The idea of introducing a spectator ticket for road cycling has been around for years, but has yet to be implemented. Charging for tickets is common in trekking and cyclo-cross, and there are some who believe that this should be extended to road cycling as well.
Tour de France organizers are not backing the idea of fans paying for access to key stages of the race, but former top rider and team manager Jérôme Pineau says it could be considered.
Pineau cited next year's Tour de France's double climb of Alpe d'Huez on two consecutive days as an example, seeing it as an ideal opportunity to introduce a ticketing system. He suggested it could help shore up the teams' fragile financial position. "Why not make people pay to access the last few kilometres of the mountains?" Pineau asked rhetorically. "If we charged people for the last five kilometres, it would bring in a very significant amount of revenue for the teams without affecting the race."
VIP tents are already a common sight in cyclo-cross and some one-day races, such as the Tour of Flanders, which will charge over €700 for the most expensive spot in 2026. In 2023, Visma–Lease a Bike team manager Richard Plugge suggested that fans could pay a much more modest €10 for restricted-access mountain sections. He saw it more as a deposit to help prevent chaos and crashes than as a source of revenue. “Maybe we should charge €10 and get it back if nothing happens when we come down,” he said.
In recent months, there has also been support for the idea of holding more races on circuits to reduce disruption caused by protests, which, for example, caused interruptions or cancellations on several stages of the Vuelta a España.
A representative for the Tour's organising body, ASO, quickly dismissed the idea of charging for tickets, arguing that charging would go against cycling's "access for all" principle. "By its very nature, cycling is free for spectators and introducing a ticket system is absolutely not on the agenda," said Pierre-Yves Thoualt, deputy director of the ASO cycling department.
However, long-time AG2R La Mondiale team principal Vincent Lavenu noted that the recent collapse of the Arkéa–B&B Hotels team after the departure of its sponsors, and the ever-widening budget gap between the largest and smallest WorldTour teams, are making it increasingly difficult for some teams to remain competitive. He said that more reliable revenue models need to be found in the long term, or even consider introducing a salary cap.
"There are now teams that are state-sponsored or backed by giant companies with unlimited budgets, and others that are struggling to keep sponsors and whose supporters are less and less willing to open their wallets," Lavenu said. "Cycling is too dependent on sponsors. The teams don't benefit from television rights, like in football, or from ticket sales."
The question is, will the competition organizers share ticket revenue with the clubs or not?
