• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, August 10, 2011

 What would you give to be associated with an international professional sports team that brought in $400 million in media value over four years?

Is this the New York Yankees? The Green Bay Packers? Manchester United? No. Try an international professional road cycling team, the San Luis Obispo, Calif.-based HTC-Highroad, which has garnered almost 500 wins in four years. Oh yeah, the team is disbanding at the end of the year because it can't get a sponsor.

Bob Stapleton, the owner of HTC-Highroad, doesn't know why. He says cycling brings a lot of value to marketers. I'm guessing NASCAR teams and European soccer teams might make a similar case -- especially since those teams and sporting organizations can give marketers big front and center exposure in key places on uniforms.

Cycling teams are known by the names of their major sponsors. It is a sport where major backers can spend $14 million to $16 million to support a team per year.

So let's do the media math : $100 million in media value a year coming from a $15 million media/marketing investment -- the total yearly budget to operate a team. That sounds pretty good. Every time a journalist mentions a team like Stapleton's (such as in this column!) means some media value. And when that happens on TV -- with the big signage on cycling jerseys -- that means lots.

Stapleton has other data -- the cost-per-thousand media impressions, called CPM (different from the mostly TV-minded media metric, the cost-per-thousand TV viewers, also known as CPM).

Stapleton says cycling has been at $1.25 CPM. Convert this to Euros and Stapleton says cycling is still a good buy. Earlier this year, he said, "Formula One teams were about 25-30 euros per CPM...and then football [soccer] was about 35 [euros]. If we look at our results [cycling] last year we were down in the 20-30 cents per thousand range."

Sounds like a good deal.

But is this the kind of marketing big companies look for? Also consider that a lot of that media value has been in Europe, and to a lesser extent in North America -- though growing in other markets. So a marketer needs to take into account those considerations. The U.S.-based team HTC-Highroad has been backed by Taiwan-headquartered phonemaker HTC. In previous years it had been Portland, Ore.-based apparel manufacturer Columbia Sportswear.

But what would happen if the Dallas Mavericks, New York Yankees or Green Bay Packers actually went out of business because their entire financial set-up was controlled by one or two major sponsorships?

Many sports don't have to go through this.

Jonathan Vaughters, manager of another strong U.S.-based cycling team, Garmin-Cervelo, which is jointly co-sponsored by the Kansas-based sports instrument/device maker Garmin and Canadian bike maker Cervelo, said things need to change in the cycling world: "Why is the business model of cycling so ridiculous that no matter how successful a team is or its great history, it's dependent on a sponsorship. If the sport wants to improve across the board it has to change and have a more stable business model."

And that means cycling team owners need to have a piece of the TV rights -- just like other professional sports teams do around the world. This, in turn means, athletes need a piece as well.

Where does the cycling TV money go? To big event promoters -- operators of the Tour de France, the Giro d'italia, the Vuelta a Espana, and, in the U.S., the Amgen Tour of California, the biggest stage race in North America.

Truth is you can go to a cycling event and not pay one dime to see it -- unlike watching virtually any other sport in the world. Still, cycling event sponsors subject you to signage and other marketing stuff.

Now HTC-Highroad athletes need to look for other jobs. That includes its high-profile sprinter from the U.K., Marc Cavendish, who says he already has a team signed up. No problem there. But Cavendish reminds us about the importance of marketers.

Tweeting his response to the team's demise, he says: "So funny how easily people forget that @HTC SAVED this team 2 years ago. Shouldn't you hate EVERY company that DOESN'T come into cycling?"

That might not be the right approach. But some sports executives may understand the frustration.