Bradley Wiggins has offered the most detailed insight so far into the financial troubles that led to a declaration of bankruptcy, suggesting the issues took hold during his racing career when he admits assuming money “was going to be there forever.”
Speaking on WEDŪ's The Forward w/Lance Armstrong podcast, after being a guest commentator throughout WEDŪ's Tour de France coverage, Wiggins said “One of the things I regret is I never paid attention to my financial affairs when I was racing.
“Which is one of the things that happens to athletes you know, you make a lot of money and if you haven't got your eyes on it, people take advantage.”
Wiggins claims he now recognises that his oversight as a rider played a part in his reportedly dire financial situation. “But I realise now the importance… I should have paid more attention to it,” he said. “Because you get to the point then where I'm in this situation now but because of the mess that's been created, and because it's been rumbling on for quite a few years now this hasn't just happened overnight.”
Specifically, Wiggins suggested that the financial structure through which his businesses were constructed made him liable for losses beyond his knowledge.
Company structure and debts
“I was made bankrupt through a company,” Wiggins explained.
“I had three companies – my image rights company that handles all my image rights, endorsement deals.
“So connected to that I joined XIX Entertainment, Simon Fuller, in 2014. And they set up various joint ventures with various clubs and companies, drinks suppliers, all different things, whatever endorsements.
“Off the bottom of that, the third company was a cycling team called New Cycling Limited, which was Team Wiggins, which was a team that was set up to facilitate the national track program, which was team pursuit, my last cycling career goal in Rio. That team should never have made a loss, it should never have made a profit, it was purely to pay the riders of the team, their wages and handle the budget.
“Now that that was done, as we see now through the lawyers, that was done purposefully. So the top company would always take the hit if there was any trouble with the other ones.
"They should have been separate companies."
According to Companies House Wiggins has been a director of four companies - New Cycling Limited, WIGGINS RIGHTS LIMITED, WSW Cycling Limited and TWOFOLD FIRST SERVICES LLP. The latter is a Tax advisory partnership which Wiggins resigned from in 2013, while WSW Cycling Limited was dissolved in 2013.
Wiggins claims that Team Wiggins overspent against a planned budget of £650,000. “In year one, for six riders it spent a million so I had to prop that team up with my own money from Wiggins Rights," the Tour de France winner explained.
“So there was a lot of money coming down from the top company to prop up these ventures that weren't making any money,” he said, while also pinpointing management costs as a source of financial loss.
“The top company took the biggest hits when it ran up a debt of nearly one and a half million, which got given to me as a director's loan. But I wasn't the director at the time and I had to be made a director to take the loan without my knowledge. I was still riding my bike at the time. So it's a complete mess and I wasn't aware of this mess until I was deep into retirement."
Sky employment and tabloid intrusion
On top of the impact of financial losses that subsidiaries bore, Wiggins revealed details of an employment case which reclassified him as an employee.
“When I left [Team] Sky, because I was a British resident, I never lived abroad – the tax laws changed,” Wiggins said.
“And when I started with Team Sky, as most cyclists, I was self-employed with an image rights company. Towards the end of my tenure with Team Sky, they were involved in a two-year case with HMRC for everyone who worked at Sky to fight whether they were deemed employed by Sky.
“I was acting as a witness for Sky in that case against HMRC and spent an enormous amount of money on legal fees because ... if I was deemed employed, I'd have had to back pay taxes and National Insurance etc.”
Unfortunately for Wiggins, he claims the case found him to be an employee. “In the end, I was deemed employed so I had to go back five years and pay all the taxes and every bits and bobs and pieces. And Sky knew that was happening from the day I signed with them.”
While the tax liability and company structure may not explain Wiggins’ financial situation in full, he argues that everything will come to light, “This will all come out in the wash over due process in the next few years. It's just going to be a hell of a headache to get right.”
In recent months, countless stories have emerged detailing Wiggins’ apparent destitution, with some alleging he was ‘couch-surfing’. Wiggins was quick to dispel those claims.
“That's where the sensationalism came,” he said.
The Olympic champion went on to criticise the role of tabloids in what he described as “harassment of every member of my family and trying to dig up dirt and stories and things like this just to add weight to the fact that they think you're done and dusted.”
He detailed an intense focus on his downfall, alongside a suggestion that journalists had an inside knowledge of his financial affairs. ”They were aware of it before it even went on the insolvency register, which shows that there must have been someone inside that leaked it to the press.”
Wiggins believed his situation would reach a positive resolution despite the negative press he has received.
”It will be alright,” he said. “But that's the first time I've commented on it since that happened.”
