Jonathan Vaughters defends the new cycling 'Super League' project: "This is a necessary step for cycling"

This week reports uncloaked a behind-the-scenes push to overhaul the business model of professional cycling. Led by Jumbo-Visma CEO Richard Plugge and Soudal-QuickStep's wealthy backer Zdenek Bakala, the scheme is designed to bring large amounts of venture capital into the sport to help shore up what are increasingly dire economics.

The details of the plan are still unclear, but Plugge and EF Education-EasyPost CEO Jonathan Vaughters spoke to the 'Radio Cycling' podcast revealing some new information.

"I can speak for teams and I can speak for a lot of the events on the calendar that are really struggling to make ends meet. Cycling has always subsisted off of this sponsorship revenue model, and that applies to teams, but it also applies to smaller races where you have to find sponsorship revenue in order to produce the event."

"This isn't about anyone becoming rich out of this equation. This is about stabilising the economics so that we do not run into situations like Jumbo-Visma almost going bankrupt at the end of the season," Vaughters adding that HTC-Highroad were in the same situation in 2011 and ultimately disbanded.

"This is a necessary step for cycling and so any sort of personal conflicts that people might have with Richard, I would hope they would be able to put them aside in order to make this step forward and start building something collective that betters the entire sport."