Not Even Visma-Lease a Bike Can Keep Up with UAE’s Massive Budget

It’s a sure sign that cycling’s super team era is rocketing to a new dimension when one of the peloton’s most successful teams needs more cash to stay competitive.

Wielerflits broke the news this week that Visma-Lease a Bike is hunting new sponsors to fund its chase for the Tour de France.

Norwegian brand Visma has told “The Bees” it won’t open the financial faucet any further as the team looks to pull the reins on Tadej Pogačar and UAE Emirates-XRG.

And the team knows that without more finance, the Tour de France might ride out of its reach.

It’s a telling sign that now more than ever, cash buys success in a sport governed by multi-million dollar contracts, scientific expertise, and an arms race of tech.

Visma-Lease a Bike losing ground in the super team arms race

The future is secure for the team that won all three men’s grand tours in 2023 and is the reigning champion of the Giro, Vuelta, and Tour de France Femmes.

Major sponsors, including Visma, Lease a Bike, PON, and Rabobank, are committed to the squad, at some level, for the foreseeable future.

But the squad’s longer-term presence at the top of the hierarchy with riders like Jonas Vingegaard and Wout van Aert is under threat.

Visma is no longer willing to throw cash into a sport that requires incremental investment every year.

Sources within Visma-Lease a Bike told Velo that the world’s No.2 team now needs a new revenue stream to stay relevant in an era of upstart new mega squads and their escalating budgets.

“We need this to keep up – and to take the next step,” they said.

Indeed, the peloton is moving faster than ever right now.

Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, Lidl-Trek, Decathlon CMA-CGM, and Ineos Grenadiers all recently welcomed new backers to increase or maintain their stakes in the WorldTour arms race.

It paid off.

Remco Evenepoel has already delivered a seven-win dividend to his new Red Bull team. Rising U.S. sensation Matthew Riccitello just won his first stage race for team Decathlon.

USA’s EF Education EasyPost squad recently revealed it’s putting its naming rights up for sale to whoever will support its quest to win the Tour de France, fast.

Now it’s Visma-Lease a Bike’s turn to go to market.

The rich get richer in the Pogačar era

WorldTour budgets have climbed in the post-pandemic era as fast as Vingegaard and Pogačar scale mountains in the 7w/kg Tour de France.

A report published last December by Gazzetta dello Sport stated the total budgets of all men’s WorldTour teams expanded from €379 in 2021 to €570 in 2025. That’s 50 percent in just four years.

UAE Emirates catalysed that explosion.

Pogačar’s super team picked up in the 2020s where Team Sky left off in the 2010s in driving a rapid spiral in what’s needed win yellow jerseys and monument titles.

And the white-clad armada is proving that money can buy happiness.

Last year, the Emirati super-team wielded the biggest budget in the WorldTour – somewhere in the region of €60m per year – to crush the single-season stage-win record.

It’s looking on track to repeat the feat in 2026.

After a blockbuster contract extension in 2024, the Pogi-GOAT is understood to earn at least €8 million before bonuses per season. Even his bottle boys like Adam Yates and João Almeida earn far north of €1m.

Evenepoel is thought to be the next highest earner at around €7-8m per year.

Counting salary and a payout to Quick-Step, the Belgian’s transformational three-year deal with Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe is thought to have swallowed around €25-28m of energy drink-backed budget.

Oscar Onley and Juan Ayuso’s record-breaking contract terminations and whopper salaries put similarly sizeable dents in their new paymaster’s coffers.

But at the other end of the spectrum, Arkéa B&B vanished this winter after it lost sponsors, and Intermarché and Lotto had to join forces to remain relevant.

Meanwhile, Picnic-PostNL only narrowly escaped an existential crisis when Ineos Grenadiers went large to lure Onley. According to the Money in Sport Substack, the Dutch squad lost €19.5m across the past three seasons, despite its notoriously low salary bill.

It’s a brutal fact that in modern cycling, money buys success and success attracts sponsors.

And just like everywhere else, the rich will get richer, and the poor will get poorer.

Visma-Lease a Bike acknowledges financial threat

Visma-Lease a Bike’s current budget is thought to hover in the top third of the WorldTour at ~€50m per season.

Money in Sport indicated more than 70 percent of that comes from sponsors.

Speaking to Het Laatste Nieuws at the recent Visma-Lease a Bike media day, team CEO Richard Plugge already hinted that €50m is no longer enough.

The squad’s concise and considered transfer policy this winter was perhaps a further clue.

“We’re currently fifth or sixth in the peloton,” Plugge said of his team’s budget.

“It’s a tough challenge for us to maintain that position and stay within striking distance of the top four,” he said. “If possible, we’d like to climb to third or fourth place.”

Visma-Lease a Bike famously rose to the top of pro cycling in 2022 and 2023 off the back of a strong budget and a stronger commitment to rider development and science-backed training, fueling, and racing.

But what worked when Vingegaard went back-to-back at the Tour de France doesn’t work anymore.

Expertise costs money, and altitude camps, wind tunnel testing, and R&D costs even more.

“With the arrival of companies like Decathlon, Red Bull, and Lidl at other teams, there’s a lot of competition at the top,” Plugge told HLN.

Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe just dropped €20k a day for Evenepoel to ride up and down a laser-filled railway tunnel, and still had cash to throw at a crazy training camp PR stunt.

Ineos Grenadiers is pumping funds into devo teams to ensure a pipeline of success, and Lidl-Trek is building its own Red Bull-inspired performance center.

Visma rose to the top with similar initiatives, but now it needs more to stay there.

Sources told Velo that Plugge is already in advanced talks with multiple global brands willing to back his cycling super team.

Then, all Plugge has to do is use his new revenue to win the Tour de France. Easy.