"A percentage of those image rights should go to the teams and riders" - Luke Rowe proposes changes to cycling's TV coverage and laments emergence of Veloviewer

With his twelve year stint in the professional peloton coming to an end at the end of the 2024 season, INEOS Grenadiers stalwart Luke Rowe is set to join the performance staff at Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale Team for 2025 as a sports director.

In conversation with Rouleur though, the experienced Welshman has answered a series of interesting questions with typically engaging answers from the road captain-turned-podcaster-turned-sports director. One particular question was how Rowe would change cycling for the better if he could. "You go to the Tour de France, and they say: ‘You’re going to ride your bikes for three weeks, you’re going to fund the riders and everything else, we’ll film it and publicise it, we’re going make loads of money and we’re not going to pay you a single percentage of the money we sell the footage for’. A percentage of those image rights should go to the teams and riders," he responds thoughtfully. "It’s a big way for the sport to take a step forward, and the only way to improve the sport."

Some of the more modern changes to racing in the latter half of Rowe's career haven't been as well received by the 34-year-old though. "Veloviewer. Everyone knows everything nowadays – you can click through an entire parcour and see everything if you spend enough time," he explains. "But pre-Veloviewer, you didn’t know what was coming, and you had to be smarter. You’d know the wind was coming from the right, but you wouldn’t know if it was exposed or not, so you’d be looking at the hedgeline, for forests, for residential areas. You were rewarded as a road captain for doing a better job without Veloviewer, but now, even if you’re not switched on, you can click through Veloviewer and know everything."

"Pre-Veloviewer, in races in Holland, you’d be like, ‘Watch out for Visma, they’re the local guys, they know the roads and know where to make a move’," he adds. "But now that doesn’t count for anything because everyone knows everything."

As mentioned, in 2025 and beyond, retirement from racing and a career as a sports director looms for Rowe at Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale. As such, Rouleur ask: What makes a good DS? "Calmness under pressure. The peloton is a really nervous, hostile place, everyone has a place to be and is on edge, and if a DS is screaming, it’s only inflating those emotions. What you want to do is calm riders down, and that’s why I always said Nico Portal was the best DS I ever worked with and I believe, potentially, ever existed," Rowe answers. "He’d get the point across, but he had such a calming way of speaking and dealing with people. Even if it was all going wrong, he had a way of making you feel positive about yourself."