Visma-Lease a Bike are seeking a new title sponsor as the Dutch team seek to keep up in cycling's budgetary arms race with other top teams including UAE Team Emirates-XRG, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, Decathlon-CMA CGM, and Lidl-Trek.
Visma, a Norwegian business software company, is not prepared to continue increasing its budget and will instead take a step back from the team, without pulling away entirely.
The news was first reported by Dutch website WielerFlits on Tuesday and later confirmed to Cyclingnews by sources within the team.
The Dutch team are looking to continue competing with the sport's other 'super-teams', including UAE, backed by the oil-rich Middle Eastern state, and Red Bull, Decathlon, and Lidl, who are all owned by their title sponsors and so can pour further funding into the squads.
Visma-Lease a Bike aren't in danger of folding or ceasing operations; the team will continue with its current range of sponsors, including Lease a Bike, Rabobank and PON, which owns Cervélo. However, in order to stay competitive at the very top of the sport, higher budgets are needed in the coming years.
Discussions, led by team boss Richard Plugge, with prospective sponsors, including large multi-national companies, are said to have been underway for a number of months.
The average men's WorldTour team budget in 2025 was €32 million, with UAE at the top of the list at €60 million. The biggest teams in the sport, including Visma, have budgets over €40 million.
Visma-Lease a Bike's 2024 financial report, filed with the Netherlands Chamber of Commerce late last year, showed that the team had an operating income of €52.6 million in 2024, with operating expenses of €58.7 million, which resulted in an operating loss of €6.1 million and a net loss after tax of €5.3 million.
Both Visma and Lease a Bike are on board as sponsors after signing permanent contracts with the team in 2024. Both companies will remain on board with the team, though Visma won't continue to increase sponsorship budgets year after year, and so will take a step back.
This could be in part due to Visma's planned IPO, where a private company issues shares for sale publicly, reports WielerFlits, with the company revising its sponsorship approach in anticipation of the move.
The company could, however, postpone the IPO in light of poor results from other software companies on stock exchanges around the world, according to The Financial Times.
The Visma-Lease a Bike team declined to comment on the story when approached by Cyclingnews.
