One of the beauties of pro cycling is its roadside accessibility. There are few sports where standing centimetres away from the pros is even possible, let alone at no cost to your wallet. There’s no Ticketmaster price gouging, season tickets or shady ticket resales. Instead, you pitch up a camping chair and wait eagerly by the curb until the peloton rolls by.
However, in a sport that is supported by a fragile financial model driven largely by commercial sponsors, ticket sales appear an untapped source of income for race organisers, and in that sense they are lagging behind their counterparts in rival sports. Talk of touting roadside spots has been persisting for the past year – in truth it’s been a discussion point for decades – but the idea was tabled afresh last week when former pro and Italian race organiser Pippo Pozzato told SpazioCiclismo that ticketing ‘is the only solution we have to survive in the future. We are the only sport that does not have a model with ticketing.’
Echoing this, former B&B Hotels KTM team boss Jérôme Pineau told French radio station RMC that the Tour de France organisers should ‘privatise the last five kilometres of Alpe d’Huez. Let’s charge admission, let’s have VIPs, let’s create something to make money.’
Are they onto something? Is the sport selling itself short? Should cycling be ticketed, or should we keep our niche as the world’s biggest free-to-spectate sport?
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How can the sport be ticketed?
Xavier Pereyron
There’s very little precedent for tickets in road cycling. Yes, track and cyclocross are ticketed, but roadsides have been kept free to access over the years as one of the cornerstone appeals of witnessing the sport live.
Monitoring a 200km course and checking for tickets at every metre is obviously completely unfeasible. Instead, the idea is to monetise prime locations on the route. At Pozzato’s Veneto Classic, spectators were charged €10 to watch the peloton tackle the Tisa climb, which delivered maximum value as the ascent was tackled on six occasions that afternoon. In its first ticketed year, just over 700 spectators paid to access the roadside on the 400m ramp, generating a modest €7,000 in revenue.
‘The dream is to reach a thousand people and start increasing the price of the ticket and the quality of the service,’ Pozzato said, comparing the cost of a bike race to that of watching a non-league football match.
OneCycling, the holding name for the previously speculated Saudi-backed cycling league, has also suggested the idea of ticketed sections and VIP packages in prime locations. When the story was picked up last winter, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe chief Ralph Denk believed the idea would provide a better ‘return on investment’.
He’s correct on that point, but when it came to the general public the prospect of ticketed circuits was met with widespread disdain at first. The question remains: in a sport so entrenched in tradition, would cycling be simply catching up with the times and ensuring its future by adopting a more direct financial model, or foiling a crucial part of its identity in the first place?
Revenue generation
Xavier Pereyron
Currently, races accrue revenue from a mix of sources. The main contributors are race sponsors, with local authorities chipping in to host the race in the case of large-scale events. TV rights are also an important form of income, but there are also some major costs when dealing with a bike race. Just consider road closures, police, security, transfer logistics, hotels, prize money and broadcasting equipment. It’s not cheap, and roadside fans are accessing the results of all of that free of charge.
The issue is more pressing than ever at a time when there’s clearly a cash-flow issue in the sport. Races continue to fold, especially in the sport’s lower ranks and women’s scene – notably in the UK and US. Ticketing, therefore, is an obvious way to shore up income. How it would be enforced, on the other hand, is more of a grey area. As mentioned, current suggestions focus on creating ticketed zones in lucrative areas such as key climbs, iconic spots and even race finishes in the case of OneCycling’s model. To keep the effort involved contained and manageable, this is a strategy that makes a lot of sense.
Xavier Pereyron
Let’s use Pineau’s suggestion, as mentioned on RMC’s radio show. In 2022, an estimated 300,000 fans flocked to the 13.8km ascent of Alpe d’Huez. That translates to roughly 21,000 fans per kilometre, meaning there would be around 105,000 people in the final 5km. If they were all charged €10, like at Pozzatto’s Veneto Classic, revenue from Alpe d’Huez ticket sales alone would be just over €1 million (and that’s not accounting for next year’s double ascent-ish).
Or taking Paris-Roubaix as an example, around 20,000 fans line the 2.3km Trouée d’Arenberg on race day. If we use the same hypothetical ticket price, a further €200,000 could be earned through ticket sales alone, with potential to sell food, drink and merchandise in the ticketed zone too. Here’s hoping at least that overpriced hot dogs steer well clear of our dear two-wheeled spectacle.
