Having been in the role of CEO for the Riis Seier cycling project for half a season now, Michael Rogers has called pro cycling “broken” as he seeks to create a WorldTour team for Bjarne Riis for 2018.

Rogers, who retired in April, says the loss of his former boss Oleg Tinkov is serious for the sport, as new faces with fresh ideas are required to help fix the sport.

“Oleg is obviously a very vocal person in the cycling world and I honestly see that as a positive because otherwise cycling is too comfortable in its own zone,” Rogers told SBS Cycling Central from his home in Switzerland. “We need people that don’t have such a long cycling history and traditional view to move forward because professional cycling, if you look at it as a sport trying to move forward, it’s broken. It’s really broken.”

Rogers confirmed that initially, his team was hoping to be in action for 2017, but they had to abandon the idea due to lack of time to put everything in motion.

“We had played around a little bit with looking to 2017 but we eventually gave up on those plans because it was just such a short time line,” Rogers said. “We were actually worried about rushing and creating something that didn’t have the foundation that we envisioned, so that was a purposeful decision to sit back and make the foundation that will take us a long way down the track.”

Roger says the economics of cycling simply don’t make sense, and many businesses are keen to sponsor other teams in other sports as they can gain more exposure for a fraction for the price it costs to run a WorldTour team. 

“[Take] soccer being 20 per cent or 30 per cent dependent on corporate sponsorship. What have I got? In 10 years I’m going to spend €45 million on a cycling team, or I can go to soccer, or football, or baseball, whatever, you name them, and probably have better exposure for €15 million. We need to start addressing those longer term issues. I certainly hope these conversations are being held in the UCI and with some of those bigger stakeholders.”