The Women’s WorldTour has entered the next phase of restructuring that will see WorldTeams and Continental Teams in a battle for points that will decide the 15 WorldTour teams in 2024. Like for the men’s WorldTour teams in 2022, the 2023 season will become a battle for points and so Women’s WorldTour survival.
The combined points accumulated across the 2022 and 2023 seasons will be put toward the two-year system for the UCI World Ranking, which will play a key role in determining which teams are either promoted, relegated or remain among the top tier of Women’s WorldTeams.
Three current WorldTour teams have found themselves in a relegation danger zone, with Israel Premier Tech-Roland in 18th, Uno-X Pro Cycling in 24th and Human Powered Health in 27th based on the UCI World Ranking at the end of the 2022 season.
Don’t count them out, however, because, with revamped rosters and a targeted points-chasing strategy, these teams have everything to play for in 2023 as they battle to keep their WorldTeam licences.
The sport governing body introduced the Women’s WorldTour in 2016, which replaced for former one-day World Cup series, and created a two-tier team structure as part of the women’s professional racing reforms in 2020.
The team restructuring began with the elevation of eight teams to the top tier called WorldTeams in 2020, and the number of top-level teams increased to nine in 2021, 14 in 2022, reaching 15 teams for 2023.
How did these teams acquire WorldTeam licences?
During the application and registration process, each team had to meet four non-sporting requirements to be granted a WorldTeam licence: administrative, ethical, organizational and financial.
The heightened financial criteria include, but are not limited to, a team’s ability to pay its riders a minimum salary, which the UCI introduced for Women’s WorldTeams in 2020.
Currently, riders contracted with a top-tier team earn a minimum salary of €32,102 (employed) / €52,647 (self-employed) in 2023, and that is set to increase to €35,000 (employed) / €57,400 (self-employed) in 2024, and again to €38,000 (employed) / €62,320 (self-employed) in 2025.
The salary structure now also includes a neo-pro minimum salary scale.
No team is guaranteed to keep their WorldTeam licence, and even those teams that have had a multi-year licence are required to undergo the registration process each year so that the licence commission can verify that they still meet the four non-sporting criteria.
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