Professional road cycling: Globalization and the role of stakeholders in the semi-closed leagues

Abstract

Road cycling is one of the oldest sports and one of the first sports disciplines to have been professionalized. Professional road cycling, in particular, has its own peculiarities: in terms of competition, it is an individual sport practiced by teams, and in terms of organizational structure and funding, the main races are organized by private companies and by teams dependent on their sponsors. However, academic literature has paid little attention to it. It was not until the beginning of the 21st century that studies began to be published. This paper seeks to determine whether the semi-closed world league promoted by the International Cycling Union (UCI) since 2005 has achieved its goal of globalizing the sport and what role the different stakeholders have played in it.