Does professional men’s cycling need a budget cap to make it more competitive? That is the idea being promoted by the UCI, the sport’s governing body, which is concerned that the current WorldTour is divided by the haves and the have nots, thus making the sport less attractive to fans and investors.
The notion of a budget cap is nothing new in cycling: certain teams, riders and individuals – mostly French – have been calling for a cap to level the playing field for decades, and the UCI’s president David Lappartient first called for one in 2017 when Team Sky were all-conquering. Now, he might finally be about to get his way. Since the summer, the UCI has been working with the Switzerland-based consultancy firm, PwC, to investigate how the sport could become more financially sustainable. The buzz phrase they’ve opted for is a Financial Fairness Initiative (FFI), and they’d like to see a budget cap, or FFI, in place for the start of the 2026 season.
Discussions are still at an early stage – all 18 WorldTour teams were only informed about the proposals on the eve of Il Lombardia – and no set model as to what a prospective FFI would look like is even close to being agreed upon, but a hybrid system of a budget cap and a ‘luxury tax’ that financially penalises those who overspend is part of the current proposal.
Even though talks are very much in their infancy, the idea is already causing consternation, with the majority of riders and their agents said to be dismayed by the prospect, and Richard Plugge, manager of Visma-Lease a Bike, publicly voicing his current opposition to a budget cap, saying there are more pressing matters to prioritise. So should it happen? And will it happen?
‘Buying speed’
It’s not difficult to understand why the UCI would be in favour of implementing a model that prevents the superteams from further increasing the gap between themselves and the rest: while there have always been superior teams, and money hasn’t always correlated with success (Ineos Grenadiers is a very recent case in point), the past two seasons have been characterised by unprecedented dominance, with Jumbo-Visma winning all three Grand Tours in 2023 and UAE Team Emirates claiming 81 victories in 2024.
Figures from a PwC presentation highlight how the richest team in the sport (thought to be UAE) has a budget in excess of €40m more than the least-wealthiest team, while they also spend more on staff wages than the eight teams…