Sponsors Coming Back to Cycling
Good news for the business side of world class cycling teams. Amid doping scandals that go back to the 1990’s and most skeptics believe well into the 1980’s, teams are now landing endorsement deals. This week, Columbia Sportswear Company announced that they will sponsor Team High Road for the remainder of 2008.
The team will now compete as “Team Columbia” and the new blue, black and yellow uniforms will be unveiled on July 3rd, two days before the start of the 95th Tour de France.
The three sponsorship deal runs through 2010 and includes both the mens and womens professional cycling teams.
In addition to Team High Road, Team Slipstream-Chipotle’s and Team CSC also announced that they landed multi-year sponsorship deals. Although no numbers were announced, past sponsorship deals indicate that a good guess would be the mid seven figure range for the Columbia deal. Cycling, with its international reach, still brings a lot of value to sponsors. That’s, with out the doping news.
