Pro Tennis Looks at Major Reforms ... Why Not Cycling? Celebrity Ownership Models; Lappartient Puts Forth France's Bid for 2030 Winter Games; More on Van Aert 2024; NASCAR Strikes it Rich ...
Key Takeaways:
● Pro Tennis Moves Ahead with the Reforms Needed in Cycling
● New Celebrity Ownership Models in Other Sports
● Lappartient Bids 2030 Winter Olympics for France
● Van Aert’s 2024 Calendar Remains a Hot Topic
● NASCAR Strikes It Big in TV Rights Valuation
Professional tennis is reportedly looking at massive restructuring options which could reshape it – with a more straightforward and understandable schedule and the potential for considerably greater revenues. Each of the four independently run “Grand Slam” events are supposedly looking to partner up and create a new top-level league or tour, somewhat like Formula 1, that will also include prominent lesser events. The inspiration behind the plan is twofold – to consolidate media rights and sponsorship opportunities, and to drive greater value and revenue opportunities for the sport. In addition, it is hoped that a more coordinated schedule – weaving together a relatively small number of the key competitions into a season-long arc – would make it easier for fans to understand and follow the sport. In particular, a unified “tour” concept would help elevate the smaller events to a much wider audience, resulting in greater overall revenue for the sport. Such a union between the major events could also help dispel any type of disruptive outside “takeover” attempts, like what has happened with LIV in professional golf. Top stakeholders in the sport “have come to accept that tennis in its current form does not work nearly as well as it should. Among their criticisms: it is confusing for fans to follow; hundreds of millions of dollars that could be earned are left on the table; its nearly endless schedule overtaxes top players, whose careers are cut short by injury and mental fatigue.” Wow, does any of this sound familiar? Tennis has proven to be one of the most inflexibly structured sports, but also one of the most progressive – with regards to the women’s tour, athlete organization, and increased anti-doping efforts. The fact that it is rapidly moving towards organizational reinvention after decades of stagnation should be an inspirational moment for other tradition-bound sports like pro cycling.
In an interesting development this week, the U.S. team of the competitive sailing Sail GP series was purchased by a group comprised of wealthy businessmen and celebrities. The ownership team includes actress Issa Rae, NFL wide receiver Deandre Hopkins of the Tennessee Titans and other NFL players, soccer star Jozy Altidore and several tech investors. This could be a smart move for both the team and for the SailGP series itself, as the celebrity association may help to bring in many fans from outside the sport. Indeed, cycling could use a similar injection of pop culture. Compared with the courtside seats of an NBA game or box seats in the NFL, how many famous actors, athletes or musicians do we see at the Tour de France finish line? During the Armstrong era, cycling enjoyed a bit more of a celebrity presence, but compared with many other sporting events today, cycling is largely missing the boat. Famous personalities – like actor Jason Momoa, F1 driver Valtteri Bottas and NBA legend Reggie Miller – are already cyclists and fans of the sport. Why not develop a program to actively engage people like this, and intentionally bring them into the excitement of bike racing? One challenge is the lack of a pro cycling team with a truly American identity. (Nominally American teams like EF Education First, Human Powered Health and Lidl Trek are actually composed mostly of foreign riders, from many countries.) There is very little activity in the sport to cultivate these types of relationships in a meaningful way, but they could substantially elevate the sport’s overall profile. This is an angle to popularizing cycling that is worth further investigation.
The International Olympic Committee has weathered consistent criticism over the past few editions of the summer and winter games, including multiple bribery cases and the Russian doping scandal that is still reverberating today. More recently, its had a tough sell finding host-nation bids, as cost/benefit modeling continues to show potentially detrimental impacts of such massive IOC-led infrastructure investments. Thus, the rapid assembly of a fast-tracked bid (one of just two) for a proposed French 2030 Winter Olympics raised more than a few eyebrows in the sports management landscape – not only for the fact that the Alpine regional partners would have only six years to prepare for the events, but also for who brought the bid forward – current UCI President David Lappartient. Lappartient took over the French Olympic organizing committee earlier this year in an attempt to correct course from its prior embattled leadership and will thus oversee the 2024 Paris summer edition and now, potentially a 2030 winter games as well. While Lappartient’s dedication on behalf of French sport is admirable, his simultaneous positions in politics and potential future ambitions in the IOC potentially blunt his commitment to and time for cycling – a sport which sorely needs to adopt meaningful reforms in the near term. This concern, and perhaps his desire to leave a legacy in cycling, may have something to do with Lappartient’s recent about-face and apparent acceptance of many long-suggested reforms to cycling – a surprising development we discussed a couple weeks ago.
