How much money does a WorldTour team need?

Men's professional cycling continues to rise in cost at a steady pace. The budgets of the men's WorldTour teams will reach a combined total of 663 million euros by 2026, with an average budget per team of 33 million, representing a 4.5% increase compared to the previous season. An economic escalation that is accompanied by a new increase in the salaries of the riders, which are becoming increasingly significant within the teams' accounts.

The budget of the World Tour teams keeps rising and inequalities are growing

As reported by La Gazzetta dello Sport, the data was presented during the UCI WorldTour seminar held in mid-December in Geneva and reflects the financial state of the 20 structures that will make up the men's WorldTour in 2026. Among them are also Tudor Pro Cycling and Q36.5, which have automatic invitations to the entire World Tour calendar and their budgets are comparable to those of the top-tier teams.

The report confirms that budgets continue to grow, but they do so unevenly. The average stands at 33.1 million euros, but that is not the reality. While the so-called "super teams," such as UAE Team Emirates-XRG, Visma-Lease a Bike, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, Lidl-Trek, Decathlon-CMA CGM, or Ineos Grenadiers operate with figures close to or exceeding 50 million euros, other teams must operate with practically half of that budget.

In total, the 20 teams of the men's WorldTour employ 555 riders and 1,312 staff members, an average of 65 people per structure, a figure that can be inflated in cases where men's, women's, and development teams coexist under the same umbrella.

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Salaries continue to gain weight

The increase in the budget is also reflected in salaries. The median salary of a self-employed rider in the men's WorldTour now reaches 350,000 euros per year, a 5.6% increase from 2025. However, the average salary is heavily distorted by the large contracts of the superstars of the peloton.

The clearest example is Tadej Poga?ar, whose base salary is around 8 million euros, exceeding 10 million with performance bonuses. These figures raise the average of self-employed riders to 654,000 euros, although the reality of the peloton is much more heterogeneous.

The data also highlights the difference between employed and self-employed riders. In 2026, 43% of the riders in the men's WorldTour are contracted as employees, a figure slightly lower than that of 2023. The median salary of these riders is 216,000 euros, 46% less than that of the self-employed, partly due to higher tax and social security burdens for the teams.

Even so, both models have seen notable increases since 2023, and the salaries of employed riders have risen by 40%, while those of self-employed riders have increased by 24%, driven in many cases by the growing professionalization of contract negotiations.

Despite the overall growth, the report reminds us that professional cycling still largely depends on sponsorship: 87% of the teams' income comes from sponsors, which maintains the structural fragility of the sport. Nevertheless, the visibility offered by the Tour de France and the WorldTour continues to be a strong attraction for major brands, justifying increasingly higher investments.