Now that Toyota won’t be renewing the biggest sponsorship in domestic cycling, it will be interesting to see what happens to United Pro Cycling Team, LLC. When they launched at the end of 2005, they were talking about revolutionizing the sport by promoting the United brand (as opposed to that of their sponsor) to generate revenue through merchandising, their fan club, a bike company, and so forth. They came hard out of the gate in 2006, with J.J. Haedo winning the first stage of the inaugural Tour of California, and they’ve had some great moments since, like Dom Rollin’s stage win this year. They’ve run a well-marketed, winning program, so you can’t say that they’ve been a bust. But they haven’t met their own expectations, either.

At least initially, their sponsorship prices were based on some lofty projections. At Interbike in 2005, Kurt Stockton and I had a meeting with a clothing company right after United’s team owner Sean Tucker met with them. When our meeting started, the first thing we heard from the company was, “That guy just asked us for more pieces as part of the sponsorship than we sold in North America this year.”

I won’t guess at how well their jerseys have sold, other than to say that I’ve never seen one not on a team member. United Bicycles flopped amid rumors that sales were in the single digits. The 25,000 registered fans mentioned in the release is 25,000 more than most teams, but a fraction of the six-figure membership that Sean originally envisioned.

Not to knock Sean - he’s run a good race team and done a solid job of building the United brand (thankfully dropping the faceless rider who graced the original logo); I just think he bumped up against a lower ceiling than he anticipated. Looking at the United program, it’s not so differentiated from other domestic teams but an attractive sponsorship property nonetheless.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 5th, 2008 at 1:14 pm and is filed under Bike Racing, Bike industry, Sports Business.