The names of the pro teams are part of the language of cycling, but what the title sponsors actually do is sometimes a mystery to most of us. Okay, we all know that Ineos is a chemical company with a sideline in Land Rover wannabe cars and BMC Racing Team didn’t leave much room for confusion, but some of the sponsors are a little more obscure. Here are some of the most interesting from the top levels of the sport.
Androni Giocattoli–Sidermec
The second tier Pro Continental roster is where you’ll find some of the most marvellously obscure sponsors (at least from an Anglophone point of view). Androni Giocattoli is an Italian maker of kids’ toys, known for beach toys (yes, buckets and spades) and a Lego Duplo lookalike, Unico Plus.
Also from Italy, Sidermec makes steel sheet for the canning industry, which has to be one of the more oblique marketing-via-sponsorship propositions. It’s not like anyone chooses a can of beans because the manufacturer of the steel used to make the can sponsors bike racing.
Bora–Hansgrohe
Bora makes hobs that draw cooking vapours and smells away before they can spread around your house, hence all the videos of former world champion Peter Sagan cooking that appeared on social media a while ago. To be fair, he does them well in a Blue Peter kind of way.
For the record, fellow title sponsor Hansgrohe makes taps, sinks, showers and stuff like that, if you were wondering.
Trek-Segafredo
The Segafredo half of Trek-Segafredo refers to an Italian coffee brand. It’s no surprise to find coffee featuring among the World Tour team sponsors, caffeine being about as central to cycling as shaved legs and Lycra. It always has been. You might well know, for example, that the Faema name which was emblazoned across Eddy Merckx’s chest for a large part of his career is a brand of coffee machine. Saeco, sponsor of the hugely successful team of Italian sprinter Mario Cipollini in the late 90s, also makes coffee machines.
Deceuninck–Quick-Step
Julian Alaphilippe, Deceuninck Quick-Step (Alex Broadway:ASO:SWpix.com)
One of the longest-running teams in the pro peloton, Patrick Lefevere’s squad has had Quick-Step flooring as its principal or secondary sponsor since 1999.
New principal sponsor Deceuninck NV is a Flanders-based multi-national designer and producer of PVC building materials such as windows, doors and cladding.
CCC Team
Headquartered in Polkowice, Poland, CCC is a retailer and manufacturer of shoes and bags. They don’t make cycling shoes, which is a bit disappointing, but the team is nevertheless Poland’s first WorldTour team.
Lotto-Soudal
Soudal makes adhesives. 300ml of its white Decorator’s Caulk will cost you just a quid from Homebase.
Mapei, a big name in cycling in the 1990s and early 2000s, is also well represented in your local DIY store thanks to a range that covers a similar area.
Oh, and vaguely related, there’s Quick-Step flooring, of course.
Groupama – FDJ
The team run by double Paris-Roubaix winner Marc Madiot (far left, above) got a substantial cash injection for 2018 when French-based insurance company Groupama came on board as a sponsor
FDJ stands for Francaise des Jeux (which roughly translates as ‘French Games’) which is the operator of France’s national lottery. No prizes for working out that Lotto of Lotto-Soudal is also a lottery.
Jumbo-Visma
Jumbo is a supermarket chain in the Netherlands. Given the amount of food your typical pro cyclist inhales in a day, a supermarket is a logical sponsor for a racing team. French supermarket cooperative Systeme U sponsored a team back in the 1980s that included Tour de France winner Laurent Fignon, though Fignon’s Systeme U era is best remembered for his losing the 1989 Tour de France to Greg Lemond by just eight seconds.
Visma is a Norwegian software company specialising in business, administration and government systems. As far as we can tell, that’s exactly as boring as it sounds.
If you’re looking at the team group photo and thinking “Blimey there’s a lot of them”, that’s because the line-up includes the 11 speed skaters also supported by the same organisation.
Astana-Premier Tech
Astana Pro Team is sponsored by a group of state-owned companies from Kazakhstan and is named after its capital city. Fun fact 1: Astana is the second coldest capital city in the world after Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, despite sitting at roughly the same latitude as London. True. You can impress your friends with that one, if your friends are easily impressed. Fun fact 2: The city is now called Nur-Sultan, having been renamed in 2019 in honour of Nursultan Abishuly Nazarbayev, president of Kazakhstan from 1990 to 2019. A fiver says it changes again if Nazarbayev’s Nur Otan party ever loses power.
Premier Tech is a Canadian agricultural products and industrial solutions company.
Movistar
This one is pretty well known; Movistar is a big Spanish mobile phone and broadband operator owned by Telefónica, the company behind O2.
Cofidis
Cofidis is properly called Cofidis Solutions Crédits, and you don’t need to be fluent in French to work out that the company specialises in consumer credit. Finance is well represented in the pro peloton: AG2R La Mondiale provides life insurance and pensions while Caja Rural from the Caja Rural – Seguros RGA Pro Continental team is a Spanish bank, and Seguros RGA is one of its subsidiaries, in what we think is a ubique example of a team being sponsored by two bits of the same company.
