欧州自転車レース追っかけ日記

What is wrong with the business model?

I don't like the business model that road bike race world has been forced to follow.

It is not like the Formula 1 or many if not most professional sports have been enjoying.

Spectators go to the venues to watch the event ( stadiums or circuits after paying the entrance fees) or pay some subscription fees to get the cable TV access or decoding codes to access the scrambled stream from the satellites or others. Part of the money generated through these means are distributed to the participating teams in due proportion.

As the "ROAD" cycling sport takes place on the road, it is not easy to make spectators pay for the entrance unless you make hefty barricades along the road.

So the only hope of money that bike road race teams have is the money generated from the TV broadcasting revenues that the race event organizers get from the broadcasting media.

They (race organizers except some rare generous ones) don't give out the money to the teams. That is the problem.

Teams depends on so-called sponsors who give generous amount of money to have their names, logos or brand names on the jerseys that the riders are wearing or shown on the TV or mentioned on any media (radio, Internet, news paper, journals and so on).

Sky had been a generous sponsor for years and no doubt that they were able to generate money from their subscribers who wished to watch cycling sport events on TV.

Some would say it is up to ASO, the biggest race organizers. I believe it is partly true but I would say you have to see the big picture. Is UCI not partly guilty for the situations?

Why I think UCI is guilty

Do you like the team(s) or do you like the individual rider(s)?

I like individual riders over teams, personally. Some riders are very nice to us, spectators and fans. Some take extra moment to give out autographs or moments to get shot (I mean a photo op). We fans are more attracted to individual riders than the teams. I guess this applies to most cycling fans.

So why UCI made this "point system" at all? This is killing the sport. What is their reasoning, if they have some reasoning at all?

Why are teams obliged to accumulate some points to qualify themselves as top-layer teams? When a rider wins a race or finishes within some positions, they get "points" accordingly. So at the end of the season riders accumulate some points. Some get a lot and some zero because some so-called domestics are not supposed to have, say, a top 10 finish.

Some riders (winner of the Tour, for example) get a lot of points and get sought after because of their points. There are some vital riders in a team who don't get any point at all during the season but loved by fans.

This point system make some of those riders retire earlier than they should. This makes me really upset.

Team owner (or the big boss) has to make their mind up toward the end of the season whom to let go and whom to hire to make sure the team has the enough points for the next season.

Do we (fans) care? We don't. We just want to see our favorite riders.

Cycling sport is definitely a team sport but it is not like other team sport like soccer, baseball, basket ball or others.

I have to continue this in a separate entry later.

In Japanese: 続きをどうぞ [So-called Business model issue]の続きを読む

テーマ:自転車ロードレース - ジャンル:スポーツ

1. 2020/12/26(土) 22:34:55|
2. Bike Races
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Ubiquitously

"Coup d'état" is a French word (actually consisting of three words, so it should be phrased as a phrase, maybe) ubiquitously. It is recognized in English and also in Japanese as far as I know.

"Ubiquitous" means everywhere basically.

Anyway, what I want to say here is that it is happening in the U.S.A. as we speak not in a country belonging to so-called Third World countries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World).

Overthrowing the entities in power by unlawful means is its definition, more or less. It used to be done by violence, which is visible and most of the time tangible.

Rigging the election is not so visible and not so tangible, in other words, subtle. If the counting is done by hand, it could be more tangible (visible). It is harder to rig an election where the counting the votes by hand, provided that the counting process is being observed by people.

If the counting process is invisible (like done by computer software programs), it is hard to verify the result.

In Japanese: 続きをどうぞ [Coup d'état is a French word used ubiquitously.]の続きを読む

テーマ:日記 - ジャンル:日記

1. 2020/12/11(金) 16:03:19|
2. Diary
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