Can Fans Become Pro Cycling’s Next Revenue Stream?

Laurent Gouverneur

Sep 5

6 min read

Fantasy games, betting and digital collectibles are turning fan engagement into business. But how much of that value can actually reach the teams?

Professional cycling has never lacked fans. What it has lacked is an efficient way of turning those fans into customers. The traditional economic model remains overwhelmingly B2B: companies sponsor teams in exchange for exposure, broadcasters and organisers monetise audiences, and cycling brands sell equipment around the sport. The fan sits at the centre of this ecosystem, watching races, following riders, buying products and increasingly interacting digitally, but surprisingly little of that spending flows directly to the teams creating the sporting spectacle. This is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore as team budgets rise and sponsorship remains inherently fragile. Fantasy games, sports betting and digital collectibles offer three very different examples of how this relationship is changing. None is likely to replace sponsorship, but together they raise a much bigger question for professional cycling: could the fan eventually become a meaningful second source of revenue?

1. Fantasy cycling has already created an engaged digital audience

Fantasy cycling is perhaps the clearest evidence that fans are willing to move from passive viewing to active participation. The Tour de France operates its official Fantasy by Tissot, allowing fans to select riders and compete throughout the race, while Belgium's Sporza Wielermanager has developed an especially impressive community. Its 2026 spring competition approached 100,000 participants, with individual race rankings showing more than 95,000 active entries across the Classics. The attraction is obvious: instead of simply watching Pogačar attack or wondering whether a sprinter will survive the climbs, every tactical move suddenly has a personal consequence. The Tour has pushed this logic further by activating its fantasy game before the 2026 Grand Départ through quizzes and credits, extending engagement beyond the actual racing days. Yet economically, fantasy highlights cycling's paradox. The platform creates traffic, registration data, sponsorship inventory and longer engagement for the media company or race organiser, while the riders and teams represented inside the game generally remain part of the content rather than direct beneficiaries of its monetisation. Fantasy has therefore demonstrated the demand; it has not yet fundamentally changed the economics of the teams.

[MAIN VISUAL — WHO MONETISES THE CYCLING FAN?]

2. Betting monetises uncertainty — cycling produces plenty of it

Sports betting represents a potentially much larger pool of money, although one that comes with significantly greater risks. Cycling provides an unusually rich betting product: overall winners, individual stages, podiums, classifications, head-to-head rider markets and numerous live scenarios can all turn sporting uncertainty into commercial inventory. Unlike fantasy, however, betting immediately introduces questions of integrity and regulation. UCI rules place specific conditions on sponsorship by betting companies precisely to reduce risks of collusion and competition manipulation, while the federation participates in the IOC's Integrity Betting Intelligence System to exchange information on suspicious betting activity. That creates an interesting business dilemma. Betting companies can value cycling's engaged audience and generate substantial economic activity around races, but the closer cycling itself moves towards capturing that value, the more carefully conflicts, data access and integrity must be managed. For teams, betting sponsorship could become another commercial category; a direct share of betting activity would be considerably more controversial. The opportunity exists, but it is probably not the cleanest answer to cycling's search for more sustainable revenues.

3. From NFT speculation to useful digital ownership

Digital collectibles offer a different experiment. The first generation of sports NFTs showed that fans were willing to spend extraordinary amounts on virtual assets. NBA Top Shot approached $1 billion in historical on-chain transaction volume, while football platform Sorare generated more than $165 million of sales volume in 2021 alone according to industry estimates. Even Formula 1 demonstrated the potential intensity of demand: F1 Delta Time generated $3.4 million from a single 90-minute NFT sale. The comparison should be treated carefully — these figures cover different periods and mix primary sales with transaction volumes — but the scale is instructive. Sports fans can assign genuine economic value to digital ownership. The equally important lesson is that speculation alone is not a sustainable business model: the NFT boom faded dramatically and F1 Delta Time ultimately disappeared. For cycling, therefore, the interesting question in 2026 is no longer whether someone will pay thousands for a JPEG of a rider. It is whether digital ownership can be attached to something fans actually want to use.

[SMALL CHART — HOW BIG CAN DIGITAL SPORTS COLLECTIBLES GET?]

NBA Top Shot — ~$1bn historical on-chain transaction volumeSorare Football — >$165m sales volume in 2021F1 Delta Time — $3.4m from one NFT dropCyLimit — ? Can cycling turn digital cards into a meaningful revenue stream?

Figures use different periods and methodologies and illustrate scale rather than a like-for-like market comparison.

4. CyLimit is testing a different model for cycling

This is where CyLimit becomes an interesting case study. Rather than selling collectibles independently from the sport, the French platform combines limited digital rider cards with a fantasy game based on actual race performances. Some cards exist on blockchain and can be traded, while the platform also offers non-blockchain game assets; for French users, the service now operates within the regulatory framework for Jeux à Objets Numériques Monétisables (JONUM). More importantly for Pelotonomics, CyLimit explicitly presents its ambition as building a “new economy” for professional cycling teams and states that part of its sales is redistributed to teams. That changes the economic chain. Instead of fan → platform, the ambition becomes fan → game/collectible → platform → team. CyLimit has also expanded into physical rider cards, linking collecting, fantasy gaming and support for professional teams. The amounts involved are not publicly disclosed at a level that allows a meaningful comparison with Sorare or NBA Top Shot, which is precisely why the experiment is worth following: the important metric will not simply be how many cards are sold, but how much incremental revenue can ultimately reach professional teams.

[CYLIMIT FOUNDER INSERT]This would be the natural place for the interview: number of active users, total card sales, primary versus secondary-market activity, average spend per paying user, participating teams and — most importantly — the amount or percentage of revenue flowing back into professional cycling.

5. The bigger opportunity goes far beyond NFTs

The most important lesson may therefore have little to do with blockchain. Fantasy and CyLimit are simply early versions of a broader shift from audience monetisation to fan monetisation. A professional team could theoretically build several direct-to-consumer revenue layers around the same supporter: paid membership with exclusive content, enhanced race data, digital or physical collectibles, limited-edition merchandise, auctions of race-used equipment, virtual access to riders, service-course visits, premium experiences or fantasy products in which the team participates economically. None needs to become enormous individually. Imagine instead one million highly engaged cycling fans worldwide generating an average of €20 of incremental direct annual revenue: that would represent €20 million entering the ecosystem. At €50, it becomes €50 million. These are scenarios rather than forecasts, but they illustrate why the concept matters. Cycling does not necessarily need to invent another €50 million sponsor; it needs to become better at capturing small amounts of value from a very large, passionate global audience. The strongest models will probably combine digital engagement with something tangible — access, competition, ownership, community or experience — rather than asking supporters simply to pay for content they currently receive for free.

6. From audience to customers — without losing the fans

There is nevertheless a balance to protect. One of professional cycling's great strengths is that so much of the sport remains accessible: spectators can stand beside an Alpine road without buying a ticket, watch the peloton pass within metres and follow much of the season without belonging to an expensive fan ecosystem. Aggressively monetising every interaction could damage precisely the accessibility that makes cycling distinctive. Betting brings integrity and responsible-gambling issues; digital collectibles bring financial and regulatory risks; subscriptions can fragment audiences; and even fantasy products need scale before revenue sharing becomes meaningful. The objective should therefore not be to put a price on being a cycling fan, but to give the most engaged fans additional things worth paying for. Professional cycling has spent decades turning audiences into value for sponsors, organisers and broadcasters. Fantasy games, collectibles and new digital experiences suggest that the next step could be different: turning a small part of that enormous audience into customers — and ensuring that, this time, more of the value reaches the teams.