The arrival of Red Bull as majority shareholder of the Bora-Hansgrohe team is expected to have a ‘major impact’ on the rider transfer market for 2025, sparking an increase in rider salaries and perhaps further hostile attempts to buy riders out of existing contracts.
Remco Evenepoel and Wout Van Aert’s representatives quickly refuted reports that the two Belgians have been approached for 2025 and Red Bull’s take over of the team has still to be approved by Austria’s antitrust authorities. However, Red Bull are widely expected to buy a 51% stake in the German WorldTour team and boost the spending power of team manager Ralph Denk.
Rider agents have naturally welcomed the arrival of Red Bull to professional cycling, hoping their investment could raise the salaries of their riders.
Red Bull made a profit of €1.56 billion ($1.64 billion) in 2022, and reports indicate that Oliver Mintzlaff, the managing director of sports sponsorship, expects the team will be strengthened and rebuilt for 2025 with the aim of winning the Tour de France. German news agency dpa suggested the Red Bull logo could appear on the team’s jersey as soon as the 2024 Tour de France despite sponsorship with Bora and Hansgrohe recently extended until 2027.
“The arrival of RedBull will have a major impact on the sport and on the rider transfer market,” leading agent Alex Carera told Cyclingnews.
“The arrival of Lidl as a title sponsor changed a lot for the 2024 rider market, raising team budgets, and so has the more recent arrival of Decathlon. The arrival of Red Bull will only raise the value of the biggest riders even more.”
Dpa claimed that Bora-Hansgrohe have already put out ‘feelers’ to investigate if Wout Van Aert and Remco Evenepoel would be interested in joining the team. Both have contracts with Visma-Lease a Bike and Soudal-Quick Step until the end of 2026 but could have limited exit clauses in their contracts and so become targets for Red Bull, who usually target globally appealing riders.
Van Aert already has a personal deal and helmet sponsorship with Red Bull, while Evenepoel has a deal with Bora-Hansgrohe bike sponsor Specialized.
Denk has twice tried to sign Evenepoel but he has so far remained with Patrick Lefevere’s Soudal-Quick Step team, despite suggestions from his father that he is not happy with the Grand Tour potential of the team.
“There are four global stars in professional cycling at the moment and I think Ralph Denk could try and sign one of them for 2025,” Carera…
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