Rarely if ever has there been so much debate and discussion generated – and so much virtual ink spilled – on the subject of a rider’s future race schedule as there has been concerning Wout van Aert’s supposed 2024 calendar. But we’ll add to it here anyway. Even though there has still been no official communication from the Jumbo-Visma team, Van Aert continues to signal that he will be at the start line of the 2024 Giro d’Italia. However, in a recent interview, he poured cold water on any speculation that he would challenge for the general classification and pointed out (as many observers already have) that he would have to eschew the classics and lose significant weight to have any chance challenging for the GC. Hopefully, this honest admission from Van Aert will preempt months of purely speculative pieces about whether he can win a grand tour – similar to what dominated the news cycle back when Fabian Cancellara was at the peak of his powers and managed to win a tailor-made Tour de Suisse.
Despite these recent “clarifications,” it still seems illogical that the team would choose to send Van Aert to the Giro. If he remains focused on challenging in the spring classics and is not personally motivated by challenging for the Giro GC – which some observers originally suggested – then why would the team risk sending him to the Giro at all? Perhaps Van Aert is drawn to the Giro because it will provide him the freedom of chasing stage wins without the burden of supporting a GC leader, which would almost certainly leave the team short-handed as they try to defend Jonas Vingegaard’s title at the Tour de France in July. But, as is often the case, the decision may be at least partially based on money. On this weekend’s THEMOVE+ podcast, Johan Bruyneel floated a theory that the decision could be at least partly driven by the fact that Giro organizer RCS is known for paying handsome seven-figure start fees to attract star riders and their teams. But this doesn’t quite seem to be a totally satisfactory explanation either. Even if there was a payment on the order of (say) €1 million, it is difficult to imagine how that amount of money would be worth it to Jumbo – sending Van Aert to the Giro, and then having him be either fatigued or absent at the Tour. Surely the team is not so financially stretched that a relatively small cash influx from RCS would be enough to jeopardize the rest of their season during a title sponsorship search year? But, as we continue to point out, we are still awaiting a formal announcement of the team’s 2024 schedule.
With regards to reforms in professional cycling, the long view has always been the expansion of its broadcast presence to the benefit of sponsorship models, revenue opportunities, and exposure to wider and more diverse audiences. The U.S. NASCAR motorsport series recently achieved this and more with the recent announcement of nearly $7.7 billion in media rights agreements, despite early hiccups in implementing competitive structure reforms. The new content deal is creatively stitched together with streaming, terrestrial television, and on demand subscriber services. (A previous report from The Outer Line – in conjunction with Breaking Limits – examined NASCAR’s sponsorship and revenue models in detail, and its lessons for cycling.) There are two takeaways from the NASCAR announcement – first, competitive structure reforms such as understandable points and rankings can improve a sport’s appeal and narrative in the long run. Second, creative and multi-modal content licensing can increase the overall valuation of the content (based on how the broadcaster intends to leverage the content to drive subscriptions or advertising pricing). In both observations, pro road cycling is behind the curve. What has to happen before cycling’s disparate parties will come to the table – in a similar way as NASCAR and the aforementioned new tennis tour proposal – to explore collaboration, elevate its exposure to new audiences, and build value? Pro cycling has every potential to adopt reforms and realize its potential for change – if only its leadership can organize its priorities and get on the same page with regards to lofty proposals and simple structural corrections.
At the New York Times DealBook Summit last week, two of the most powerful players in sports media – Disney (parent of ESPN) and Warner Bros. Discovery – decried the tough economic challenges and strategic choices facing the industry. WBD head David Zazlav drew a distinction between sports and most of the company’s other TV programming, saying “the only product we rent …. Is sports.” Other content and product is owned, but with sporting events, we only get to “enjoy it and benefit from that until the deal is up.” The company’s Turner subsidiary has extensive baseball and hockey rights and is currently negotiating to extend its NBA television rights. Said Disney head Bob Iger, “people love sports … and we want to stay in that business.” Earlier in the year, there were extensive rumors that Disney would spin off, or at least bring new investment into ESPN, but Iger seems to be walking that back now. He also indicated that the company’s linear TV businesses are not for sale, all of which provides further confirmation that sports as entertainment will be the dominant anchor for media players and continue to justify ever-increasing licensing deals into the foreseeable future.
Putting 2 and 2 together (namely the closure of GCN and the recent high value tv deals for nascar and british football, I wonder if a new TV rights deal for cycling may be in the pipeline, Amazon now have the£4bn they were budgeting for football burning a hole in their pocket, and eurosport/discovery//Disney won't want that to happen, so if the UCI and tdf were smart they could strike a very big deal (even if a buyout of current contract was needed).....just pondering....