ASO vs. UCI: Condemned to repeat history?

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Can cycling avoid becoming a total wreck?(Image credit: AFP)

News feature, July 4, 2008

There is a very sad reality to the current political climate of international cycling – it's all been done before. I'm not talking about the barrage of threats in the UCI Vs. Grand Tours battle which is annually followed by an 11th hour truce before the Tour de France starts each July. No, this battle – from beginning through to resolution – has been fought within other sporting frameworks for many years.

At the heart of cycling's political bickering is money. Television rights from events such as ASO's Tour de France, and its newly acquired stake in the Vuelta a España, is a multi-billion dollar industry. While UCI's claim of wanting to protect the rights of those employed within the industry is true to an extent, its desire to gain a share of the financial windfall of television rights has long been one of the sticking points in negotiations with the sport's biggest promoter.

The first comparison comes from the United States of America, where the seemingly impregnable fort of open wheeler racing has belittled itself due to conflict. The split between governing organisation Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) and Indianapolis Speedway owner Tony George, started a 12-year feud that crippled open wheeler racing; at the same time, NASCAR sped through to claim the limelight and develop one of the world's largest sporting economies in the process.

In the mid-1990's, CART racing was struggling to keep up with the emergent NASCAR circuit which was stealing much if its thunder. CART owners got into a dispute with Tony George, who owned the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the discipline's equivalent of the Tour de France: the Indianapolis 500. George wanted to make changes to the sport to compete with NASCAR, but protests from the league led him to form his own, which he dubbed the Indy Racing League (IRL). IRL later became IndyCar, while CART became ChampCar but though the names changed, the battle did not end.

This is where the parallels with cycling start to ring warning bells: The UCI seems intent on pursuing the ProTour concept without the Grand Tours or most of the Monuments of cycling like Paris-Roubaix, instead focusing its efforts on globalization. Its pricey license will require teams to compete in non-traditional cycling countries like Russia, but the pressure to race a full non-ProTour European schedule, complete with three Grand Tours, will still be high.

A similar dilemma, further complicated by the competition from NASCAR, nearly collapsed open wheel racing in the US. So what did the IRL and Champ Car do? They merged! After splitting in 1995, the two came back together in February, 2008, after George made an irresistable offer to ChampCar teams this January. IndyCar stood victorious, albeit a shadow of its former self, while the CART/ChampCar organisation was placed into administration for a second, and final, time.

Just like the ASO and UCI, FOCA went to war with the International Automobile Federation (FIA, then FISA) - auto racing's governing body, for a number of reasons, and even launched a failed attempt to create its own rival championship. The situation descended into boycotts and protests until finally Goodyear, a major sponsor, threatened to withdraw entirely from Formula One, an event which would have been commercially disastrous for the sport.

In F1, there is a commercial rights holder appointed to manage the sport's top series - the Formula One Group. For the ProTour concept to work, the UCI would have to relinquish any aspirations of being a commercial rights manager itself. The Swiss organisation would have to accept a role – as it was always destined for in the pre-commercialised world – as a body which sets and governs sporting regulations. That's it.

There is another resounding problem with the situation cycling faces when compared to motorsport. When Ecclestone took hold of Formula 1's commercial fate, individual promoters were struggling to captialise on the product it had – especially when it came to television rights. This is of significant difference to cycling's positioning, where ASO is having little trouble selling its product at a tidy rate – another reason why any unified front needs to have heavy ASO involvement to work.

ASO's cards include some of the sport's most famed races like the Tour, Paris-Nice, Paris-Roubaix, La Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, as well as its holding in the Vuelta. In the UCI's camp the power card is its position as gatekeeper to the Olympic Games, something ChampCar – given motor racing isn't an Olympic sport - didn't have the benefit of. Despite the importance of being an Olympic Champion to riders, it's a card with little value at the negotiating table.

The greatest problem with the UCI's power card is it needs to demonstrate a willingness to use it in order to show its worth. However such an attempt could have dire consequences. If the UCI moved to sanction riders from contesting a break-away series, with omission from the Olympic Games as the punishment, national bodies would be up in arms that their top riders couldn't start the Olympic Games.

ASO's move to have its events operate under the French Cycling Federation's governance has been marketed by the UCI as a move by ASO to create a new international governing body. The notion, however, has a flaw. Why would a company which makes billions from events management want to get involved in a political market that has little – if any - return on investment? Instead, all ASO seeks is someone who will provide it with a rule book to run its events by – without trying to influence the direction of its assets or take an unreasonable slice of its cake.

Of course, UCI could attempt to re-create the Tour's success. CART pursued a similar path with its creation of the U.S. 500 to rival the history-rich Indianapolis 500 after the series split. So ambitious, or perhaps naïve, were the organisers that the first U.S. 500 was run on the same day as the Indianapolis 500. It was a flop. While the name was retained by another event on the calendar, the original head-to-head with the discipline's great race never took place again.