Vaughters wants guaranteed Tour spots for team franchises

LONDON: World Tour cycling teams should become franchises with guaranteed entry into the sport’s top races to avoid financial meltdowns, according to Cannondale EF Education First-Drapac chief Jonathan Vaughters. American former professional Vaughters fought a desperate battle to stop his Cannondale-Drapac

team folding in September after a seven-million-dollar funding shortfall in their 2018 budget.

A deal was finally struck with EF Education with the team ‘hours away’ from disappearing and Vaughters believes a franchise-based system, together with greater financial fairness, would ensure stability and create more fan appeal. “Over the past four, five years there has always been at least one or two World Tour teams that have collapsed. It’s something that cycling, as a sport, needs to address,” Vaughters told Reuters at the Rouleur Classic cycling exhibition in London after the launch of the team’s new kit.

“Structurally there is a problem that needs to be corrected. Fans of Manchester United or the Denver Broncos don’t worry about them just going away. It’s not something that fans are used to or can understand.

“There are a number of different ways to go about it. One is cost control, or financial fairness, which is what I call it. The other is creating a structure where franchises are guaranteed the biggest races such as the Tour de France. “If there is a guaranteed entry into those races in the lifetime of the business, then at that point you have created a limited market, you have created scarcity and when you create scarcity sponsors come in and gravitate towards that scarcity.”

“What we have now is if you come up with 20 million pounds you can start your own team, there is no scarcity of the commodity,” added Vaughters. “It’s just a matter of who can scrounge up the money, whether they come up from a very disreputable source or a reputable source, it doesn’t matter.”

Things became so desperate for Cannondale-Drapac that Vaughters Tweeted in August: “At the risk of colossal spam, if anyone out there has a lead on some financial support for our team, email: press@slipstreamsports.com.”