Organisational forms in professional cycling : efficiency issues of the UCI pro tour

This paper gives a first economic approach to pro cycling and analyses the changes induced by the newly introduced UCI Pro Tour on the racing teams’ behaviour. We develop an oligopolistic model starting from the well known Bertrand and Cournot frameworks to analyse if the actual setting of the UCI Pro Tour leads to a partially unmeant behaviour of the racing teams. In particular, we show that the blamed regional concentration of their race participation depends on a lack of incentives stemming from the licence assignation procedure. Our theoretical results are supported by empirical data concerning the performance of the racing teams in 2005. As a recommendation for future improvements, we derive from the model the need for a relegation system for racing teams.