Professional team budgets are growing year by year: riders and staff earn more, and teams spend more and more on performance, travel, high-altitude camps and every detail that helps them win races and collect UCI ranking points. Cyclingnews analyzed the numbers of the biggest teams to find out where they spend their ever-expanding budgets.
The increase in costs is driven primarily by top-level teams that are buying themselves into success. Teams fighting for the yellow jersey of the Tour de France operate with seasonal budgets of more than 50 million euros.
According to official reports compiled by the UCI and obtained by La Gazzetta dello Sport last winter, the combined budget for all men's WorldTour teams in 2025 was €570 million. This is a sharp increase from €379 million in 2021 and €499 million in 2024.
The average budget for a World Tour team in 2025 was €32 million (€28 million in 2024 and €20 million in 2021). The median was €27 million, excluding UAE Team Emirates-XRG's budget of almost €60 million and Arkea-B&B Hotels' budget of around €17 million.
Around 60% of the teams' budget goes towards salaries for riders and staff. The rest goes towards logistics and vehicles, training camps, high altitude camps, nutrition, special equipment and marketing.
Tadej Pogačar is currently the most successful rider and of course also has the highest salary – his annual salary is estimated at 8 million euros, and with bonuses, the total income could reach almost 10 million euros. Each WorldTour team has several leaders who earn over a million euros per season; some female riders' salaries are also close to this level.
Women's teams generally have much smaller budgets – perhaps only a tenth of those of men – but the pace of growth is much faster, underscoring the rapid development of professional women's cycling and the potential for further growth in budgets and salaries.
According to La Gazzetta dello Sport, 87% of WorldTour teams' revenue comes directly from sponsors. Fortunately, sponsors also get a return on their investment through the teams' naming rights and great visibility, especially at the Tour de France. The business model of professional cycling is fragile, but it usually doesn't lead to huge debts.
When Cyclingnews conducted a one-off sponsorship analysis in 2013, it was calculated that the average WorldTour team earned €75 million worth of media coverage in 2012. Team Sky earned a whopping €465 million in media value after winning the Tour de France with Bradley Wiggins, with 80% of that coming from the Tour de France.
Jonathan Vaughters, CEO of EF Education-EasyPost, the employer of Madis Mihkels, recently released data from the Nielsen agency for 2025, according to which the team generated 98 million euros worth of media coverage during the WorldTour season (84 million in 2024). Ben Healy's stage win and two days in the yellow jersey turned the American team's season from mediocre to successful.
At the top of cycling, behind the multi-million euro budgets and headline-grabbing success, many teams are struggling to survive. The sport's sponsorship-centric model and the hunt for UCI ranking points put teams under intense pressure. The 18-team men's WorldTour can be roughly divided into three groups based on budgets: the rich get richer and the poor stay poorer, making it increasingly difficult for them to compete.
According to data from Escape Collective, the six richest teams accounted for 48% of the total budget in 2024, while the six poorest only accounted for 21%. Some teams receive support from sovereign wealth funds or national sponsors, while others rely entirely on private donors, which exacerbates inequality.
There are so-called super teams such as UAE Team Emirates-XRG, Visma-Lease a Bike, Lidl-Trek, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe and Ineos Grenadiers, which are expected to be joined by Decathlon CMA CGM in 2026. All of them will have budgets exceeding 40 million euros by 2026.
The second tier consists of teams like EF Education-EasyPost, Movistar, Alpecin-Premier Tech and Soudal-QuickStep, with budgets of around €30 million. They are followed by teams trying to avoid relegation from the WorldTour – such as Jayco AlUla, Picnic PostNL and Lotto Intermarché – with budgets of less than €25 million.
In recent years, the number of ProTeams has decreased, but the budgets of those that remain have increased significantly. Tudor Pro Cycling and Pinarello-Q36.5 have raised the level and level of spending of ProTeams; the average budget by 2025 is close to 10 million euros. However, some smaller ProTeams operate with half that amount and depend on free passes to the Grand Tours to survive. The new UCI rules allow only ProTeams that are in the top 30 in the world rankings to be invited to the Grand Tours. 
An in-depth look at Visma-Lease a Bike's revenues and expenses
A recent report by Money in Sport on Visma-Lease a Bike's finances revealed where the team gets its money and where it spends it. Similar analyses have been done on the Inrng blog about Decathlon and Ineos Grenadiers.
Money in Sport has taken a close look at the 2024 accounts of Visma-Lease a Bike's management company. It has emerged that Yellow B Cycling is now jointly owned by team manager Richard Plugge and Dutch billionaire Robert van der Wallen. The latter sold his Brand Loyalty company for nearly a billion euros and then founded L-Founders of Loyalty.