Given how these things work, it’s likely prices would soar along with demand. It’s simple economics. Prime spots at the Tour de France could be marketed for figures close to those of Premier League football matches. Especially if all tiers of cycling receive some form of ticketing – the Veneto Classic, for example, is a 1.Pro race – prices are bound to fluctuate and increase based on demand and event prestige. As buying tickets to attend cycling events become more normalised, certain levels and premium packages could be thrown in.
Would you like a front row spot at the finish? That’ll be an extra €30, please.
Of course, some degree of price-gouging is the inevitable end product, just as we’ve seen in football, music and other ticketed events. It’s a capitalist Pandora’s box but one that I can only see benefiting race organisers in the long term.
The fan experience
Xavier Pereyron
To be honest, we cycling fans are a little bit spoilt. To get a season ticket for a Premier League team, you’re looking at a four-figure fee. To follow all three Grand Tours, the only costs you’ll need to front are travel and accommodation. Judging from the hoards of caravans at the roadside, many fans simply bypass the latter.
Ignoring our scrimping ways, however, we bring a good atmosphere with us: mountaintop tifosis, seas of flags and a fan experience like no other. Remember, it’s not just for diehard fans. Cycling’s come-one-come-all roadside policy attracts not only keen followers of the sport, but also tourists and those just wanting a slice of the culture.
Together, we create a unique ambience, and ticketed areas are a threat to this important pillar of the sport. Logically, a financial barrier poses a risk to the fan experience and depth of crowds in these proposed ticketed sections. And if those premium spots are flogged at high prices, it’s likely that only a small subsection of cycling fans will be able to spectate in person. In other words, the most well-off benefit while others are priced out.
This would be a drastic shift for cycling, which has always been an accessible sport to watch, particularly for the working class in Europe. If it goes down a ticketed path, the sport would be turning its back on that historical base, where all fans are equal on cycling’s egalitarian roadside.
Rider safety and race security
Harry Talbot
Cycling is perhaps a victim of its success in terms of accessibility. By this I mean that fans can often mob the roads and encroach on the riders in key sections or climbs of major races. There are plenty of case studies for this, from Tadej Pogačar’s stunted attack on the Joux-Plane at the 2023 Tour to Remco Evenepoel’s halted chase at this year’s Lombardia and Chris Froome’s infamous moto shunt on Mont Ventoux.
If we’re clutching at straws here, you could argue that a financial point of entry could thin out the crowds in these honey-pot locations and, in turn, improve rider safety. On a similar note, the extra stewarding and security needs of enforcing the ticketing policy should see additional personnel on hand to keep fans at a safe distance from the rushing pros. If you’re of the view that political protests are a potentially dangerous obstacle for the riders, access could be more carefully controlled in key race locations. As we’ve seen in other sports and cultural domains though, tickets won’t stop protestors.
A byproduct of this roadside segregation, however, could be overcrowding elsewhere, with ticketed sections concentrating fans into non-regulated parts of the course. For example, when fans were moved off the top half of Mont Ventoux in 2016, chaos ensued as the truncated course squashed fans into a more compact area, triggering the Froome running calamity.
Don’t underestimate the potentially disruptive power of a stubborn fan.
A smart idea or a betrayal of values?
Xavier Pereyron
I can’t argue with the rationale behind looking at ticketing in cycling. Races have been struggling to stay afloat for some time now, with the likes of ASO, RCS and Flanders Classics the only ones that seem to be consistently in the black. And in many ways cycling fans should feel privileged to not have to pay €60 to see their favourite pros, which is considered perfectly normal for a Premier League match or a chart-topping popstar.
Ticket sales are a no-brainer in simple cash theory, but in practice, I think it could ignite a financial spiral that fans simply aren’t prepared for. After all, Pozzatto may have opened the bidding at €10 per head, but he’s made it clear his intention is to raise the price. If that’s the approach in the third-tier of pro racing, just imagine what the pricing would be to watch key parts of the Monuments and Grand Tours.
Finances aside, I think there’s a matter of principle to be upheld here. Yes, riding pro-level bikes and wearing fancy kit is far from financially accessible for most fans, but I have always appreciated the universal point of access at road races. Everyone has a right to be at the roadside, no matter how much money you have or how much you care about the sport. I imagine the face of the sport for fans will change quite quickly once hors-catégorie climbs are reserved only for those willing to pay for their handful of seconds seeing Pogačar at close range.
Call me a traditionalist – or a soft egalitarian, if you like – but I can’t see ticketing being able to simply slip into the sport without a fight. While the extra revenue from tickets may seem an immediate bonus, more eyes being drawn to sponsor logos is surely a better focus for the time being. Who knows, by charging for roadside access you may be shutting out a potential future Grand Tour star from ever witnessing the unique thrill of bike racing in the first place.