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Sponsorship in Professional Road Cycling

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The Economics of Professional Road Cycling

Part of the book series: Sports Economics, Management and Policy ((SEMP,volume 19))

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Abstract

Sport sponsorship is any commercial agreement by which a sponsor contractually provides financing or other support in order to establish an association between the sponsor’s image, brands, or products and a sport sponsorship property in return for rights to promote this association and/or for granting certain agreed direct or indirect benefits. Since professional road cycling was one of the first sports to be practiced commercially, sponsorship of cycling teams already started in the first editions of endurance races like Bordeaux–Paris at the end of the nineteenth century, and it has grown ever since. Today’s cycling teams are in fact financed almost exclusively through sponsorship. This chapter explains the business-to-business characteristics of sponsorship of cycling teams and shows how the cycling sponsorship market can be very dynamic. The duration and termination of sponsorship of cycling teams as well as a company’s motives to invest in such sponsorship deals are discussed, and the importance of the integration of sponsorship into marketing communication is illustrated. We also analyze the economic return and effectiveness of cycling team sponsorship and of cycling races and conclude with some thoughts on today’s sponsoring challenges in professional road cycling.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. KU Leuven, Campus Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium

    Wim Lagae

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  1. Wim Lagae
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Correspondence to Wim Lagae .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Economics and Business, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Campus Brussels and Campus Kortrijk, Leuven, Belgium

    Daam Van Reeth

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Lagae, W. (2022). Sponsorship in Professional Road Cycling. In: Van Reeth, D. (eds) The Economics of Professional Road Cycling. Sports Economics, Management and Policy, vol 19. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11258-4_4

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