Sir Dave Brailsford has six months to find a backer but cycling’s top team need big bucks and China may be the answer

As Team Sky’s sponsorship enters its final season after nine years at the peak of professional cycling one thing is certain: unless Sir Dave Brailsford announces a replacement backer this side of June, the vultures will circle ever closer to the ground. They will already be on the wing after the announcement on Wednesday that Sky will end its backing at the close of 2019.

There is speculation that because some of their most valuable riders have contracts that last beyond the end of next year, backing may already be in place. It is equally likely that the contracts are long term, as the management had no option but to think that way and possibly little inkling the team may shut up shop, and that possible penalties for early termination of those contracts may be tied to the current sponsorship.

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Riders’ agents will already be considering the implications for the prices they can ask for their clients and the benefit to their own wallets of Team Sky’s disappearance. The loss of the British team could affect the entire structure of cycling because its budget is so vast, the wages it pays so large and the number of top riders it employs so disproportionate.

The Tour de France is the sport’s market place and, unless Brailsford lands a backer before July’s race, the chances of Chris Froome, Geraint Thomas or Egan Bernal winning it will be diminished. There will be declarations of loyalty, of “doing it one last time for the team” but cyclists tend to live by the motto of Ibsen’s trolls: “Be true to yourself and to hell with the world.”

Team Sky live on the edge at the Tour, as Thomas’s recently published memoir confirmed. Four weeks in the bubble during which the team’s stars and their staff negotiate in secret with other teams – accompanied by leaks and speculation in the media – could take that to a new level.

One of Team Sky’s greatest strengths has been to avoid some of the instability inherent in the sport because its backing has been so long term. It has been one of the much-derided “marginal gains”. But the pressure to find a new team for 2020 will already be weighing on riders from the minute the 2019 season dawns with the Tour Down Under on 15 January.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Chris Froome on his way to winning the 2015 Tour de France: Team Sky won six of the last seven races. Photograph: Stefano Rellandini/REUTERS

As for the chances of finding that backer, cycling sponsorship is a gamble that depends largely on a team finding the right individual in the right company at the right time. Being the best in your field does nothing to change that. It is delicately ironic but not entirely a coincidence that the two longest sponsors are the national lotteries of France and Belgium, backers of the FDJ and Lotto-Soudal squads.

There is a constant churn of squads and sponsors, and those that remain sustainable are the exceptions: AG2R in France and Quickstep Floors in Belgium are the only big backers with more than 10 years in the sport. Team Sky are already a rarity in that they have lasted so long with no major change and a budget running at several times that of some of their rivals.

One problem for a backer is image given Team Sky carry an epic amount of baggage. Nine years ago the team were formed on a platform of anti-doping and racing “clean”. There have been no positive tests but the Jiffy bag controversy, the TUEs issued to Bradley Wiggins and the damning report by the House of Commons DCMS select committee have left the team in a less certain and more difficult place.

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They are a team whose chief had a public war of words with the head of the UCI, and whose riders toured France to a chorus of boos. The question of the alleged delivery of testosterone patches to the Manchester velodrome for the team’s then doctor, Richard Freeman, in 2011 – reportedly owing to an error by the supplier – remains unexplained, although Freeman, who denies any wrongdoing, is due to appear at a GMC tribunal in February that may offer clarification.

Reopening that running sore may deter corporates with an eye on their image. Another factor that will weigh heavily is Brexit. Given the uncertainty around trading conditions with Europe and the consequences on investment decisions by UK companies, a large-scale British backer will be harder to find. It is more likely to be the kind of sponsor that has come to the fore in recent years: national backers from the east. China has yet to invest heavily in cycling but it can be only a matter of time.

In securing a sponsorship by a corporation that will have lasted 10 years Brailsford pulled off as unlikely a feat in cycling as winning the Tour de France multiple times. Historically sponsors have tended to linger for half a dozen seasons at most, establishing brand name recognition relatively quickly and then hanging on while executives deem it worthwhile.

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Few major teams retain the same sponsor for 10 years or more – those Belgian and French lotteries excepted – none have found a single replacement that has lasted another decade.

History and economic reality are against Brailsford. If he can pull it off, it will be a far more unlikely feat than winning the Tour de France six times in seven seasons with three different riders. Then again 10 years ago no one thought that was possible.