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Professional road cycling has the capacity to be a major worldwide spectator sport, but has yet, in the eyes of many, failed to realize its full potential. There is a growing awareness that profound reforms are crucial for the sport’s future success. The purpose of this paper is to explore the conditions which the sport must address, and define a new business model for professional road cycling.

The paper uses qualitative data to screen professional road cycling’s current business model, and to present a coherent vision on the changes needed to reform the sport. Information was gathered from archival material and from talks with stakeholders.

The paper presents a blueprint for the future of professional cycling. It identifies 6 vital building blocks and 25 specific action points, beginning with the idea that professional road cycling needs a stable business model that produces a valuable core product.

Professional road cycling is is conservative by nature and changes are extremely difficult to implement. This contribution presents a glimpse of one possible future for professional cycling, if cycling’s policy makers acknowledge the need for profound reforms of the sport and are willing to make the necessary changes.

Women's sport is said to be experiencing a moment of progress exemplified by the ‘professionalising’ of teams, leagues and events (McLachlan, 2019; Pavlidis, 2020; Taylor et al., 2020). The current ‘professionalising’ moment is celebrated as a measure of incremental change that demonstrates that women's sport is progressing in the right direction (Sherry & Taylor, 2019; Taylor, 2020). In this chapter, we pursue critical questions of progress in relation to professionalisation in women's road cycling. Cycling as a sport commenced in the late 1800s, and women were able to earn money from riding and racing their bicycle. However, the evolution of women's cycling has not been a linear process, (McLachlan, 2016) and despite increased ‘professionalisation’ of women's road cycling, women cyclists lack proper wages, safe working conditions, significant prize money, and suitable economic and career opportunities. Our work draws from data of 15 semi-structured interviews with riders and from extensive fieldwork of elite women's road cycling races in seven different countries in 2019. Our findings illustrate that despite the general perceptions of progress of women's professional road cycling, the cyclists' experiences and rationalisations of their conditions reflect deeper struggles. We argue that struggles over rewards, resources, and recognition are all evidence of the ‘unimpeded sexism’ in sport (Fink, 2016, p. 3), and as such, the professionalising of women's sport does not guarantee transformation of the gender order.

This study seeks to examine how a sport league, a unique feature of professional sport, influences the business‐to‐business marketing of teams participating in the sport league.

This study uses a qualitative research design based on a single case study, the UCI ProTour in professional road cycling. The primary sources consist of 27 semi‐structured interviews complemented by written sources and controlled for construct validity, external validity and reliability.

From a theoretical point of view, a sport league is a marketing channel network (a specific type of an intentionally developed business network or IDBN). Theoretical analysis also reveals that the teams' business‐to‐business marketing is positively related to the network's value‐creating system. Empirically, it is argued that the introduction of a marketing channel network has a positive influence on the financial value of the teams' business‐to‐business market but does not result in a change in the business demographics of corporate sponsors.

The study has possible sport‐specific limitations.

Business‐to‐business marketers and sport league managers should pay attention to the characteristics of the sport league as these influence the teams' business‐to‐business market. This is especially valid for sports in which teams rely strongly on sport sponsoring and, to a lesser extend, on gate revenues, television rights and prize money.

For the first time, this study examines and provides data on the business‐to‐business environment of teams in professional road cycling. It contributes to the literature of international sport marketing and professional road cycling, a sport gaining momentum in various countries and which is understudied in comparison to other sports.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of doping scandals (n=25) in professional cycling Grand Tour events on the primary team sponsor’s daily stock return.

Event study methodology.

Overall it was found that during the time period and events under examination in this study doping scandals had no significant impact on the primary team sponsor’s stock returns.

There is limited research to explain the economic impact of widespread doping in cycling and its commercial shareholders. This study addresses this gap by examining the relationship between doping scandals in professional cycling and the daily stock return of the involved team’s primary sponsor.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the 2015 Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) Road World Cycling Championship in Richmond, Virginia.

An array of eclectic methods included in situ witness observations of several of the races, 21 semi-structured random interviews and multiple discussions with elements of UCI, the city of Richmond’s planners, residents and business owners during and after the championship in fall 2015.

This paper has uncovered five findings: First, the material investment was considerably smaller than that of other events (common good criterion CGC i – good governance); second, pre-planning was critical to successfully hosting the event; third, this event included not only two entities as one would expect at first glance, but many (common good criterion CGC ii – good management); fourth, a filière approach to community service and the exploitation of clustered thematic activities was of critical importance to successfully hosting the 2015 UCI Road World Cycling Championship; and fifth, this event enabled the opportunity to market other city and regional assets (common good criterion CGC iii – good outcomes).

