A league of ASO’s own

With respect to last month’s column, let’s just say that shenanigans were pulled. But you can get the full scoop at the all-new kadisco.com, where I’ve been blogging about bike racing, marketing, the web, and a few other things. If you like the column, you’ll probably like the blog. Again, that’s kadisco.com – like kay, ay, disco.

Hey I just thought of a contest! Go to my site and leave a comment on any post before June 10. The author of the best comment – as judged by me and/or Tom Boonen – will win a copy of MASH (mashsf.com). Now here’s the non-self-promoting part…

It seems like I’ve written a million words about the UCI vs. ASO beef, but at least I can always count on those guys for fresh material. This time, it’s the prospect of ASO forming a “private league”. In March, the UCI’s Pat McQuaid raised the specter of privatization in an open letter to Le Monde. ASO’s Patrice Clerc indignantly denied it, saying in April that “ASO has no ambition to transform itself into a new world cycling federation.”

But that’s actually not such a bad idea, and it begs the question of why professional cycling needs the UCI at all.

As I’ve written in the past, the Olympic-centric bureaucracy of non-profit international and national governing bodies is not well suited to managing the modern business of sport as profit-seeking entertainment. Mr. McQuaid and others might find that commercialization distasteful, but that’s where cycling is heading. In this environment, the UCI brings just two assets to the table that couldn’t be replicated by ASO’s new Hypothetical League of Professional Cycling (HLPC).

One is the trademark of the rainbow stripes, although this doesn’t require that the world championship be operated by the UCI. Stripes or no stripes, the true world championship is whichever race calls itself the “world championship” and has the best riders. Still, the UCI has done well over the years establishing a brand that represents world championship-ness, and that’s worth a lot.

The second non-replicable asset is access to Olympic selections, but I’m with Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA franchise, on that issue. In his view, the International Olympic Committee and its partners are businesses that compete with the NBA and its partners, and he’d rather not give his competitors free access to his highest-paid employees, especially when he’s still responsible for the salaries if they get hurt. The man has a point.

So, let’s set aside the idea of the Olympics as some sort of gift to humanity, and let’s think of it as just another bike race… that happens once every four years, where the riders aren’t allowed to represent their sponsors, and that could never really be a part of the HLPC system. That they hold the keys to this particular race is not a compelling argument in the UCI’s favor.

The HLPC wouldn’t require a complicated structure. Get the biggest events together and sell their television rights as a package. Get the teams together and make sure that the biggest teams take part in the biggest races. It might also be a good idea to give them a cut of the TV revenue. This HLPC might even bear some resemblance to what Hein Verbruggen, McQuaid’s predecessor, had in mind when he started the ProTour.

The difference would be that, instead of the gatekeeper to the Olympics being in charge of professional cycling, the people that run the Tour de France would be in charge of professional cycling. Seems like a logical choice, no?