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Tadej Pogacar's agent Alex Carrera: "The arrival of Red Bull will have a major impact on the sport and on the rider transfer market"
CyclingFriday, 19 January 2024 at 02:10
Big money is being brought into pro cycling. Contracts are getting longer, the big stars are being payed more, and this trend may only continue with the arrival of international brand Red Bull.
Alex Carrera, agent of stars such as Tadej Pogacar and Cian Uijtdebroeks, believes this is the case. "The arrival of Red Bull will have a major impact on the sport and on the rider transfer market. The arrival of Lidl as a title sponsor changed a lot for the 2024 rider market, raising team budgets, and so has the more recent arrival of Decathlon," he tells Cyclingnews. "The arrival of Red Bull will only raise the value of the biggest riders even more."
Although INEOS Grenadiers continues to be the highest budget team in the peloton, for some years, UAE Team Emirates are now very close and have a team filled with stars and leaders. Although at a lower budget, Team Visma | Lease a Bike also presents a wide variety of leaders and has reached eextreme success in 2023. Lidl-Trek has had a big boost in budget, and hence quality into 2024, and BORA - hansgrohe is the next team to possibly take the step - after signing Primoz Roglic, and now partnering with the Austrian brand which had over €1.5 billion euros in profit over the past year.
"There are four global stars in professional cycling at the moment and I think Ralph Denk (BORA - hansgrohe manager, ed.) could try and sign one of them for 2025," Carrera believes. "The big four are Tadej Pogačar, Mathieu van der Poel, Wout Van Aert, and Remco Evenepoel. I wouldn't include Jonas Vingegaard in that list despite him winning the Tour de France simply because I don't think he's a global star that appeals to Red Bull."
Hence, into the upcoming season a lot can happen. The possible and also sudden merger of Visma and Soudal - Quick-Step some months ago, as well as Cian Uijtdebroeks recently, puts more possibilities into special transfers coming along. Those could include breaking of contract of some big stars. Remco Evenepoel and Wout van Aert were already rumoured this week to have received contact from the German team.
"Tadej is under contract until 2028 but I don't think the other riders have huge exit clauses. Van der Poel recently extended his contract with Alpecin-Deceuninck and so perhaps is likely to stay," he concludes. "That leaves just two riders left for Red Bull to target…"
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