Cities hoping to bid for events ought to consider hosting unique events such as road championships. Those cities will benefit from careful event pre-planning, responsible event hosting and post-event legacies in the form of socio-economic and mindscape memories.

Bidding and pre-event planning is increasingly seen as an opportunity to locate, create and develop support for common good urban projects, which will remain valuable after the event is over or which will need to be built in spite of the bid’s result.

This study fills an unresearched gap on the impact of events on a city’s future non-motorized sustainable transportation priorities.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the determinants of breakaway success in road cycling races.

Descriptive statistics were computed, and a logit model of breakaway success was estimated based on a new kind of statistical data describing the development of each of the 268 breakaways that occurred in the 76 regular stages of the Tour de France 2013 to 2016.

Breakaway success partly depends on the physics of cycling: breakaways are more successful when the stage is hilly or in mountain than flat. In addition, the likelihood of breakaway success depends on strategic moves such as attack timing and the percentage of riders with a teammate in the breakaway.

Understanding why certain breakaways succeed and others do not is useful to comprehend cycling performance and to help coopetitive temporary organizational forms such as breakaways optimize their strategic behavior. A limitation is the focus on the Tour de France only.

The present study adds to the literature on temporary organizational forms, coopetition and cycling performance by analyzing within-stage data in cycling and, as such, enabling to capture its strategic dimension.

The aim of this study is to examine the effects of team diversity on team performance in the Tour de France.

Longitudinal data on teams participating in the Tour de France between 2004 and 2013 are used for the empirical analysis (n = 208). Team performance is captured with a standardized measure controlling for the number of riders arriving in Paris. Diversity is measured with the variation coefficient (continuous variables) and the Blau index (categorical variables). Regression analysis is used to analyze diversity effects on team performance.

The results show that diversity in terms of tenure significantly adds to team performance, while diversity in terms of skills (proxied by body mass index) decreases performance. Diversity in terms of age, nationality, language, previous Tour participations and stage wins has no significant effect on team performance. The more teammates arrive in Paris, the better the team’s performance.

The findings have implications for team managers and the composition of teams. Managers should employ riders who are heterogeneous regarding tenure and homogeneous regarding skills. While investing in the integration of riders of different nationalities or languages does not pay off, it can be recommended to select riders who are likely to arrive in Paris.

The present study adds to the literature by examining diversity in a variety of attributes including human capital, experience and success that are observable in sport.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of an athlete's body type, team characteristics, and pay on performance in the Tour de France (“the Tour”). Based on the concept of scaling and the concept of human capital, the paper aims to derive a set of hypotheses.

Secondary data were collected about all riders that finished the Tour in the years from 2002 to 2005 leading to a total number of n=600 observations. Random effects regression models are estimated with rank as the dependent variable.

The findings indicate that lighter riders perform better in the Tour than heavier cyclists. Better teammates were found to increase average riders' performances, whereas top riders did not benefit from top teammates. Experience (rider, teammates, coach) was a significant driver of performance.

Team managers should pay attention to the composition of the team. Having only one strong team captain and several good coworkers was more effective than having several star riders (i.e. potential captains) in a team.

The findings with regard to team composition can be transferred to other sports and professions where teamwork plays an important role. Successful teams should consist of only one captain and several good coworkers.

The paper extends previous work on the determinants of performance in the Tour by using a longitudinal dataset that covers more variables than previous research.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of a crisis situation in a sports team on the credibility of their sponsor and how the sponsor’s use of various crises response strategies may repair the damage done to their credibility.

A scenario experiment was conducted with a 2 (pre-/post-crisis) × 4 (sponsor response strategy: denial/distancing/rebuild/no response) mixed factor design. Respondents (n=191) were recruited from a research panel.

The results confirmed the existence of a spill-over effect: the sponsor’s credibility dropped as a result of the crisis. More interestingly, the effects of the crisis on sponsor credibility were moderated by the response strategy of the sponsor: the harm that the crisis did to the sponsor credibility was aggravated by a denial strategy, but somewhat weakened by a diminishing strategy. A rebuild response unexpectedly improved the credibility of the sponsor.

While partnerships in sports can be risky, because crises can be contagious, such partners can also help one another to protect their credibility. Therefore, this study advocates an integral approach of crisis communication. Sponsors may improve their credibility when they frame their contribution to the solution to the problems as an authentic effort to do good.

Starting from an issue arena perspective, this contribution shows how crises in sports teams also affect sponsors and how sponsors can contribute to the restoration of the damaged credibility with suitable responses to the crisis situation.