{"id":472286,"date":"2026-02-13T11:46:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T11:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/472286\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T11:46:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T11:46:10","slug":"jonathan-vaughters-launches-a-search-for-new-title-sponsor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/472286\/","title":{"rendered":"Jonathan Vaughters launches a search for new title sponsor"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nEven if EF refused to admit the situation for a while, hoping the team can somehow win a Tour de France on one of tightest budgets, the reality eventually caught up to them: “For a while they just said, ‘Well, you\u2019ll figure out a way to win it without a whole lot of money,'” Vaughters tells Domestique<\/a>. “And I kept saying, no, it won\u2019t. I mean, thank you for having the faith in me, but no, that\u2019s not going to happen.”New strategic partner<\/p>\n

Of course, EF can hardly compete with the financial options of UAE, Red Bull or Lidl. Thus their reluctance to further invest in the project is logical. But the facts were ruthless, which is why the American company eventually agreed to launch search for a “strategic partner” willing to pay for the media exposure that comes with the privilege of being titular sponsor.<\/p>\n

“They basically said, ‘We\u2019re an education company, not a petro nation or a fracking entity or whatever. We have to be responsible with our marketing budget. We can\u2019t blow out big numbers just to win races,'” Vaughters explains EF’s point of view. And then the idea came around; to sell naming rights.<\/p>\n

“I told them it didn\u2019t mean they wouldn\u2019t retain ownership of the team or that there wouldn\u2019t be giant EF logos all over the uniform, but the most valuable asset that we hold is the name and the naming rights. Now at first, they didn\u2019t like that at all. They said they were paying for the brand exposure, and if they weren\u2019t the name of the team, then all of that would decrease pretty considerably.”<\/p>\n

\"Dwars<\/p>\n

Dwars door Vlaanderen victory of Neilson Powless was one of the most iconic moments of 2025<\/p>\n

Although all negotiations are still very much in their early phases, Vaughters notes that their project generated a great wave of interest among potential partners: “The response has been really, really good, but we are early, and we knew that \u2013 people aren\u2019t at the decision-making points for their 2027 budgets yet,” he says.<\/p>\n

“There\u2019s not a set price, there\u2019s a number of different ways we can go about it,” Vaughters explains the selection procedure. “It just depends on what somebody wants. They might be very price sensitive and say they just want to be the second name after EF, or they might say they want the whole name, and they want to change the colour of the uniform to blue. If that happens \u2013 blue would be pretty boring \u2013 but if that happens, that price tag is much larger. So it depends on what they want.”<\/p>\n

The ambitions are not small at all. The end-goal is to win a Tour de France with both women’s a men’s teams. The ladies should do so within the timeframe of next 3 years with C\u00e9drine Kerbaol or Magdeleine Vallieres. Men’s project will take a bit more time, but 2030s could be a turning point for the American squad also on this front.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Even if EF refused to admit the situation for a while, hoping the team can somehow win…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472287,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,58562,46733,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-472286","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-ef-education-easypost","12":"tag-jonathan-vaughters","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472286","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=472286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}