As the fallout from the Lance Armstrong doping affair continues to gain momentum it is easy to think that road cycling, as a sport and a commercial ecosystem, faces an uncertain future.



In the wake of the United States Anti-Doping Agency's (USADA) investigation into 'the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme that sport has ever seen', Dutch financial institution Rabobank has withdrawn its long-standing support of its top-level cycling team, and Skins, a clothing manufacturer and international cycling sponsor, has launched a UK£1.25 million action against the sport's global governing body, the UCI.



But away from the eye of the storm, the commercial future looks bright for cycling, as indicated by a spate of recent cycling deals involving major international sports rights agencies.



IMG, the global media company that currently promotes the Tour de Suisse, is believed to be on the verge of announcing a three-year deal that would see it sell international broadcast rights to the major one-day races that fall under the 'Flanders Classics' corporate umbrella, namely the Omloop Het Neuwsblad, Dwars Door Vlaanderen, Gent-Wevelgum, Scheldeprijs, Brabantse Pijl, and the Ronde Van Vlaanderen, where a route change this year was undertaken with commercial growth in mind.



Ioris Francini, IMG's incredibly astute head of sales, clearly sees growth potential in top-level cycling, having sealed a long-term deal with RCS Sport for the Giro d'Italia and other major Italian races earlier in the year.

Francini was certainly busy at the recent Sportel sports broadcast rights market in Monaco.



As was Nicole Gruber, the UCI's commercial manager who has just put pen to paper on a landmark deal of her own. Infront Sports & Media, another agency titan, signed a four-year media rights deal for the UCI's major events in September.



While the financial details have not been revealed, Infront, which exploits the commercial potential of Swiss Cycling through a joint venture called InfrontRingier and is due to take over the promotion of the Tour de Suisse from IMG in 2015, has guaranteed the UCI a significant increase on its previous distribution deal with the EBU.



It is not just the major Europe-based agencies that are scrabbling for cycling. Total Sports Asia (TSA), which has offices in Malaysia, Singapore, China and India, also sees the sport as a potential growth area, an endorsement, in itself, of the sport's collective effort to grow internationally of late.



"We’ve gone a bit into cycling now, which seems to be, funnily enough, a flavour of the month for some of the other agencies as well," TSA chief executive Marcus Luer told SportsPro during Sportel in October.

"It seems to be a bit of a hot sport"





"We have looked at it for quite a while, done a few deals already and now you see Infront in it, IMG coming in – I guess we all had the same idea that there is an opportunity.



"It seems to be a bit of a hot sport. There’s a lot of talk in Asian cities about making them more cycling-friendly. If you take away the mess on one end with Lance Armstrong and the stuff you read about, there is a lot of good, positive things about the cycling world as well. We’re working with the new tour in India, Tour de India. We found them a title sponsor as well as working with them on a few other things, so that’s quite exciting – the first big cycling event in India."