Team Schleck coming in 2011
Posted on 03. Jul, 2010 in Bike Racing, Sponsors, Sports Business
It looks like Andy and Frank Schleck will ride next season for a Luxembourg-based team that they’re launching with a couple of other former Riis Cycling employees. I wrote a couple months ago in my column for ROAD Magazine about the idea of teams built around star riders. Check it out.
THAT ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT
Let’s say you’re Alberto Contador. You’re 27 years old and you’ve already won the last four Grand Tours you’ve started. Your 2010 season is humming right along with GC wins at the Volta ao Algarve, Paris-Nice, and the Vuelta a Castilla y León. If everything goes according to plan, you might have another 3 or 4 years as the hands-down Best Rider In The World and another 3 or 4 after that when you’re still a threat to win every race you enter. Currently, you’ve got less than a year left with Astana. Then what?
Alberto’s best bet could be to build a new team around himself. Then he’s got all the financial upside, he can run the program the way he wants to, and he can control the risks to his liking. Actually, that’s probably a good approach for any major star in any team sport, except that in most sports it takes several years, a new stadium, and hundreds of millions of dollars to get in the game. And even then your expansion team will probably stink for at least a few years.
But among pro cycling’s many quirks are its low barriers to entry into the highest level of the sport. If you’ve got a PowerPoint presentation and connections, you can have a world-class team in the Tour de France in about a year. All you need is a title sponsor. Not that signing a multi-million dollar deal and starting a cycling team is a piece of cake, but it’s a lot easier than, say, starting an NBA franchise. Just look at the fast starts of new programs like Cervélo TestTeam, Team Sky, and – to a lesser extent – BMC Racing Team. When RadioShack separated from Astana, the addition of another team to the population was one of the least controversial aspects of the split.
So it would be pretty easy for Alberto to have his own team on the road next year and there have been rumors to that effect involving Formula 1 driver Fernando Alonso bringing Banco Santander as the sponsor. Also, it’s worth noting that Specialized’s personal contract with Contador was negotiated separately before the team deal with Astana was finalized.
But what are the benefits to Alberto of going it alone, compared to just signing the huge long-term contract that Astana reportedly offered? If you presume that Alberto’s image is the key selling point for most of the potential sponsors during the rest of this career – i.e. consumer brands, not Central Asian governments – there’s an economic efficiency to having his own team. Want to sponsor Alberto? Sponsor Team Alberto. Plus, eliminating the “middle man” role of the traditional team management gives the sponsor an assurance that the team’s main attraction won’t bolt unexpectedly a là Brad Wiggins. From an operational standpoint, there’s an appealing level of clarity in a team focused on a single rider. Everyone knows their job and is handpicked to do it.
The major financial upside of the star-centric team is the ability to negotiate personal endorsement deals concurrently with team sponsorships. The obvious case study is Lance Armstrong becoming the advertising face of The Shack while launching his own Team RadioShack. Meanwhile, other riders have to make do with whatever sponsors their team managers already have on board.
Of course, there aren’t very many riders with the star power to pull something like this together, let alone with willingness to accountable for actually running a team. Beyond Contador, the Schleck brothers reportedly have been mulling a similar venture and I could see it working for someone like Fabian Cancellara.
This summer’s Tour de France is the last in which the old crop of ProTour teams are guaranteed a spot. Starting next year, a new system will be in place. The more open it is, the more rider-owned teams I think we’ll see.
