This really sucks:
http://velonews.competitor.com/2013/07/news/euskaltel-gives-riders-green-light-to-search-out-contracts_297336
http://velonews.competitor.com/2013/07/news/euskaltel-gives-riders-green-light-to-search-out-contracts_297336
Euskaltel Euskadi has been a presence in professional cycling for almost 20 years, but it now looks
- Thread starter lance_armstrong
- Start date
certainly is a sad day for all those involved. i especially liked them for their commitment to cycling at all levels in their community. muscled out by the big bankrolled superteams and the few races where euskaltel euskadi actually stood a chance at a podium as much as having to compete in every uci pro race. wondering if they might be better served in a new form as a continental team.
I think you're going to see more and more teams leaving the sport.
SKY is investing millions in their team.
No disrespect to any Aussies here, but when the likes of Murdoch become involved in any sector that presence cannot be welcome for a whole series of reasons.
Of course the UCI will aid and abet SKY/Murdoch.
SKY is investing millions in their team.
No disrespect to any Aussies here, but when the likes of Murdoch become involved in any sector that presence cannot be welcome for a whole series of reasons.
Of course the UCI will aid and abet SKY/Murdoch.
have to agree, lim. hard to see how the economic model will allow the poorer sisters any shot at competing on the "global" scale that the uci pro teams have to. just the logistics of getting to these races around the world must have placed a strain on the finances of many of the teams. have to wonder what uci/mc quaid were thinking when a sponsor like liquigas or rabobank doesn't have a world-wide business presence to promote.
In this part of the world, The Dirty Digger (Murdoch), borrowed vast amounts of money to secure the Premiership League (soccer).
Through his TV company, SKY, it now controls the television rights for Premiership football which he sells at extortionate prices to
subscribers.
Prior to this, people could watch soccer for free on TV. In 1992, SKY approached the Football Association offered the teams huge money for exclusive rights to transmitting their games.
The money is divided into three parts: half is divided equally between the clubs; one quarter is awarded on a merit basis based on final league position, the top club getting twenty times as much as the bottom club, and equal steps all the way down the table; the final quarter is paid out as facilities fees for games that are shown on television, with the top clubs generally receiving the largest shares of this. The income from overseas rights is divided equally between the twenty clubs.
The bigger clubs have benefitted greatly from SKY's largesse.
Over time the smaller clubs have been forced to take on huge borrowings to try to compete with the "more successful" teams and many soccer clubs are effectively insolvent at this point.
This is why I'm concerned at the prospect of Murdoch becoming involved in cycling. We've seen the effect of a sugardaddy in other sports,
The UCI's history of being compliant to sugardaddy's and it's lust for lucre make it a prime target for the likes of Murdoch.
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