Cycling’s Next Platform: What Changes for the Teams?
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The UCI’s consultation puts familiar commercial ambitions back on the table. The test is whether teams gain enforceable rights to revenue and a meaningful say in the business they help create.
The UCI’s latest consultation gives professional cycling plenty to discuss. Published on 25 September, its synthesis brings together 55 submissions on cycling reform, including commercial reform and a central digital platform. UCI announcement
My reservation is what happens after the discussion. A team could supply riders, content and data to a more attractive commercial offer while remaining dependent on its next title sponsor. Better presentation of the sport would be welcome. A stronger business for the teams would require something more specific: a dependable claim on the income their participation helps generate.
That is the distinction I would use to judge this reform. Until the proposed model explains those claims, its commercial ambition gives me little reason to expect a structural change in team economics.
Two routes, two different negotiations
The report identifies two approaches: pooling existing commercial and media rights, and creating new assets through a central digital platform. It also recognises existing organisers’ rights and envisages voluntary pooling and shared governance for them. UCI report, pages 17–19
Pooling existing rights requires a deal with the people who currently control them. Their decision would turn on the income, risk and authority they retain under a collective arrangement. An organiser asked to contribute valuable rights would reasonably compare a concrete business it already controls with a forecast from a business it would have to share. A larger projected market does not settle that comparison.
Creating new assets offers another route. Teams could participate from the outset in a business built around additional races, data products, content or sponsorship opportunities. In principle, that creates room for income beyond the redistribution of existing broadcast revenue.
A data product is a concrete example. As our analysis of cycling’s data-product gap argues, live rider data needs to become a dependable service that answers questions the camera cannot and fits a broadcaster’s workflow. That would give a customer a reason to pay for an additional product. Whether teams benefit would still depend on who controls its rights and how its income is shared.
But “new” does not mean free of competing claims. A proposed product still needs rights, investment, participants and customers. Its ownership has to be agreed before its future proceeds can be meaningfully shared.
The platform question starts before the technology
Consider a proposed service combining live rider data with race footage and analysis. A useful commercial brief would establish which permissions it needs, who provides them and what can be sold. It would then identify the paying customer and the reason that customer would choose this product over the available alternatives.
Only then can the parties value their contributions. Team participation, rider access, event footage, data collection and distribution each have a role. Those roles need to become contractual obligations and entitlements; describing everyone as a stakeholder leaves the difficult work unfinished.
The same applies to the fan relationship. Whoever runs the account system could become the point through which subscriptions, customer insight and future offers are managed. Teams should know whether they can use that relationship for their own services, receive useful customer information where permitted, or simply provide material to somebody else’s product. A shared interface can conceal very different commercial arrangements.
This is where a platform proposal begins to earn credibility. It should explain what each party contributes, what each party receives and which decisions each can influence. Software can implement that agreement. It cannot supply the missing agreement.
Revenue sharing needs a calculation
The report places investment and cost discipline ahead of the distribution of incremental revenue. It also leaves the platform’s governance, business model and operating economics for further work. Those are material qualifications. UCI report, pages 19 and 23
For a team, a share of gross revenue, a share after agreed operating costs and a share after investment recovery are three different propositions. They can produce very different payments from the same sales figure.
The definition of the distributable amount therefore matters as much as the percentage. Who approves expenditure? Which costs can be charged to the shared business? How long does investment recovery take priority? Can participants inspect the calculation, and what happens if further investment is required?
None of those questions implies that costs should be ignored. Production, sales and technology have to be funded. But a model intended to improve team stability should let a team understand when it gets paid and how that payment is determined. An expectation of future distributions is a weak foundation for a recurring sporting budget.
What Formula 1 makes concrete
Formula 1 offers a useful reference. Under its Concorde arrangements, teams receive payments from the central commercial business. Liberty Media reported $1.4 billion in team payments for 2025, excluding one-off Concorde signing incentives. It attributes the increase to higher Formula 1 revenue and variable payments calculated with reference to revenue and costs. These are payments from the wider commercial model, rather than a simple distribution of media-rights income alone. Liberty Media, 2025 annual report
The relevant lesson for cycling is the contractual connection between the competition’s commercial income and the teams’ income. Formula 1’s payments are not equal: performance and other principles, including historical success and heritage, affect the allocation. There is still a negotiation over who receives what. But the teams have an agreed payment mechanism to negotiate within.