DSM
DSM is a Netherlands-based multi-national chemical company. The TLA stands for Dutch State Mines because the firm started as a Government enterprise to mine coal in the Limburg region. Coal mining ceased there in 1973, but the name remains to acknowledge the company’s origins.
Roompot-Charles
The team is no more, having folded at the end of 2019, but how could we not mention a squad called Roompot? Hailing from the Netherlands, Roompot Parks is another holiday park company, while Charles is a brand of charcuterie and salad products: sliced meats, bacon and like that.
20 thoughts on “13 crazy pro team sponsors and their unlikely products”
I like to kid myself that I’m
I like to kid myself that I’m predominantly immune to the pressures of advertising, but I took great delight earlier this year at buying some Soudal silicone seal earlier this year at Homebase. I think it might have been 50 p more than the other branded alternative, but it’s what Andre Greipel would have wanted me to do. Having said that, I never felt good with Sky taking over my previous broadband supplier, and was happy to ditch them at the first opportunity. Perhaps it was just familiarity breeding contempt, but if given a choice, I’d definitely go for a Quick-Step floor.
I’ve got a retro San
I’ve got a retro San Pellegrino shirt from Prendas and have taken to drinking their Limonata at my regular cafe stop so influence clearly continues long after the sponsorship ends.
Apple drink… pink…
Apple drink… pink…
Those old Domo-Farm Frites
Those old Domo-Farm Frites Merckx bikes were things of beauty.
I went for a HTC phone a few
I went for a HTC phone a few years ago for obvious reasons.
Lampre is an Italian
Lampre is an Italian industrial firm supplying hot-rolled steel pre-coated with a PVC film, according to http://www.bikeraceinfo.com/riderhistories/sponsors-directory.html
U.S. Postal must have done well out of a certain Texan’s Tour wins while brands like Carrera jeans and Mercatone Uno, an Italian supermarket chain, have also become famous worldwide. I had never heard of HTC before they sponsored Cavendish & co. but would subsequently have considered that brand if I was in the market for a mobile phone. If I was buying an espresso machine Rocket would be the first brand I’d consider (although I can’t even remember who they sponsored).
Vacansoleil is a holiday company while co-sponsor DCM soil company.
Companies come and go, just look at the rollercoaster of Vaughters’ Slipstream / Garmin / Cannondale gang funding. Sunweb used to be Skil-Shimano, briefly 1t4i then Argos-Shimano and Giant-Alpecin.
Apparently the AnPost-Chain Reaction team run by Sean Kelly & Kurt Bogearts haven’t been able to secure a title sponsor after the Irish postal service didn’t renew for 2018 after 10 years of support. It will also no longer sponsor the Rás and the Rás na mBan.
More about sponsors by INRNG – http://inrng.com/2017/01/pro-team-sponsors-2017-world-tour/
It was a while before i found
It was a while before i found out Lotto wasn’t the trainers i assumed it was.
I do my bit for the Lotto
I do my bit for the Lotto Soudal team by using their expanding foam filler.
Steve Cooper wrote:
Darn, I just bought some foam filler the other day and didn’t think to look for Soudal brand. Would have been the closest I came to buying a pair of Hanseno shoes.
Just wish Soudal (or Lotto)
Just wish Soudal (or Lotto) would end their sponsorship so I could buy the team kit, best one in the peloton to my eyes.
Good business for building
Good business for building suppliers, plenty of jollies for the architects and consultants where they can meet the teams. It’s not about awareness from the public, more about being able to wine and dine specifiers, they are worth more tha you or I.
Not bad for the sponsors themselves either as the marketing director for Movistar had signed pictures from sporting heroes, from all sorts of sporting disciplines all over his office. The odd VIP tickets came from there too.
Was in B&Q the other day and
Was in B&Q the other day and found some soudal expanding foam-safe to say i didnt purchase it due to its high cost.
Also there is a Deceuninck factory close to me in Calne, Wiltshire.
The flat I bought has
The flat I bought has Hansgrohe taps, and boy oh boy the spares are expensive. Happy to support a cycling team though ;-))
Well, you did by a flat with
Well, you did by a flat with a top brand in taps. I visited the factory in Schiltach many years ago and was impressed with the range of processes. They made everything from raw materials, moulded their own plastic parts, cast and chromium plated the brass parts. Completely the opposite of most brands in cycling that just buy everything in and stick a name on it.
Except Astana is no longer
Except Astana is no longer name of Capital city. It’s now Nur Sultan.
I persuaded my daughter to
I persuaded my daughter to specify Quick Step flooring for her new extension.
The first road bike I bought was a Carrera from Halfords in the mistaken belief that it was the brand ridden by Stephen Roche.
My reasons for buying a Trek bike are now too embarrassing to mention.
We have had QS flooring for
We have had QS flooring for 20 years now – would recommend it any day.
Blimey they have been in cycling a long time !
CCC making a comeback? Or a
CCC making a comeback? Or a recycled article not being updated? Come on road.cc, you can do better
They also swapped the Jumbo
They also swapped the Jumbo Visma photo out so now the comment about the team looking so big doesn’t work as it’s not a team photo. Doh !
lesterama wrote:
Are you new around here?