jyl

ASO will demote all of its races, including the Tour de France, to HC status. The rules for HC races say those races will have no more than 70% World Tour teams, which means 15 if the Tour has 22 teams, or 13 if the Tour is reduced to 20 teams as ASO wants. The remaining teams will be wildcards from ProConti teams. Under the rules, ASO could even invite fewer than 70% WT teams. Or, ASO could disregard the rules and invite all 18 WT teams.

The possibility, then, is that several WT teams could be left out of the Tour and ASO's other races, which would be a disaster for the team, sponsors, and riders. (Currently, every WT team gets automatic entry into all the top races.)

This fight is partly due to ASO's disagreement with the UCI's planned reforms to the World Tour, including 3 year WT team licenses and more racing days. More fundamentally, ASO wants fewer racing days (meaning, fewer non-ASO races), fewer teams per race (they want 20, not 22+), fewer riders per team in each race (they want 8, not 9), 1 year team licenses (not 3 years), and the freedom to pick and choose which teams they invite to each race. It seems that ASO also wants to undercut Velon specifically, and the teams' power generally. If ASO can force teams to abandon Velon (under threat of not being invited to the Tour), and can reduce the teams' attractiveness to sponsors (since the sponsor can't be sure of Tour de France exposure), then it can keep the teams weak and eliminate any threat to its own revenue and control.

I think this will be a crisis for pro road cycling. When the first WT teams are forced to sit out the Tour, those sponsors will leave or cut back their sponsorship, and the disparity between team budgets will get even bigger. Fewer riders will get the chance to break through at the Tour. The ASO will get greater power over pretty much every aspect of racing. And, as we've read, there is a Chinese company interested in buying ASO, so in future that power may be wielded by someone who is not today's ASO.

It is interesting to consider how the teams and the UCI might respond. Obviously no team will individually boycott the Tour. However, teams could boycott ASO's lesser races, or the Velon teams could do so as a bloc. Losing the Velon teams (LottoNL-Jumbo, BMC, Cannondale, Lampre, Lotto-Belisol, EQS, Orica, Giant, Team Sky, Tinkoff and Trek) would gut any race. Then the boycotters would take the risk of not being invited to the Tour. If they took the position that none will race the Tour unless all are invited, ASO would probably have to blink. Whether the Velon teams and UCI can actually hold together like this is doubtful.

chasm54

Tricky one for the teams, because it isn't just that all the WT team managements would have to stick together, they'd have to do so while retaining the support of their sponsors. That's a hell of a call. Obviously, however, if all the top teams refused to take part in the Tour, ASO's market value would plummet and their Chinese buyers might disappear.

It'll be interesting to see how it all plays out. Le Tour hasn't always been the be-all and end-all of pro cycling to quite the extent it is today (at least in the mass media) so I suppose it isn't impossible that the big teams and the UCI could seek to place the emphasis and prestige elsewhere. If they all turned up for the Giro, Tirreno-Adriatico and Milan San Remo but not for the Tour, the Vuelta, the Dauphine or Paris-Roubaix, ASO would be ****ed. Dangerous times.

diphthong

i feel the aso already has too much sway/power over pro cycling as it is. would love to see the major teams boycott
all their races in that first year (potentially takes effect in 2017 if i read correctly??) and concentrate on the rest of the calendar.
that giro would be the all-time epic gt with all the big players making that their main focus. of course, the chances of
the major teams all uniting to boycott aso races are about 10%. whatever happens, i fear we (in the united states)
will be seeing less televised cycling because of the feud.

ijsbrand

The rules about HC races are that they cannot be longer than 200 km, and that stage races may not take more than five days.

Which makes it impossible for ASO to organize a Tour de France or a Vuelta under the UCI umbrella, and might have an impact on classics like La Doyenne.

Judging by the official UCI response, it is well aware of that.

chasm54

I don't necessarily disagree. But would allowing the top teams to have much greater dominance be any better? And that seems to be one consequence of the UCI proposals.

Under Cookson's leadership, British Cycling became virtually synonymous with, and in some important respects was actually run by, Sky procycling. GB riders actually wear Sky kit in track events. In my view it has not been healthy, it gives Sky far too much influence and has transformed BC from being an organisation that principally represented clubs to one which is almost exclusively focussed on elite performance, and on the perfprmance of one particular commercial interest.

I'm deeply suspicious of Cookson leading the UCI in a similar direction, and allowing a few big teams to effectively shut out any challengers. Of course, I don't much like ASO either, but on balance I'd rather see a separation of power between race promotors, teams, and rules-makers.

jyl

The rule isn't clear.

"The duration of new events in classes HC, 1 and 2 is limited to 5 days, unless an exemption is made by the management committee."

Is the Tour a "new event"?

Anyway, seems to me this is a power play. ASO could simply withdraw the Tour from the UCI calendar entirely, and dare the teams to skip the race.

If the teams, or at least many of the major teams, stick together and are willing to go to the mat, and the UCI stands firm, and the Giro steps up to become the marquee event for that year, then maybe the ASO will find it is not powerful enough to win.

My sympathies are with the teams, not necessarily with the UCI or the ASO. If a WT team isn't guaranteed to ride the Tour, but has to lobby for an invitation by sending its stars to other ASO races instead of non-ASO races, then the team is weaker and sponsorship of the team less valuable. Teams are struggling to find sponsorship as it is. French teams already have an advantage, they get invited to the Tour as wildcards even without being WT teams, this will just get worse. Non-ASO races will get weaker. Eventually ASO will own most of the races and pro cycling will be essentially one company's commercial enterprise.

badger1

Informed comment and good perspective here (entry for December 18th): The Inner Ring ? news, comment, analysis, chat

jyl

And here

Vaughters: Tour owner ASO 'is the big playground bully? - VeloNews.com
Vaughters comments, I'm surprised he's being so frank considering his team is one that ASO could easily leave out of the Tour.

inrng : who will make the cut?
Second article from Inner Ring. Who points out that Vaughters might have signed top French rider Pierre Roland as "insurance", and that Pinot's market value for 2017 just went up a lot.

jyl

Cookson: ASO can't pick and choose which rules apply to them | Cyclingnews.com

UCI say the 200 km limit applies. Don't mention the 1 week limit.

gsa103

Tinkoff is laughing his ass off as he exits stage left....

gaucho777 

A nice summary of the ASO/UCI dispute appeared in yesterday's edition of Business Insider:
Inside the war over the Tour de France - Business Insider

It'll be interesting to see how this all shakes out. I think there is some merit on both sides, so I hope a compromise is found. It certainly is a strange model for a sport to have no revenue sharing for tv rights or major events, while at the same time teams are so completely dependent on sponsors who in turn rely on participation in the Tour for their return on investment.

cafzali

The teams should rally their sponsors in support of a strike of ASO races. The ASO thinks they have all the power because the UCI and teams aren't striking back. But this isn't chicken and egg. Without riders, they have no events, whereas the riders could compete in other races and still have a season, albeit a shorter one.

The reason cycling does so poorly from a business standpoint is the UCI has no power.