Cycling cannot simply copy that arrangement. A collective deal would have to accommodate the rights its organisers already hold. The useful benchmark is whether teams gain a defined economic entitlement alongside their commitment to compete, with the calculation agreed in advance.
Earlier attempts reveal the other dependency
Cycling has already explored team-backed formats and collective commercial initiatives. Velon’s Hammer Series used a compact team competition built around climbing, sprinting and a chase. In March 2020, Velon suspended the series and attributed the decision to UCI actions restricting its development. That was Velon’s account of a disputed relationship, rather than an independent finding about the causes. Velon’s statement
One Cycling encountered a separate barrier. In June 2025, the UCI rejected its proposed inclusion in the WorldTour calendars in the form presented, citing governance, regulatory and sporting concerns, while leaving further discussions open. UCI decision
These cases should not be reduced to a claim that every regulatory objection is commercially motivated. They do demonstrate why a business plan for a new competition has to address sporting approval alongside funding and rights. Willing participants and an attractive offer cannot substitute for the permission required to operate.
The current UCI rules make that dependency concrete: participation in an event requires calendar registration or other prior authorisation, and breaches can attract sanctions, including suspensions. This describes the present framework; it does not establish the circumstances of any historical Hammer decision. UCI regulations, articles 1.2.019–1.2.021
A credible reform consequently needs a clear route through both negotiations: agreement over the commercial business and predictable conditions for sporting approval.
A franchise model addresses a different risk
Revenue sharing concerns annual income. A fixed franchise system would address another question: what lasting asset does a team owner hold?
US sports offer familiar examples of continuing league membership within a business that can change hands. In August 2025, the NBA approved the sale of controlling interests in the Boston Celtics. That is a transaction in a team business, not a sale of a licence in isolation. NBA announcement
A WorldTour licence provides valuable sporting access, but it does not guarantee permanent membership. For the 2026–2028 allocation, the UCI assessed applicants against several criteria, including sporting performance over the previous three seasons when applications exceeded available places. UCI licence allocation
That uncertainty affects what an investor can underwrite. A lasting place in a competition, combined with defined commercial rights, could support a longer investment horizon and a more durable team business. It would not create value automatically: the competition would still need demand, credible income and workable costs. Nor would permanent membership itself guarantee any share of revenue. Those rights would have to be designed together.
The consultation surfaces this tension directly. Contributors proposed treating WorldTour licences as regulated, transferable assets to attract investment. The UCI explicitly rejects a closed licensing system, citing the European sporting model and its sporting philosophy. UCI report, pages 18–19
There is a serious sporting objection to fixing membership: it could protect weaker incumbents and limit stronger outsiders’ opportunity to reach the top tier. I would therefore treat a franchise approach as a separate, consequential choice. Greater investment security would come with a decision about who gets the opportunity to compete. A digital platform leaves that choice unresolved.
What would make cycling reform materially different?
A central platform could still make cycling easier to follow and create worthwhile commercial products. Those improvements deserve assessment on their own merits. They would not, by themselves, establish a new economic position for teams.
For that, I would look for enforceable revenue entitlements, representation in the decisions that affect those revenues, defined permissions over contributed assets and a clear authorisation framework for new competitions. Teams should also understand their position if they leave the arrangement: which obligations end, which assets remain committed and what access they retain.
A consultation cannot reasonably contain every final contract. It can, however, make clear which rights the subsequent negotiations are intended to establish. That would give the sport a more useful measure of progress than the number of ideas receiving broad support.
There is no simple solution to cycling’s competing interests. My scepticism rests on the gap between agreement that the sport should earn more and agreement on who is entitled to those earnings. The latter is where reform becomes a business decision.
Until that gap closes, I would treat the proposed platform as a possible new commercial venture. I would not yet treat it as a new business model for the teams.