Cycling talks crisis but ignores what tickets for fans could unlock

This time the spark came from Jérôme Pineau, who suggested on the RMC Sport’s 'Grand Plateau' podcast that the final five kilometres of Alpe d’Huez at the Tour de France should be fenced off and made ticketed. Gates on the most mythical climb in the race. VIP decks, tickets, extra income for the teams.

The reaction was exactly what you would expect. UCI president David Lappartient warned in Ouest-France that “if you try to make people pay to see the Tour, you will face enormous resistance. Just look at what happens when you touch the pension system.” 

Tour de France organiser ASO are on the same line. Pierre Yves Thouault, deputy director of cycling, told La Dernière Heure that “cycling is by definition free” and that “introducing ticket sales is simply not on the table.”

Those are understandable answers from a world that leans heavily on tradition. They are also very predictable answers from a deeply conservative ecosystem that has struggled for years to look beyond the current model.

The most genuinely forward thinking response to Pineau’s remarks from the major organisers came from Flanders Classics CEO Tomas Van Den Spiegel, who told Wielerflits he believes there is room for a model that also includes paid options. “If the Tour de France were to say next year that Alpe d’Huez will be ticketed, I think a lot of people would be willing to pay for that.”

Compatriot Wout van Aert was more forthright recently in an interview with De Tijd. "In cycling we may be a bit too focused on the charm and the folksiness. If you ask €5 entrance money, that doesn’t mean it’s no longer a people’s sport. Cyclocross also charges admission, and nothing is more ‘of the people’ than that. We should dare to rethink things like that.”

Before we dive deeper into this debate, let us clear up one misunderstanding first. Cycling is not free. There may be no gate along the road, but the sport is paid for.

Municipalities put money on the table. Sponsors pump millions into teams and events. Broadcasters pay for media rights and fans then pay for their television packages or streaming services.

Free, in this debate, mostly means this: as a fan, you do not have to buy a ticket to stand by a public road. It is a nice democratic idea, wrapped in a romantic image that happens to sound great in a quote. But it just does not solve anything about the fundamental problem that cycling keeps circling back to. The model depends too heavily on a few big organisers and a handful of rich sponsors or states. 

If you shout ‘free’, what you are really saying is that someone else has to pick up the bill.

That is why it is interesting that someone like Filippo Pozzato does not stay in the abstract but simply tries something. At his Veneto Classic, fans pay €10 to enter a kind of natural arena on the Tisa climb, where the riders pass several times, with entertainment and facilities included.

When he launched it, he says, he mostly received abuse: elitist, commercial, against the soul of the sport. A few years on, there are hundreds of paying visitors and the idea is slowly growing. Not as a full stadium model, but as a test lab. How much are fans willing to pay for a specific experience if you organise it properly? What kind of infrastructure do you need? What works and what does not?

Flanders Classics has already shown for years that you can build hybrid models. The Oude Kwaremont has partly become a paid hospitality zone, while the vast majority of spectators still watch the race for free from the roadside. 90% folk sport, 10% stadium logic. There is nothing sacrilegious about that. It is simply a smart way of dealing with the reality that you cannot put a concrete stadium wall around a classic.

The conversation only turns poisonous when we frame ticketing as all or nothing. Either everything stays free, or we fence off every kilometre. That is a false choice.

The core issue is not whether you are allowed to have fans pay to watch a race. That question has been answered long ago in other sports.

The real question is: what exactly does a fan get in return?

For a random patch of grass on a mountain, with no extra toilets, no clear view, no added context or experience, nobody will happily pay. For a well organised zone with a good sightline, safety, food and drink, toilets, big screens and entertainment while waiting the equation might look different.

And that is before you even talk about the extra layer on top of that: the extra value you can build around the basic experience of being there on race day.

And here is where the real commercial opportunity lies for the sport. Of course tickets bring in extra revenue. But the structural value sits somewhere else. In the fact that through online ticketing you finally know who your fans are, what they do, and how you can stay in touch with them.

Sponsorship is less and less about simple logo exposure. Brands want direct access to fans. They want to know who is on the roadside, what their interests are and how you can activate them. Whether that is a trial subscription, a discount code, a product trial or a community. Without data, sponsorship stays floating above the crowd.

With a ticket, a relationship begins. A name, an email address, an opt-in. From that moment on you can start to build value. Not only as an organiser, but also as a team and as a sponsor. 

Right now, even the Tour de France, which draws around 12 million spectators to the roadside every year, has almost no idea who those people actually are. Twelve million touchpoints, zero real relationships. That is the scale of the opportunity the sport is leaving on the table.

It all starts with a simple exercise. How do you make sure the perceived value of a ticket is higher than the price printed on it?

Once you accept that basic comfort and a clear view are the starting point, the next step is to design different levels of experience on key sections of the course.

Add digital layers on top that enhance that experience. Exclusive content or behind the scenes video for ticket holders. A live audio channel to follow the race while you are waiting, with insights from sports directors. A voucher for team merchandise from your favourite squad. Priority access to lotteries for a meet and greet or a group ride with a rider. All things that are relatively easy to connect to a ticket and that lift the value for the fan.

Then think in terms of bundles and partnerships. Buy a ticket for a Tour climb and get two months of Tour de France partner Basic-Fit membership included. Or a free month on Zwift. Or a discount code for your next stay with Tour sponsor Airbnb. Combine the experience with tangible value in the daily life of the fan.

It’s not about these examples, it’s about the mindset and way of thinking, making sure that paying for access is no longer perceived as a bitter pill but instead starts to feel like a logical choice.

So perhaps we should flip the question. 

Not, should we start charging for access to road races? But, how can we deliver so much value that people actually want to pay to watch a bike race?

That demands creativity, cooperation between organisers, teams and sponsors, and a fair model in which income and data are shared. It also demands courage to go against the current, as Pozzato is doing. Small steps: testing, adjusting, learning.

The honest conclusion is that the current world of cycling is still a long way from that point. With a status quo that has leaned on the same structures and the same actors for decades, it is unlikely that we will suddenly see a wave of experiments. The instinct to dismiss anything that smells of ticketing as an attack on the soul of the sport is deeply rooted.

That is exactly why this conversation is needed now. Not because Alpe d’Huez should suddenly disappear behind a fence, but because doing nothing means accepting that the sport stays in the same place while others keep moving.

Between everything free and everything paid, there is a wide and largely unexplored space. That space holds real opportunity, under one clear condition. Any money that fans pay has to flow back into the sport. Ticketing only makes sense if it helps create a more sustainable business model for teams and smaller organisers alike, in order to strengthen what happens on the road.

In that shift, there is room for organisers who want a future, for teams that want to be more than moving billboards, and for brands that want to maximise their sponsorships. Above all, there is an opportunity for fans, who can get a richer experience than a fleeting moment by the roadside.

If cycling is willing to stop treating free as a dogma and start treating it as one option among many, tickets can be a piece of the solution for a healthier model.