An ominous headline flashed on CyclingNews recently, reading Final British men's Continental team announce closure as domestic scene in the UK takes another hit.

If you’re keeping a pulse on road racing worldwide, maybe you also heard from CyclingWeekly that Trinity Racing will soon be a thing of the past. (Which is especially cumbersome because that CyclingWeekly article came out before the CyclingNews piece landed, where CW suggesting that Saint Piran would be the sole British based team into 2025, only to end up as premature news when CN reported that Saint Piran was forced to close their doors as well.)

As an upshot of the ripple regarding Saint Piran, cycling fans out there who want to see the sport thrive were happily met with a more recent article, 'We've got two weeks' - Former WorldTour rider hoping to launch new British Continental team for 2025.

Taking a trip through the UCI’s website, here are the past six years of statistics as related to the number of teams in existence. (Please note, this below data is limited to men’s cycling teams. It’s a different conversation entirely to speak about women’s cycling which has seen a recent boom in the past half dozen years. Women’s WorldTour teams have nearly doubled from eight to fifteen, and Women’s Continental teams have shot up nearly 25% in number.)

Taking a quick look at this data, we see a consistent number of teams in existence across the board. From the highest level, the WorldTour, down to Continental teams, which are a bit more haphazard — that’s no wonder because the average salary is often zero at the lowest ranks, as compared to the half million Euros per rider paid to the upper echelons of cycling — overall the number of teams remain roughly the same.

I didn’t parse out the number of teams from each country throughout the world. Anecdotally, there are strong cycling scenes in Central and South America, east Asia, and an increasing presence of teams based in Africa. Taking the pulse here in the United States, domestic cycling is in what I’d categorize as dire straights. I did enough due diligence to see that in 2024 there were five Continental teams in the US, down from a high of eight over the previous six years. Not huge absolute numbers, but a considerable drop off nonetheless. Especially as compared to the dozen or more that were around in the early 2000s heyday. Meanwhile, some other data points from left field: cycling fanatical Italy had as few as four Continental teams in 2018 and is up to a dozen this year, while equally nutty for cycling Belgium and the Netherlands have maintained roughly the same number of Continental teams over the time period.

Whatever the case, these development-level teams across two of the world’s biggest markets, North America and the UK, are struggling. So what’s to blame?

Is Covid to blame? My crystal ball is still at the cleaners and supposedly won’t be polished up until sometime closer to 2030. Taking a decade long view of the pandemic I think will unveil considerable insight. In short and at the risk of repeating the obvious: during the pandemic lockdown, lots of people bought bikes, the industry went gangbusters and sold out of seemingly everything, then with hopes of that momentum would continue companies throughout the cycling industry invested a lot into inventory only to see the demand for bike-related-things come to a standstill. The, let’s call it “Covid demand and subsequent lack thereof” rebound continues and will be in the midst of a correction for the next year or two or even more. That all said, a global pandemic isn’t entirely to blame for the trouble among developing cycling teams, since we’ve seen such a harsh drop off in the number of teams here in the US continuously even prior to 2020.

Is gravel to blame? The race now called Unbound set off on its inaugural ride in 2006. The first Vermont Overland was in 2009, the Belgian Waffle Ride hosted their first event in 2011. Heck, SBT is considered original by some and that event hosted its first race another seven years later. If gravel is to blame for the failure of race teams, that quickly becomes a bit of a chicken and egg… followed by another chicken and egg conversation. See, the cost to host road cycling races steadily rose at an unsustainable rate over the past two decades. Here in North America the previously booming road race scene steadily became anemic and frankly is now on life support. Tour de Toona, the Fitchburg Longsjo Classic, Cascade and Mount Hood in Oregon, the Nature Valley Grand Prix were all week-long fixtures of the American racing calendar drawing full fields of pro riders as well as full categories one through five. (And that’s not even getting into the conversation of Tour of California or Philadelphia International Cycling Classic or the powerful suite of races that lead up to Philly, as captured in the iconic movie Pro.) Over time, with the ever increasing budgets to host races, they shrank in size and eventually went away.

Adding to the quagmire along the same timeline, the number of teams began to diminish. Cash strapped teams couldn’t make it to cash strapped races. Simultaneously these aforementioned, nascent gravel races were less of a series of events going on in the background, they became one of the few places that riders could pin on a number and race. This is especially apt in the past half dozen years where privateers see literally no other option than to throw their hat into the gravel ring. So I would argue gravel isn’t to blame; rather it’s one of the few places racers can race.

Oh heck, I brought it up. Is Tour of California to Blame? It’s been said that Tour of California is a victim of its own success and that it killed North American racing. The timeline is certainly fitting; ToC first rolled down the California coast in 2006. Over time, more and more European teams showed up and ultimately with ASO’s affiliation, only top tier World Tour were allowed to participate. There were a few minor concessions in the form of amalgamated national teams (a collection of 8 riders from one nation) and division 2 (now called ProTeam) teams. Ultimately what that meant is the lower level teams, were either not invited or had to spend a hefty portion of their annual budget to race the biggest race on the calendar, the Tour of California. So what are now called Continental and ProTeams found it cost prohibitive, even in the rare event they were invited. Furthermore, the race became so expensive courtesy of exorbitant costs of hotels to house hundreds of riders, staff, and race personnel, that someone in the finance department pointed out they were perpetually in the red and ultimately had to call it a day with their last event in 2019. Is Tour of California to blame for the lack of teams currently? This actually earns a definite maybe.

When I first started writing this column you’re reading today, it wasn’t my intent to point to further reading here on iamtedking.com, but I recently wrote about the financial state of professional cycling, either road or gravel, as it compares to other major professional sports. In summary, if you ask any team manager over the ages why they closed shop, the overwhelming answer will point back to financial difficulties. Here in America or the troubled pro race scene in Britain, it seems we just need ever deeper pockets. Or else an entirely new model.