The AusCycling team has signed a five-year deal with ARA Group, a private company that already sponsors a men’s and women’s continental team and is deepening its support of the sport by becoming the first title sponsor of the national cycling team since 2016.
ARA – which has operations in Australia and New Zealand across the four divisions of fire & security, electrical, property services, and products – will have its logo displayed on the national kit across all of cycling disciplines from the Glasgow World Championships, where over 130 athletes will represent the ARA Australian Cycling Team across nine disciplines.
“As a young organisation that represents all cycling disciplines, securing our first major partner is a crucial step towards Victoria 2026 and Brisbane 2032 under AusCycling’s 10-year ‘United’ strategy,” said Marne Fechner, CEO of AusCycling which was formed in 2020 as part of an amalgamation of the mountain bike and BMX federations with the previously road and track focussed Cycling Australia. “We’re excited to be working with like minded partners on the journey towards a home Commonwealth, Olympic and Paralympic Games.
“ARA’s commitment to social responsibility, including its contributions to conservation, arts and literature, and the Indigenous community, strongly resonates with AusCycling’s values. I’m looking forward to all the opportunities this partnership will bring.”
In recent years the Australian cycling federation has seen a significant drop in the amount of sponsorship revenue and even the combination of the varied cycling disciplines in 2020 was not enough to push it back to anywhere close to a peak of $1.95 million, in local currency, seen in 2016 when Gerry Ryan’s Jayco was in its last year as title sponsor of the Australian team.
Sponsorship income was a little over half a million last year for AusCycling, which in 2022 had revenue of $28 million mainly from government grants but with a significant contribution also coming from membership fees. The organisation declined to outline how much the ARA sponsorship deal was worth, for reasons of commercial confidence, but did add that it hoped this would be the first of a small number of major ‘whole of sport’ partnership arrangements.
When Ryan’s Jayco signed the four year deal with Cycling Australia in 2012 it was touted as a multi-million dollar agreement and while the company may no longer be the title sponsor of the Australian team, its name and…
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