Power Plays: How 2025 Rewrote the Global Sports Business — and What Comes Next in 2026

Key Takeaways:

● Sports Stories of 2025 Dominated by Media Developments

● And A Look Ahead: Key Sports Trends in 2026

● Pro Cycling 2025: The Highlights

● Sportswashing: What to Watch For Going Forward

● Cyclocross Dominated by MvdP and Lucinda Brand

Many of the top sports stories of 2025 revolved around the rapidly transforming sports media landscape, perhaps best illustrated by Disney/ESPN’s purchase of the NFL Network in return for equity, major league baseball adding NBC and Netflix to its media partners, and TNT investing in the breakaway Unrivaled entity – the women’s three-on-three basketball league. This incipient cross-over from being distributors or broadcasters of sports content, to actually owning and controlling sports content is a gathering trend which could have huge long-term implications. Dominating the news toward the end of the year was the (still-in-progress) Warner Bros.-Discovery transaction, which we recently profiled in detail on the VELO website. This last topic is one of potentially great significance for cycling fans, as the ultimate outcome of this deal – which may be heavily influenced by political considerations within the Trump administration – could eventually determine how and whether we watch cycling events in the future and how much we may have to pay for the privilege.

The sports business landscape enters 2026 powered by an historic wave of investment, but it faces several uncertain forks in the road ahead – and several of these could determine future trends in professional cycling. We surveyed the end-of-year prognostications by various sports media analysts and outlets, and among the most consequential of these to cycling are (1) the rapid proliferation of private equity into sports leagues, (2) an ongoing labor impasse between the WNBA and its players, and (3) the increasing likelihood that the so-called “Enhanced Games” will be a success. The private equity situation was covered in our last AIRmail edition, with regards to its penetration into collegiate sports; this is a frontier which will likely now break open the floodgates, to begin to allow PE investment into any and all elite sports. This trend flows directly out of the NCAA’s settlement in 2025 to essentially pay school athletes as employees, skyrocketing head coach contract valuations, and continued expansion and diversification of NIL payment schemes to bolster athlete recruitment and retention. So-called “elite” athletes can no longer be classified as “amateur” athletes, and Olympic sports like cycling may also be in line massive investment infusions and major strategic and organizational changes.

The WNBA labor impasse will likely impact all women’s professional sports – not just for the likely increase in salaries and benefits for the players, but also for the way in which the players’ association, the WNBPA, has deftly played its hand at the negotiation table. The league has exploded in terms of popularity and cultural reach, as has its revenue streams and future market reach via team expansion and subsequent club valuations. The players innately understand these facts and their value in this ecosystem; they are demanding at least incremental increases in athlete rights, salaries, and a say in any proposed salary cap. And if all that sounds like the backbone of a meaningful strategy for pro cycling’s athlete associations – whether formally acknowledged by the UCI like the CPA, or not, like the influential women’s independent organization, The Cyclists’ Alliance – you’d be right. Athletes are increasingly learning how to leverage their legal and economic power. Despite cycling’s fragile financial model, often cited as a reason to curtail athlete demands for fear that these would bankrupt the sport, changes forced by athlete solidarity could be the spark that might lead to overall improvement of the sport. The highly-educated, smaller and more nimble women’s peloton could deliver just such a spark, with potentially positive impacts on the entire sport.

Lastly, it seems that the Enhanced Games – the “Olympics on performance enhancing drugs” – are going to take place in Las Vegas this year whether the rest of the sporting community likes it or not. We’ve covered the potential implications of this event throughout 2025 as organizer announcements and strategic initiatives have come to light, and whether approached from the cynical or the purely rational, a sporting convocation in which the athletes are lauded and rewarded for competing while under the influence of PEDs may have a long-lasting impact on global sports. First, the event may provide a benchmark for quantifying the difference between doped and clean athletes across a variety of standardized efforts in swimming and athletics, thus providing real world examples of the advantages doped athletes have long held on the playing field. Second, it will likely help to launch a global human performance enhancement “health” platform providing supplements, medication, and medical advice to subscribers who wish to experience the same benefits as the Enhanced Games’ competitors – a sure-fire multi-billion dollar industry. And lastly, the event will likely force a complete reinvention of anti-doping strategy, policy and science as it reshapes or helps to “normalize” the cultural perception of “doping.”