In 2024, Visma-Lease a Bike's revenue was 52 million euros, but the loss was 6.1 million euros. The costs associated with the sale of the team will add another 1 million euros per year to the balance sheet over the next ten years.
72% of the total revenue came from sponsors such as Visma, Lease a Bike, Škoda, Cervélo, Jumbo supermarkets, SRAM and Rabobank. Of the cash revenue, 37.3 million euros was pure cash and 9.6 million euros was barter, i.e. non-monetary value (e.g. bikes and vehicles). In 2024, 4.1 million euros were charged to depreciation and amortization.
Other revenues included €1.8 million from marketing and fan base (e.g. team fan club), €1.2 million from partnerships and events, €800,000 from competition participation, €500,000 from equipment sold at the end of the season, and €500,000 from competition prizes.
The team's operating expenses amounted to 58.7 million euros in 2024. Labor costs were 32.9 million euros, or 56% of total revenue. 2.6 million were spent on competition and training camps, 1.9 million on partnerships and events, 1.1 million on the vehicle fleet, 800,000 on materials and nutrition, and 3.9 million euros on other operating expenses.
Visma-Lease a Bike declined to comment on the details of its budget, but stressed that the €6.1 million loss includes investments and annual depreciation and amortization costs. The Dutch team has a larger budget than some rivals, but they also run a very successful junior team and a women's WorldTour team, which won Paris-Roubaix and the Tour de France Femmes in 2025 with Pauline Ferrand-Prévot.
It is said that big teams spend an average of around €400,000 a year on high-altitude camps, with coaches, sports directors and even team chefs also involved. Visma-Lease a Bike has long believed in the benefits of mountain training, and in 2024 spent six times as much on it. While at Movistar, Matteo Jorgenson once complained that most of his salary was spent on high-altitude camps, diet and personal support. At Visma-Lease a Bike and most other teams, these costs are now part of the employment contract.
Teams registered in France and Belgium are required by national labor laws to hire many drivers on an employment contract rather than as self-employed individuals, and therefore pay more taxes and social security contributions.
Other teams pay drivers and staff as subcontractors, which means they pay the necessary taxes themselves. This allows teams to offer higher gross salaries and drivers to save on taxes by living in places like Monaco or Andorra. This system increases labor costs by about 35%, but it ensures pensions and access to state benefits. 
Cycling millionaires and ever-larger teams
Drivers and staff salaries logically make up the lion's share of any team's budget. Fortunately, success and big wins bring enormous media value - each of the 30 drivers creates value that far exceeds their salary costs.
According to 2024 data, UAE Team Emirates-XRG spent 27.3 million euros on wages – by far the most. Tadej Pogačar’s 8 million euros annual salary (contract valid until 2030) makes him the highest-paid rider on the WorldTour. For comparison, Jonas Vingegaard earns around 5 million euros per year.
A sprinter who wins stages in the Grand Tours earns around 1.5 million euros a year, a top Tour de France assistant nearly a million euros, and a lesser-known WorldTour assistant at least 200,000 euros. According to La Gazzetta dello Sport, the average salary of a rider with a contract is 350,000 euros, while that of a subcontractor is 630,000 euros before pension and insurance costs.
Mads Pedersen is believed to earn €2.3 million, Wout van Aert €2.5 million and Mathieu van der Poel around €3.5 million per year. When Isaac del Toro was hired in 2024, UAE Team Emirates-XRG reportedly offered him €2 million.
Among the men, more than 70 riders earn more than a million euros a year. All of the riders on the UAE Team Emirates-XRG Tour de France are likely to earn seven figures. Super teams spend far more than their weaker WorldTour rivals, and it is this financial power that is increasingly driving the best riders to join the top teams. Big teams spend around 60% of their budget on wages, while smaller teams spend only 35-40%, as fixed costs are similar.
Budget ceiling – for losers or essential for survival?
The rapid growth of some teams' budgets is outpacing inflation and testing the limits of sponsorship. Some see the arrival of new major sponsors as a sign of the sport's good health, while others fear an ever-narrowing pyramid that could damage competitiveness and interest in the WorldTour.
Some parties are calling for a salary or budget cap, as in US sports, to strengthen competition. Others favor a free-market approach.
The UCI approved in principle a budget cap for the men's and women's WorldTour for 2026, but it was not implemented. UCI president David Lappartient claimed that teams voted against it, wanting a broader reform.
"We've reached a point where three teams dominate and it doesn't make the sport exciting," said Jayco AlUla manager Brent Copeland.
Leading agent Alex Carera is against the budget cap, saying: "The budget cap is for losers!" He says it is necessary to help other teams find new big sponsors and make cycling an attractive product. "Cycling is a beautiful field, but it needs to solve its problems. If everyone works together, we can see teams with budgets of 100 million euros and everyone earns more," Carera concluded.
