The futures of Britain’s two premier stage races, the Tour of Britain and the Women’s Tour have been plunged into further doubt after long-term organiser and promoter SweetSpot entered liquidation as it faces legal claims totalling almost £1 million.
In reports from Cycling Weekly and The Guardian, SweetSpot CEO Hugh Roberts confirmed the company had appointed KRE corporate recovery to deal with the company’s creditors after entering “voluntary liquidation.”
“Liquidation started to become a possibility back in July. Because we were already under a lot of pressure financially with the Tour of Britain,” Roberts told The Guardian. “It’s the end of an era. It’s 20 years of hard work that have come to this.
“We have been fighting so many headwinds for the last three or four years, that it’s come to the point where we really can’t carry on in the current climate and the current business environment that we find ourselves in.”
Governing body British Cycling withdrew its previous deal with SweetSpot in November after allegations were made that the company owed around £750,000 in race licence rights fees.
Cycling Weekly also revealed that the Isle of Wight council was considering potential legal action to reclaim up to £350,000 from SweetSpot after paying to host the final stages of the 2022 Tour of Britain which were cancelled due to the death of the Queen.
SweetSpot has run the Tour of Britain since its modern 2004 revival, but British Cycling has always held the rights to the race. They were due to continue their partnership until 2029 after a new agreement was reached in 2019, but it now lies with the governing body to find a new organiser.
The race ran without a title sponsor in 2023 and faced criticism for providing a repetitive parcours of sprint stages without exploring much of the UK’s varied topography.
The racing scene in Britain has taken multiple hits in recent years and SweetSpot’s other headline event, the Women’s Tour, now looks unlikely to return to the women’s WorldTour calendar after it was cancelled in 2023 following a failure to crowdfund enough money to cover the void left from losing sponsor. The popular city-centre racing event, the Tour Series was also cancelled in 2023 due to funding issues.
Roberts told the Guardian that “the prognosis looks bleak” for the women’s race after the liquidation announcement as the race had no safety net from the governing body given that SweetSpot owns the rights to the event.
If both events fail to survive…
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