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news
04 Bradley Wiggins at the TDF 2013 launch © Simon MacMichaelBradley Wiggins in £741,000 row with former management company
Sir Bradley Wiggins is involved in a legal argument with his former management company over his earnings from his contract with Team Sky and his 2012 Tour de France victory.
The MTC agency is suing Sir Bradley in the High Court for commission on his deal with Team Sky, which is reported to have been worth £4 million plus a £1 million bonus in the event of him winning the 2012 Tour de France.
MTC billed Sir Bradley for £741,000 commission on that deal, and the company claims he refused to pay. He then sacked MTC as his representatives and issued a counter-claim, accusing the company of trying to charge fees it was not entitled to and having a disorganised accounting system.
According to Martin Delgado in the Daily Mail, MTC claims it agreed to act as his sole agent in exchange for 20 per cent of his gross income from TV appearances and sponsorship deals.
But Sir Bradley says that the company was entitled to commission only on contracts it negotiated for him, and that for his first four years with the firm, some deals were arranged by his wife Catherine and friends.
Sir Bradley signed up with MTC after the Beijing Olympics in 2008. He asked MTC managing director Jonathan Marks to act for him over his move to Team Sky, it is claimed, and later asked Marks to renegotiate his deal with the team.
Team Sky boss Sir Dave Brailsford allegedly told Mr Marks in a phone call that Sir Bradley had been offered up to £4 million a year, plus a £1 million bonus, if he won the 2012 Tour de France.
MTC therefore invoiced for almost three-quarters of a million.
At the beginning of last year, Sir Bradley's lawyers wrote to MTC, suspending its authority to act for him and his charitable foundation. The agency says this amounted to a repudiation of their agreement and entitled them to sue for damages.
Wiggins is now represented by Simon Fuller’s XIX Entertainment.
A spokesman for XIX Entertainment said last night: “Sir Bradley is no longer represented by MTC. He strenuously denies that it was he who breached the terms of any contract and as this is subject to legal proceeding he will not be commenting further.”
MTC declined to comment to the Mail.
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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15 comments
So that means he's on (pre-tax) #333,333,33 I'm in the wrong job lol
How he finds the impetus to get outta bed in the AM I don't know?
I'm sure they'll get it all sorted out and it'll be fine in the end.
Blimey and I thought that this was professional sport. Sounds like Brad and MTC were both pretty amateur with the terms of the deal and that was fine until millions of quid started flying about.
This may go Brad's way if MTC didn't instigate or have any role in the Sky contract. If they knew he was being offered a contract and they were his sole agent then why did they bnot say "hang on Brad - we're supposed to negotiate that for you. We need to be involved. Oh and by the way we got you an extra million." But if they just sat back and did nothing, said nothing and then billed for the commission that's a sticky wicket.
Depends on how tightly that first contract was drawn.
I wonder how much does your average domestique gets a year.
It's either:
a) The legal minimum wage of the country of the nationality of the UCI ProTeam
or
b) € 30,000 (€ 24,000 for a new professional).
Whichever is higher.
That's minimum though so for brand new domestiques. Riders like Bradley Wiggins are obviously on much much more. The last UCI Press Release I saw on it (a couple of years ago) said that the AVERAGE wage at UCI World Tour was 264,000 euros.
Not sure how much that'll be skewed by the riders at the top on 5 million + euros...
Strange to sign up with a management company then not use their services?
Not the first time Wiggo has withheld payment to someone rightly entitled to it though
Clearly you're appraised of all the facts then, to be making statements like that..
No purely stating a recognised fact , Wiggo has been known to withhold payment to someone rightly entitled to it
So as the old saying goes , no smoke without fire .
However I understand your need to try and defend him but there were similar people who defended LA and look how that turned out
No purely stating that you're pre-judging the issue.
And what has Lance Armstrong got to do with it?!
I should imagine £741k would make a rather large bulge in his cycling shorts.
You would expect both parties to have clarified who set up each deal as they went along? Basic business practice. Let's hope Brad doesn't have Sting's old accountant.. After the first £5M I might stop checking my balance at the cash point too.
I would like to think that Brad has had some very clever people go over every inch of paperwork to make sure he is right on this one
Be very careful with this one, sub-editors!
That's a mind boggling amount of money !