This past week, we heard about the collapse of Skyter’s sponsorship of a top women’s cycling team, formerly Equipe Nürnberger Versicherung (which we’ll call The Team, for clarity’s sake in this post). I’m not surprised, and neither should you be. When I found out what Skyter was (I had to research this, since I’m not normally in the market for 30+ft. yachts), I had the sense that this was doomed from the start.

Back in the days when women’s cycling was developing, most, if not all, sponsorship was “in support of”. Meaning, there’s little-to-no business value, but someone at a company had influence over the budget and chose to spend it due to an interest in women’s cycling. We’ve moved beyond those days, and women’s cycling is now well past the point where sponsorships can justify themselves from a ROI standpoint. Cycling in general offers a great return for corporate sponsors used to multi-million dollar investments in Baseball, Soccer, or F1, and women’s cycling offers what is, IMHO, the best ROI value in all of sports.

Despite a top women’s team offering great sponsorship value, I don’t think anyone in their right mind could assume that The Team would help Skyter move more 30+ ft. yachts. There is one cyclist in the world that runs in that kind of crowd, and he’s not on The Team. That means this sponsorship likely came about due to the old boys network being activated, and since even a team of that stature is a tiny percentage of Skyter’s budget, a contract was agreed. But in an economy like this, when big yachts don’t sell/lease quite as quickly as they used to, even small percentages all over the budget get analyzed. Somone at Skyter figured out that this was not a good use of a few hundred-thousand euros and the deal was called off.

But was that really the company’s fault? Of course they bear responsibility for entering into a contract, but contracts are modified and canceled all the time. I place a significant amount of blame at the feet of The Team. When you have a squad of that caliber, you owe it to the riders to create a sponsor relationship that makes the best use of their incredible value. The demo- and psycho-graphics of women’s cycling open up a variety of valuable markets and market niches that companies struggle to reach. Cyclists’ early adoption of social media (they are probably the most active of any pro sport) gives potential sponsors a low-cost and easy way to figure out that landscape. It is, in short, valuable well beyond the “support the sport” stage.

The Team would have been much better off using their Skyter connection to be introduced to customers that would receive a much bigger benefit from sponsoring a women’s team than Skyter itself. Until teams (and events and riders) stop looking for people to “support the sport”, they will always pigeonhole themselves into that corner. And that corner lends itself to small prize lists, poor support, and low salaries, not to mention easily canceled deals.