBA negotiations stall, it could open the door to a mass player exodus. One thing is always certain \u2013 as we have\u00a0pointed out<\/a>\u00a0numerous times regarding professional women\u2019s and men\u2019s cyclists: true power for exerting change rests in the hands of the athletes.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In this week\u2019s AIRmail, The Outer Line unpacks a wide-ranging set of developments across pro cycling and the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309759,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,17738,57599,85,118190,23372],"class_list":{"0":"post-309758","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-israel-premier-tech","12":"tag-now-on-pez","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-the-outer-line","15":"tag-visma-lease-a-bike"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Irael](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/israel-tdf25-team-1000.jpg\")
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Del Toro on the way up<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Vuelta-03-Gaudu-disbelief.jpeg\")
David Gaudu \u2013 relief at the \u201925 Vuelta?<\/p>\n