Running a men's WorldTour team has never been so expensive. It now costs around €30m a year - and that's just to be competitive. If you're a cash-rich business or billionaire who fancies knocking UAE Team Emirates-XRG off their perch, you'd need to find twice that much.
Where, you might well ask, does all that money go? Cyclists are not paid the megabucks of stars in other sports. Cycling Weekly ascertained from leading agents that, of the 1,182 professional riders (men and women, WorldTeam and ProTeam), only 60-70 earn more than €1m, and fewer than 20 exceed €2m. Tadej Pogačar, with his €8.4m salary (before bonuses, private sponsorship deals and appearance fees), is an outlier - as are Remco Evenepoel, Jonas Vingegaard and Mathieu van der Poel, who command salaries of between €4 and €6m (contrast with Manchester City's Erling Haaland's £27.3m).
