Tour de France team budgets, 1989-2008

Interesting post from Kadisco regarding Tour de France team budgets, 1989-2008

Interesting in the light of the fact that rider's salaries seemed to have fallen 40% over the last few years and that despite the globalsiation of cycling and the Armstrong effect cycling hasn't kept pace with other sports.

The March 1989 issue of VeloNews - reproduced on page 18 of the January 2009 issue - estimated budgets for some of the era’s leading teams: Cafe de Colombia, PDM, Panasonic, etc. In 2008 dollars, the average of the 9 teams on the list that contested the ‘89 Tour is $6.12 million. According to VeloNews’ 2008 Tour de France guide, last year’s average budget was $10.64 million. Presumably those are official numbers released by ASO.

Although the comparison between 1989 and 2008 dollars is pretty solid, there’s a lot of uncertainty in using that as a basis to compare a bunch of 1989 currencies to the 2008 Euro. But I can’t think of a better comparison, so let’s say that team budgets increased 74% in real terms between 1989 and 2008. There are some numbers out there for rider salaries in 1989 (New York Times) and 2008 (Wall Street Journal), but the I’d consider the reporting of those to be less accurate.

Here is some context. IEG estimated that 2007 global sponsorship spending totaled $37.9 billion, a 425% increase compared to 1989 spending, as estimated in a report conducted by Sponsorship Research International in 1998. Again, lots of uncertainty. It’s worth noting that both reports estimated sports sponsorships to be about 2/3 of total spending.

To be fair, there are major sponsorship outlets today - like the UFC and action sports - that barely existed in 1989. Market fragmentation and statistical uncertainties aside, I think it’s fair to say that cycling team budgets have not kept pace with the global sponsorship marketplace. But that might be a good thing. Despite the doping scandals, a $10 million price tag to access the global platform of the Tour de France remains saleable, even in the currrent economy. It’s a hard sell, but at least it’s possible. At $35 million, probably not.

Operacion Puerto says cyclists have not defrauded sponsors

A quote from last year's Spanish Court decision to re open Puerto regarding the CPA's claim that cyclists had engaged in fraud against their sponsors etc:

"When it is notorious that for many years there has been talk of irregular practices, when there have been cyclists who have died from the consumption of drugs, frequent disqualifications and sanctions, when cycling is the mirror which other sports look into with fear, when it is known that the caravans and logistic premises of cycling teams have been searched for stimulants, when random controls are necessary after each race or stage, and the cycling teams have their own specialist doctors, to affirm that the cyclists have defrauded those who have contracted them is to close one's eyes to reality. When there is no accord regarding those practices, which bring them substantial benefits as a result of associating their brand name with the glory of victory of a famous cyclist, there exists, at least, on the party of those contracting with the cyclists, a deliberate ignorance, a “I don´t want to know” attitude, incompatible with the idea of serious fraud.


Additionally, it is very significant that despite the publicity given to this prosecution, no professional cycling team nor any brand name advertised by cyclists have intervened in the proceedings. Perhaps, in other sports fields and geographical environments where sportspersons are paid to be a model for young people, such kind of practices can be considered as deceitful, and even then, they may not fit within the fraud concept held by Spanish legislation. Under the Spanish law, it does not seem to be an offense at all except in the roundabout hypothesis of the appellants."

La fusión de las vueltas es, según Astarloza, «un síntoma de la crisis»

Anger grows over anti-doping code

By Matt Slater

Wada chairman John Fahey has made implementation of the code his priority

Leading members of Team GB are so concerned by the revised "whereabouts" anti-doping system they may quit, a senior Olympic official believes.

Pete Gardner, chief executive of the British Athletes Commission (BAC), believes stricter rules brought in this year must be reversed.

Cycling in the Age of Empire.

Cycling is a game in flux. It is not the myth or an epic as Roland Barthes wrote. Mont Ventoux is a moonscape, bare, barren and rising out of the lavender plains of Provence. They are no longer heroes of epic proportions but bare life, homo sacer competing for all to see in the desert of the real. The precarity of this existence better depicts the state of the peloton today: Free as the birds to soar to the greatest heights– Simpson, Pantani, Armstrong et al … the list is endless; but free to be shot down at a whim.

Cycling has always been an assemblage and a line of flight – from the factory, the farm, from the peloton itself. Cycling finds itself in the eye of the storm as the processes of globalisation seek to reform it in their own image. On the frontline is the very body of the cyclist – this is the object of control.

We need to contextualise the globalisation of professional cycling in the age of Armstrong and the successive doping crisis as events which signify the coming of Empire and the permanent state of exception.