{"id":269125,"date":"2025-11-08T03:20:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-08T03:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/269125\/"},"modified":"2025-11-08T03:20:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T03:20:12","slug":"bjarne-riis-visma-lease-a-bike-seems-like-a-team-short-on-cash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/269125\/","title":{"rendered":"Bjarne Riis: ‘Visma – Lease a Bike seems like a team short on cash’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Tour de France champion and long-time team owner Bjarne Riis<\/a> says he sees signs that Visma \u2013 Lease a Bike may be struggling financially compared to the biggest outfits in the WorldTour.<\/p>\n

Speaking with Feltet.dk<\/a>, Riis said that while powerhouse teams such as UAE Team Emirates, Lidl\u2013Trek, and Red Bull\u2013Bora\u2013Hansgrohe appear to have increased their budgets, Visma seems to be losing ground.<\/p>\n

Top-heavy budgets in the WorldTour<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think Visma is anywhere near being the second or third richest team in the peloton anymore,\u201d Riis told Feltet.dk. \u201cThey\u2019re far behind the top three\u2014UAE, Lidl\u2013Trek, and Red Bull\u2013Bora\u2013Hansgrohe, in my view.\u201d<\/p>\n

Riis pointed to the number of key riders leaving the Dutch team as an indication of tightening finances.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not that they don\u2019t want to keep them,\u201d the said. \u201cThey\u2019ve chosen to focus heavily on Wout van Aert and Jonas Vingegaard. But riders just below that level are moving on because the team can\u2019t afford to keep them.\u201d<\/p>\n

High-profile departures this year include Tiesj Benoot, Olav Kooij, Dylan van Baarle, and Cian Uijtdebroeks, with fewer star signings coming in to replace them.<\/p>\n

Visma\u2019s business model is inferior to others<\/p>\n

Riis, who managed his own WorldTour squad under sponsors like CSC and Saxo Bank before selling to Oleg Tinkoff in 2013, suggested that Visma\u2019s sponsorship model also hints at limited outside backing.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany of the team\u2019s sponsors are connected to the same ownership group,\u201d he said. \u201cLease a Bike and Cerv\u00e9lo are both part of the Pon.Bike group. To me, that suggests they\u2019re not as financially strong as they\u2019d like to appear.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018He could double his salary if he moved\u2019: Riis and Holm on Vingegaard\u2019s Visma loyalty<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Riis also addressed the growing financial divide in professional cycling, saying complaints about wealthy teams are misplaced.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople say it\u2019s unfair that UAE and others have huge budgets\u2014but there\u2019s no salary cap,\u201d Riis said. \u201cThe rules are what they are. Instead of complaining, other teams just have to get better.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that as the cost of competing at the top rises, more teams should consider merging\u2014though pride often gets in the way.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt takes more and more to be competitive,\u201d Riis said. \u201cMerging makes sense for many, but team owners rarely want to give up control. It\u2019s often about pride more than business.\u201d<\/p>\n

The comments come a few days after Jer\u00f4me Pineau suggested a radical revenue sharing idea\u2013ticketing spectators on Alpe D\u2019Huez<\/a>. He pitched the idea to former pro and current Groupama\u2013FDJ team boss Marc Madiot.<\/p>\n

Madiot spoke of similar challenges with smaller teams. He said French teams face heavier employment and tax obligations than some rivals.<\/p>\n

\u201cApart from state sponsors (i.e., Team UAE Emirates, Bahrain), it\u2019s difficult to exist in the peloton these days. Cycling used to be for workers and farmers; now it\u2019s a sport for the rich.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Tour de France champion and long-time team owner Bjarne Riis says he sees signs that Visma \u2013…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269126,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[123635,49,48,635,5900,82,10761,12290],"class_list":["post-269125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-bjarne-riis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-jonas-vingegaard","tag-sports","tag-visma-lease-a-bike","tag-wout-van-aert"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}