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Photo: Yuzuru Sunada
Should the UCI introduce
a budget cap on teams?
James Shrubsallt’s an issue that has
been raised before, but
new UCI boss David
Lappartient put the idea of team
budget caps firmly back on the
table last month. It’s clearly
something he’s keen to push
ahead with, although it’s not
clear exactly when he might try
to make it happen. While some
teams are all for the caps, others
— unsurprisingly — argue against
them. And an attempt to impose a
policy that not all parties are sold
on could be laden with difficulties
for Lappartient.Why does Lappartient want
budget caps?
To stop big teams “blocking”
races, apparently, and to make
them more “attractive”. Just a
hunch, but it’s likely he’s thinking
about Team Sky at the Tour de
France far more than Quick Step
at the Classics. It’s not hard to
understand the sentiment —
racing is generally more enjoyable
for more people when it’s open and
one team isn’t trouncing the rest
with predictable regularity. Rather
than individual salary caps, like
many sports in the US are subject
to, Lappartient’s idea is to limit
overall operating budgets, which
include salaries. This would, in
theory, spread the talent a bit, and
could help prevent any one team
from gaining an unbridgeable
advantage in areas such as
equipment, coaching and logistics.The small teams must be
rubbing their hands in glee?
Jonathan Vaughters, boss of
Cannondale-Drapac, has been
particularly vocal on the issue.
His team’s £11m budget is a third
of Sky’s. “To compete with Sky
costs an incredibly huge figure,”
he told the Times recently.
“Outside Abu Dhabi princes and
oil money, it’s a very difficult
figure to reach for. We have been
blessed that this year we have
been quite competitive with Sky
on one third of the resources. So it
can be done but, holy moly, it does
make it very challenging. I think
the sport should address this issue
before it becomes worse.”Presumably Sky themselves
aren’t quite so excited...
You could say that. Even Chris
Froome, not usually given to
soundbites, said a budget cap
would mean cycling is “almost
becoming communist” (a claimsubsequently rubbished by
Vaughters). Froome has also
argued that Team Sky are
wealthy largely because they are
successful, rather than the other
way round. “If you just look at
football for example... the best
teams typically win the most and
can then afford to buy the biggest
players and the best players and
it’s almost this cycle,” he said
during the Tour de France. “We’ve
found a similar thing in cycling.
If a team is successful it is able to
reinvest its funds and develop the
sport further.”If not everyone wants it, could
the UCI just go ahead with the
rule anyway?
In Rugby League, a cap introduced
in 1998 based on team profits
ultimately failed, although the
sport now uses a salary cap
instead. “You’ve got a problem if
a cost cap is imposed on the sport
and not everyone sees the value
of it,” Rugby League’s erstwhile
financial controller David Wood
told Sky Sports recently. “If you
put some sort of regulation in place
and there isn’t the willingness to
comply, they’ll always go, ‘Right,
we’ll get our legal team to try and
get round this.’”
In Formula One, an attempt by
Max Mosley to impose budget
caps on teams in 2009 failed
after some threatened to form a
breakaway faction.
If those examples tell us
anything it’s that Lappartient
could have a fight on his hands.New UCI boss faces tough opposition to resurrected funding reform
Big-budget Sky have a
major financial advantage10 | December 7, 2017 | Cycling Weekly