Finances: Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe's budget of €50 million rivals UAE Team Emirates while Women WorldTour budgets have doubled since 2022

Despite the repeating complaints from some managers that it's becoming increasingly hard to attract new strong sponsors, extra 71 million euros will be pumped into men's cycling in 2025, compared to 2024. Meanwhile budgets of women teams have doubled since two years ago. The average budget per team will rise to 32 million euros, La Gazzetta dello Sport reports based on figures from the UCI.

The budget for the men's WorldTour has increased to €570 million for the coming season, representing a 33% increase compared to 2022. Over the same period, the total budget for the women's WorldTour has doubled to €70 million.

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87% of the increased budgets come from increased sponsorships. Major investments from companies such as Lidl, Decathlon and Red Bull are key drivers behind this growth. Since the arrival of these powerful backers, the strength of teams have grown considerably, with Lidl bringing along most notably Jonathan Milan, Red Bull allowed for the transfer of Primoz Roglic to happen, while Decathlon mainly invested behind the scenes to reawaken the struggling traditional French team to have one of their best seasons ever. It's also expected that the positive yearly trend of growing budgets will continue with Chinese XDS rumouredly ready to invest notable sum to resurrect the sinking Astana.

Red Bull’s partnership with BORA - hansgrohe has significantly increased the team’s budget, putting them on par with other top teams such as UAE Team Emirates. Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe’s expected budget for 2025 is 50 million, placing them among the highest-budgeted teams. Looking at their currently confirmed lineup, there might be still some of the budget in reserves, awaiting the arrival of another big leader.

Therefore the average salary of men’s WorldTour riders has also increased. In 2024, the average salary was estimated at €449,000, but a new record of €500,000 is expected for 2025. However the median value likely is as sky high, nor has changed massively with the top riders such as Remco Evenepoel, Jonas Vingegaard, Mathieu van der Poel and Tadej Pogacar on multi-millioin contracts (Pogacar's latest contract is considered at €8 million/year) taking the biggest bite out of the hypotethical pie.

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