The prospects of survival of the French ProTeam B&B Hotels-KTM have reached a silent crisis point, as a November 30 sponsorship crunch deadline looms with no news of last-minute sponsor deals to guarantee the squad’s continuity into 2023.
Hopes have slowly but steadily diminished that a widely heralded major expansion for next season, based around a link-up with the city of Paris and multiple different big-name sponsors and crowned with the possible signing of Mark Cavendish, would actually take place.
But after news of the team’s expansion emerged on the last day of the 2022 Tour de France, none of these deals have so far actually materialised.
The delaying of deadlines of October 15 and November 22 for sponsorship news and/or presentation of paperwork to the UCI, as well as the cancellation of a press conference the day before the Tour de France presentation on October 27, has done very little to rekindle flagging optimism. And now unconfirmed rumours are flourishing that a number of riders in the team’s current and prospective 2023 line-up are already seeking employment in other squads.
Team manager Jerôme Pineau has already had to ask for special dispensation from the UCI and DNCG (the teams regulatory body in France) for an extended final cut-off point of November 30th.
He told L’Equipe two weeks ago that he had five leads on possible sponsors, with a last meeting due with potential backers on November 28, and warned that “If the five leads come to nothing, we are then in great danger and the team might not survive.”
Since then an increasingly deafening silence from team management, beyond a succinctly phrased denial from the squad’s spokesman of a report that contracted riders had been given the right to look elsewhere for teams, has spoken louder than words.
As of November 30, the 27-rider men’s team, as well as the prospects of the creation of a new women’s team and new feeder team all hang in the balance.
Riders like Belgian National Champion and Classics specialist, Jens Debusschere, are holding out for a last-minute solution. “I stay positive,” he told Het Laatste Nieuws. “I very much want to believe that it will be ok.”
“I really hope this team will continue,” UCI President David Lappartient recently told regional TV station 3 Bretagne, “But time can’t be extended indefinitely.”
“Furthermore, this team, like all the others, has to hold its training camps and meet-ups. From a legal point of view, there are a lot of legal issues, notably with the…
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