How Onley's transfer highlights a new business model for teams

Ineos Grenadiers needed a British star after Tom Pidcock's departure and Geraint Thomas's retirement left them searching for Tour de France relevance. Oscar Onley, fresh from fourth place at the 2025 Tour, was that star. Team Picnic PostNL, operating on a fraction of Ineos's budget and holding a contract through 2027, had leverage. Money changed hands. Rider changed teams. Standard transfer business.

But that framing misses what makes this winter different. The Onley deal is one of at least four major contract buyouts completed in recent months. Remco Evenepoel left Soudal Quick-Step for Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe with a year remaining on his deal. Juan Ayuso terminated his UAE Team Emirates-XRG contract three years early to join Lidl-Trek. Cian Uijtdebroeks broke his Visma-Lease a Bike agreement two years ahead of schedule to sign with Movistar. And all four moves required compensation packages running into millions of euros.

According to sources cited by Johan Bruyneel, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe paid roughly €7 million to release Evenepoel from the final year of his Soudal Quick-Step contract. Lidl-Trek's acquisition of Ayuso is believed to have cost €10 million to buy out the three remaining years of his UAE deal, with some reports suggesting the total investment in "Project Ayuso" could reach €25 million across five years when salary and support infrastructure are included. 

Team Picnic PostNL received just under €6 million for Onley's two-year buyout. Transfer fees for Uijtdebroeks's two-year Visma contract have not been disclosed, though Movistar committed to a four-year deal running through 2029.

Add those sums together, and the winter of 2025-2026 saw more than €25 million change hands in contract buyouts alone. For context, many WorldTour teams operate on annual budgets smaller than that figure.

Football has made peace with the idea that smaller clubs develop talent for bigger clubs to buy. Ajax produces players. Barcelona pays for them. Everyone understands the transaction. Cycling has always resisted this model, clinging to the fiction that teams sign riders to keep them, not to sell them on.

According to reporting from Daniel Benson, Team Picnic PostNL – and before that, Giant-Alpecin, Sunweb, and DSM, has generated roughly €9-10 million in transfer fees over the past decade. 

Tom Dumoulin, Marcel Kittel, Warren Barguil, Marc Hirschi, Ilan Van Wilder, and now Oscar Onley have all been bought out of their contracts. The Onley transfer alone brings in just under €6 million, comparable to the Evenepoel buyout and more than half of the reported Ayuso fee.

UAE Team Emirates-XRG extracted €10 million from Ayuso's departure. Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe paid €7 million for Evenepoel, but they are backed by an energy drink empire with Grand Tour ambitions. For everyone else, riders leave when their contracts expire, or they negotiate releases for token sums.

Team Picnic PostNL seems to be different. They sign young riders to long-term deals, develop them, and then make those contracts so financially painful to break that wealthier teams have no choice but to pay. It is a business model which treats rider development as a product and contract leverage as the delivery mechanism.

And this winter, that model went mainstream.

The system depends on timing and risk calculation, and the 2025-2026 transfer window demonstrates the pattern with unusual clarity.

Onley signed his contract with Team Picnic PostNL in 2023, when he was a promising development rider but far from a guaranteed star. The deal ran through 2027 – long enough to cover his entire progression from prospect to proven performer. Evenepoel's Soudal Quick-Step contract extended through 2026. Ayuso was tied to UAE through 2028. Uijtdebroeks had signed with Visma through 2027. That length was the key in all four cases.

By the time these riders wanted to move, they had become too valuable to wait out and too expensive to ignore. Onley finished fourth at the Tour de France. Evenepoel won Olympic gold in both the road race and time trial. 

Ayuso had podiumed at the Vuelta as a teenager and remained one of the sport's top Grand Tour prospects despite a difficult couple of seasons. Uijtdebroeks won the Tour de l'Avenir and showed flashes of genuine stage racing talent, and that his health issues were solved.

But these contracts gave their current teams leverage. Ineos could not wait two years for Onley. Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe had pursued Evenepoel for four years and could not risk him extending with Soudal-QuickStep. Lidl-Trek needed a Grand Tour leader, and Ayuso's three remaining years at UAE made waiting impossible. Movistar wanted a young GC rider, and Uijtdebroeks's two-year Visma deal stood in the way.

So the buying teams paid. Not token gestures or negotiated settlements, but genuine market-rate compensation that treated contract buyouts as transactions with established value. 

Team Picnic PostNL initially declined multiple offers for Onley before accepting Ineos's final proposal. Soudal-QuickStep held firm on Evenepoel's release fee even as their relationship deteriorated. UAE let Ayuso go, but only after securing compensation that made the deal financially viable. Visma-Lease a Bike allowed Uijtdebroeks to leave after acknowledging their visions no longer aligned, presumably with financial terms attached.

The whole sequence illustrates how the model operates. Sign riders early and long. Develop them effectively enough that bigger teams take notice. Then extract maximum value when those teams need the rider more urgently than you can afford to keep him.

The winter of 2025-2026 could mark the start of something broader, though whether cycling is ready to acknowledge it is another question.

If four major transfers can generate more than €25 million in contract buyouts in a single window, then rider development becomes a viable revenue model for teams operating below the super-budget tier. Not the only model, and probably not the most stable one, but viable nonetheless. 

The logic is straightforward: identify talent early, lock them into long contracts, provide enough support to help them break out, then extract compensation when wealthier teams come calling.

This is how football's mid-tier clubs have operated for years. Dortmund develops Erling Haaland. Manchester City pays for him. Dortmund uses that money to sign the next prospect. The cycle continues.

Cycling has resisted this model partly because the sport's economics have never supported it and partly because teams prefer to believe they are building something permanent rather than running a talent pipeline. But this winter suggests the resistance is crumbling. Team Picnic PostNL has been running the pipeline model for a decade. Soudal-QuickStep extracted €7 million for a rider they knew they were losing anyway.

UAE turned Ayuso's problematic seasons into a €10 million windfall. Visma-Lease a Bike let Uijtdebroeks leave rather than force an unhappy rider to stay, presumably with compensation attached.

The pattern is clear. The question is whether other teams will follow.

For that to happen, the sport would need to formalise transfer structures in ways it has not yet done. Right now, contract buyouts are negotiated case by case, with no standard framework and no transparency. Teams with leverage can extract fees. Teams without it watch riders leave for nothing. There is no market, only bilateral negotiation.

But if more teams start treating rider development as a revenue stream, the pressure to create formal transfer mechanisms will increase. The UCI may resist, preferring to maintain the fiction that cycling is not football, but the economic reality is already here. Four major buyouts in one transfer window is not an accident. It is a signal that the sport's economics are shifting toward transactions cycling has historically avoided.

For the sport, the model poses harder questions. If contracts become products, does cycling become football? If development teams exist to sell riders to super-budget squads, what happens to competitive balance? If transfer fees reach eight figures, what happens to teams that cannot afford to buy or sell at those levels?

Right now, Team Picnic PostNL has €6 million from the Onley transfer, giving them financial breathing room heading into the next licensing procedure. INEOS Grenadiers has Oscar Onley and renewed Tour de France ambitions. Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe has Remco Evenepoel and a leadership crisis to manage. Lidl-Trek has Juan Ayuso and €25 million invested in making him a Grand Tour winner. Movistar has Cian Uijtdebroeks and a four-year window to prove he can deliver.

All five teams got what they needed. The sport, meanwhile, continues to figure out what it is willing to become.