Focusing more specifically on the key trends in pro cycling, our sister publication Beyond the Peloton recently summarized the sport’s macrotrends and key turning points of 2025. Stepping back, the data simply reinforce what we all already know and recognize to be true: the sport’s biggest events have been thoroughly dominated by a tiny handful of elite riders and superteams. The 2025 season was defined by a small group of riders delivering historically consistent results in the biggest races: Mathieu van der Poel and Tadej Pogačar continued their near-total control of the monuments, with Pogačar stretching the limits of what a modern grand tour contender can be by finishing runner-up at Paris-Roubaix in his debut between two other monument wins, then comfortably defending his Tour de France title and repeating as world champion. In the other grand tours, Visma-Lease a Bike’s Simon Yates’ surprise Giro victory and Jonas Vingegaard’s gritty, protest-disrupted Vuelta win only reinforced the same pattern: when it mattered most, the same names and the same teams decided almost all of the outcomes. It was notable that Visma-LAB had to spend roughly €55 million (while booking a €6 million loss) to barely keep up with the UAE team and their massive budget – and to accomplish their three grand tour podium placements. More significantly, the window of opportunity for lower-budget teams is beginning to look smaller and smaller, with some effectively transitioning into “farm clubs” or developmental squads for the larger-budget teams.

Zooming out, the more striking story is structural. Over the past three seasons, virtually every major one-day race has been won by just four riders, almost always via long-range solo attacks, while stage racing has narrowed even further, with a handful of teams monopolizing both the grand tours and the major one-week WorldTour races. This concentration isn’t accidental: the largest teams are now able to translate sports science, altitude protocols, fueling, and aerodynamics into a year-round plan of execution at a scale smaller teams simply can’t match. And as high-dollar contract buyouts are normalized and increasingly reshape rosters (for example, Derek Gee-West’s transfer to Lidl-Trek, now apparently finalized), the result is an ever faster and more ruthless ecosystem. While this occasionally rewards smaller teams through lucrative transfers when they identify talent early, the broader trajectory seems clear: more than ever, money is the decisive determinant of competitive performance in modern professional cycling. And as we noted earlier, players in the private equity space may see that as an open door to take a foothold in the sport’s future.

The cyclocross “kerst” period that spanned the end of the year in Belgium concluded with few surprises over the 11-race celebration. Mathieu van der Poel won every race that he entered, most critically the four UCI World Cups that he had targeted. His Dutch teammate Tibor del Grosso emerged as a star for the future while Thibau Nys continued to live up to his lineage as Belgium’s preeminent ‘crosser. On the downside, Wout Van Aert may have tragically tanked his Classics season on the broken ankle he suffered at the Mol race. On the women’s side, Lucinda Brand literally won at will save for the Zonhoven race this past Sunday, in which she finally made a consequential bike handling mistake that gave Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado a clean line to victory. Despite the dominance of Van der Poel and Brand, the competition has been exceptionally entertaining and has drawn its usual packed crowds, despite the typically fickle Belgian weather of late. While fans have been able to pick up much of the coverage at a premium on TNT/MAX, those “in the know” have been able to enjoy it via intrepid pirate streams on YouTube and other platforms. And arguably, due to cyclocross’s smaller footprint and outsized cultural impact on cycling, free-to-air may be a better fit for the sport and may open it to more valuable presenting sponsor opportunities in the future.

An important context for sports business in 2026 that was not widely noted by media think-tanks will be the direct impacts of sportswashing throughout governance bodies, sponsorship, marketing, and staging of major upcoming events. We covered this extensively last year; Saudi Arabian and United Arab Emirates investments in cycling took center stage while both countries committed various human rights infractions. In addition, Rwanda hosted the road world championships as a prelude to its de facto occupation of Congolese territory. In particular, UAE’s direct support of a Sudanese paramilitary rebellion was punctuated by a genocide and wide global condemnation. The NBA, which has a long-term marketing deal with Emirates Airlines for its in-season tournament, has quietly stated that it will reevaluate that sponsorship as various U.N. and independent investigators issue findings on the now notorious El Fasher massacre – which may come to haunt cycling’s UAE Team as well.

Meanwhile, the elephant in the room could be shifting from the Middle East to the U.S., with regards to its recent “extrajudicial foray” into Venezuela and gathering overhaul of foreign visitor and visa policies. There is increasing concern that certain athletes, entourages, fans, and journalists from a wide swath of countries already at odds with the current administration could be turned away at the border during the upcoming FIFA World Cup and Los Angeles Olympics, an impact already hinted at by virtue of the record-setting downturn in U.S. tourism during 2025 – a trend which shows no signs of slowing. Freedom and independence of competition – often cited as “peace via sport” in the Olympic spirit – may become a hard sell as most of the countries around the world prepare to send their teams ahead. The World Cup may be the litmus test, especially as many matches will be held in Canada and Mexico with waves of fans seeking to cross U.S. borders multiple times during the tournament.