{"id":673120,"date":"2026-01-04T10:50:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T10:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/673120\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T10:50:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T10:50:13","slug":"rising-budgets-and-salaries-widen-gap-in-worldtour-as-costs-surge-ahead-of-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/673120\/","title":{"rendered":"Rising budgets and salaries widen gap in WorldTour as costs surge ahead of 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nHowever, averages mask significant internal disparities. According to La Gazzetta dello Sport<\/a>, UAE Team Emirates – XRG and Visma | Lease a Bike are now operating close to \u20ac50 million, while Lidl Trek, Red Bull Bora hansgrohe and INEOS Grenadiers are estimated at around \u20ac45 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A similar pattern is visible in the women\u2019s WorldTour. Total budgets rose from \u20ac46 million in 2023 to \u20ac70 million across 15 teams in 2025 and are expected to increase again to \u20ac80 million in 2026. This comes despite the women\u2019s top tier shrinking from 15 teams to 14.<\/p>\n

How much money teams spend in salary?<\/p>\n

Salaries remain the dominant cost. The UCI figures are gross amounts and distinguish between self-employed and employed riders, with employed riders accounting for 43 percent of the men\u2019s WorldTour peloton.<\/p>\n

For 2026, the average salary for self-employed riders is listed at \u20ac654,000, up from \u20ac636,000 in 2025 and \u20ac557,000 in 2023. Employed riders average \u20ac384,000, compared with \u20ac366,000 last year and \u20ac300,000 in 2023. Many self-employed riders are based in Monaco or Andorra and tend to be leading riders within their teams, which helps to explain the higher figures.<\/p>\n

At the top end of the scale, the numbers are obviously far higher. Tadej Pogacar remains the peloton\u2019s highest-paid rider, earning an estimated \u20ac8 million per year from UAE Team Emirates, excluding bonuses and personal sponsorships that reportedly lifted his total income to around \u20ac12 million this season.<\/p>\n

Remco Evenepoel\u2019s early move to Red Bull – BORA – hansgrohe, a year before his contract with Soudal Quick-Step was due to expire, is estimated at around \u20ac20 million when the buyout and multi-year deal are combined.<\/p>\n

\"TadejPogacar<\/p>\n

Pogacar is the highest-paid cyclist in the world – and for obvious reasons<\/p>\n

Vaughters speaks upThese dynamics raise growing concerns about the sport\u2019s financial structure and its sustainability. On the Domestique Hotseat Podcast<\/a>, EF Education\u2013EasyPost CEO Jonathan Vaughters warned that cycling is increasingly operating at a cost level that its revenues do not support.<\/p>\n

“Certainly the biggest cost increase in cycling is the riders’ salaries and then all the peripheral, you know, sports science and whatnot that support that goes around that.”<\/p>\n

Vaughters also argued that the spending power of the richest teams inevitably affects the wider market. \u201cA team like UAE\u2026 we will spend as much as we need to spend to win everything. Well, that\u2019s going to just bleed out into the rest of the marketplace. That\u2019s going to inflate everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also highlighted cycling\u2019s dependence on sponsorship, a problem that is not new.\u00a0\u201cWe\u2019re trying to float the entire ship on just sponsorship because these other sources of revenue don\u2019t exist,\u201d Vaughters said. \u201cWe don\u2019t have collective merchandising. The teams do not receive anything from media rights.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" However, averages mask significant internal disparities. According to La Gazzetta dello Sport, UAE Team Emirates – XRG…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":673121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4104],"tags":[4230,42457,42460,79,16152,180916,181698,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-673120","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-ineos-grenadiers","10":"tag-red-bull-bora-hansgrohe","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-tadej-pogacar","13":"tag-team-visma-lease-a-bike","14":"tag-uae-team-emirates-xrg","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115836447809659414","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=673120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/673121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=673120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=673120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=673120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}