Look around the Tour de France and you’ll see 38 sponsors – some huge international companies – lending their name to the 23 competing teams. The collective annual budget of the teams is, according to an official UCI document seen by Cycling Weekly, in excess of €600m. Top-tier cycling, on the face of it, looks richer, healthier and more financially sustainable than ever before.

But those headline figures don’t tell the full story. One team manager at the race told Cycling Weekly that 15 of those teams are currently searching for new title sponsors who will invest significant seven-figure sums, and no one else who CW spoke to disputed or was surprised by that number.

Indeed, due to sponsors withdrawing their funding and struggles to find new sponsors, Arkéa-B&B Hotels look almost certain to close operations at the end of this season; Intermarché-Wanty and Lotto are set to merge, leaving around 30 riders and dozens of staff unemployed; Alpecin-Deceuninck, the team of Mathieu van der Poel, can’t find a replacement for the exiting Deceunick; Ineos Grenadiers continue to search for additional funds, despite a new partnership with TotalEnergies; and CW understands that Quick-Step’s two-decade-plus relationship with the Belgian team of Remco Evenepoel is at risk of ending.

This article was published by Cycling Weekly during the 2025 Tour de France. You can read the full article here.