The 2025 road season was the cycling summer of breaking contracts and challenging the way the sport has functioned and operated for decades. From Remco Evenepoel to Juan Ayuso, and Derek Gee to Cian Uijtdebroeks (again), the once-sacred contract has been ripped apart on a number of occasions, upending the rules and laws that govern the sport. In the wake of the chaos is the sport’s governing body, the increasingly powerless International Cycling Union (UCI), as more and more it is becoming apparent that its rules and wishes butt up against the realities of European employment laws which often contradict the UCI’s and favour freedom of movement. 

“It’s a little bit underground, but there is indeed a system of riders moving from one team to another where there is financial remuneration. It’s not like in football where there is a clear transfer system, but cycling definitely now has a transfer market,” Dries Smets, senior vice president of the Wasserman agency, told Escape Collective. Wasserman represents Lotte Kopecky, Julian Alaphilippe and Tim Merlier, among other pros.

Escape spoke with half a dozen agents and several WorldTour managers for this story to get an understanding of how cycling’s employment landscape has taken such a dramatic twist, and to paint a picture of how rider transfers could look in the not-too-distant future. The overwhelming feeling from within the corridors of power, inside team buses, and from the agents who thrash out these contracts via Zoom meetings and in mid-rated European cafes is that change is not only coming but has already arrived. The push now is for a fully regulated system to be put into place. 

This article was published on Escape Collective in October 2025. You can read the full article here.