The man with the big plan: Rick Delaney is setting up a new business at the same time as the Aqua Blue Sport Irish pro cycling team. The business will pay for the team (Photo: Cathal Noonan)
The man behind the new Aqua Blue Sport pro cycling team, Rick Delaney, is to use a new business model and create a new company to fund the squad.
While the new Irish ProContinental team will be funded by Monaco-based Delaney initially, he plans to shift the costs to a new business he is creating and which he describes as 'the Amazon for bikes'.
And once that business is up and running and making money, all of the revenue will go to the team. It means the team will not use the usual model in pro cycling; the backing of a major sponsor with some smaller ones.
Advertisement
- Monaco-based businessman behind Ireland’s first pro team
- New Irish pro team set for international peloton in 2017
- Irish pro team Aqua Blue Sport names another 7 new riders
- “This is a chance normal people don’t get; I go in with no ego”
- Team Aqua Blue Sport’s key people talk joining Ireland’s first pro team
- New Irish pro team Aqua Blue Sport unveils its first four riders
Delaney said his goal was to create a sustainable self-funding entity that deliberately moved away from the current sponsorship-based structure of pro cycling.
He said that model “doesn’t work” and that the collapse of Tinkoff and IAM Cycling this year alone proves it.
“That's just the owners getting bored, the owners having a bad year in business or the owners deciding this toy isn't playful enough and going off to buy another yacht or do whatever they do," Corkman Delaney told Ciaran Lennon in The Irish Independent.
"We're trying to make it completely sustainable and that's our uniqueness."
Related News
Delaney’s solution is for a business to be created with the specific goal of funding the team and from which the profits will be ring-fenced for the cycling team, with not even the directors taking a salary.
The business is an e-commerce entity selling a full range of cycling products, described as Amazon for bikes.
It is set to be officially launched for the Irish, British and German markets at the start of next year and half way through 2017 it will roll out in the US.
"We've done projections for the next four years and it should be more than enough to finance the team. And that's the sustainability factor," he said.
"I'm reading what people are saying on social media, 'oh this is only as good as one man's cheque-book and the day he walks away that's the end of it'.
"But that's not the case, the case here is to create the first sustainable cycling team, and that's what I'm trying to do."
Having unveiled its first four signings last week Aqua Blue Sport named a further seven of its charges for next year today, Monday.
They include outgoing IAM Cycling teammates Stefan Denifl and Leigh Howard.
Also signed are Dutchmen Michel Kreder (29) and Peter Koning (25), former An Post-Chainreaction riders Aaron Gate (25) from New Zealand and Australian Calvin Watson (23).
And completing the seven-strong group named this morning is Dane Lasse Norman Hansen (24); the man who took gold in the omnium at the London Olympics.
They join the four unveiled last week: Lars Petter Nordhaug and Irish trio Martyn Irvine, Matt Brammeier and Conor Dunne.
Topics
