The Dutch WorldTour team Team Visma | Lease a Bike has to look for a new title sponsor. As the Dutch magazine Wielerflits reports, the previous main sponsor Visma wants to withdraw from its position as title sponsor. The Norwegian software manufacturer is no longer prepared to support the constantly growing budgets required to run a top team in professional cycling. However, the company will remain a supporter of the team, albeit in a reduced role. According to the Dutch magazine, team manager Richard Plugge has already begun talks with potential new sponsors and has received interest from several multinational companies. The search for a new main sponsor now poses an additional challenge for the team, which has already faced a series of setbacks since the beginning of the year.
Difficult start to the season weighs on the team
The first six weeks of the 2025 season went anything but according to plan for the Dutch racing team: one piece of bad news followed the next. Wout van Aert broke his ankle in a cyclo-cross race shortly after the turn of the year, and just one week later Simon Yates surprisingly announced his immediate retirement from professional cycling. At the end of January, Jonas Vingegaard crashed during a training ride - apparently because a fan was chasing him.and therefore had to postpone the start of his season due to illness. The latest negative news so far was the unexpected departure of Tim Heemskerk, the long-serving coach who had been in charge of Vingegaard for several years.
Big sponsors equal success?
However, it seems questionable whether Visma's departure can be compensated for so easily. Salaries are rising, as are travelling expenses and accommodation costs. If a cycling team wants to survive at the top of the world today, it must have a major sponsor. The UAE Emirates - XRG team has been leading the way for years. Riders are bought in on a large scale, creating an extremely dominant team. In the recent past, however, more and more racing teams seem to be jumping on this bandwagon. In 2023, the supermarket giant Lidl at the highest level of cycling, Just one year later, it was Red Bull. Since this season, in addition to the sporting goods discounter Decathlon, the The shipping company CMA CGM is also on board the French team. The surprise was limited when the team went on a shopping spree this winter and landed one top transfer after another. One thing seems clear: if a team wants to be among the front runners, it must have a financially strong sponsor.
As long as the money is right
Even though professional cycling teams are economically heavily dependent on their sponsors, they have a clear moral responsibility when selecting them. After all, cycling is not just a business, but also a social role model: teams stand for values such as fairness, endurance and team spirit - and therefore have a particularly strong influence on young viewers in front of the television and along the route. If they enter into partnerships with companies that are associated with environmental destruction, exploitation or other unethical business practices, they undermine their own credibility and damage trust in sport. Especially at a time when sustainability and social responsibility are increasingly coming into focus, teams should carefully consider what their jersey stands for.
Leon Weidner
Working student
