Apparently, cycling is finding the perfect solution to its business dreams: charging fans for tickets. The reasoning is linear, almost naive: nowadays everything is paid for, you even pay to see a fresco in a church, in other more popular sports ticket entry has always been the norm, so why should cycling alone be free, where is that written?

I must say that the issue doesn't seem so exciting, let alone revolutionary. Cycling has long been "selling" pieces of itself in various forms: TV rights, sections of arrival boulevards or certain climbs in the greatest races, the VIP enclosures at start villages are nothing more than sold spaces (to sponsors, who then send their guests inside). So, it's not true that cycling is totally and perpetually free entertainment. Let's say that access remains free along the roads, on public ground, where cycling has always lived. If anything, the precise idea would be: why not significantly extend the paid zones?

To a sensible question, an equally sensible answer: do it. Instead of one kilometer of paid access, whole or in parts, make it ten, hundred, thousand. However, you must know one thing: the larger the commitment, the greater the investment costs, good luck figuring out if it becomes convenient. And anyway: you can't respond to this urge to expand ticket sales without first asking the most serious and truest question: does the market exist?

I fear that when we talk about tickets everyone thinks of Alpe d'Huez or even just Colle delle Finestre. Come on, how could one resist, ticket booth at the foot of mythical climbs and stellar earnings by milking the crowds of great occasions. Attractive, inviting. What are we waiting for, it's time for cycling to make money, maybe even sell out.

But I can't think only with Alpe d'Huez in front of my eyes. Invariably, everything else appears before me. Especially the health of our cycling. The deadly effort that is now made every year to attract people, more and more. We're at a point where we should be thinking about paying the public to come to races, rather than entertaining ourselves with how, where, and how much to charge them. No judgment is needed on whether the idea is good or not, whether it's convenient or not: it's simply about understanding that now is not the time, even if it might be a good idea in itself. I can imagine spending a spectacular white week skiing, but without snow, it's an illusion. At the Italian level, of all the moments cycling could have decided to sell tickets, this is definitely the worst. It's the infallible law of the market, if there's no demand, every offer is painful. Shall we call it a pure timing issue? In all theaters, if actors miss their entrance timing, it's a guaranteed flop. I fear that the cycling company is also missing its timing.

But let's look around. Am I an overly pessimistic theater or is it true that now even the Giro and our Monuments struggle to get figures from TV rights, even from those, the primary source of income? Not just cycling, of course: football would want Premier League rights, Serie B and Serie C would want Serie A money, women's football would want men's figures, beyond that there are disciplines like basketball and volleyball begging for some RAI coverage at who knows what cost, to get talked about they buy newspaper pages, let's go to tennis, now for a Sinner-Alcaraz any network would pay astronomical figures, but over the centuries no one has been willing to put in two cents to relaunch normal tournaments. Returning after the long detour to the zero point of our cycling: I say heresy remembering that for the Tour, TV channels pay well, but for all other races it's a continuous downward game, with the well-founded prospect of not broadcasting anything at all (ask our organizers about the acrobatics and even humiliations to get a camera on the day of their event).

Here I say it and here I won't deny it. If cycling really intends to persist with this seductive siren of paying fans, I imagine terrible endings. The first that comes to mind: a Tour, randomly chosen, might fill up with attendance and earnings, but everything else will have to make do with cardboard cutouts by the roadside to break the funeral atmosphere. Gloomy science fiction? I wouldn't say so. Just look at how many people are by the roadside in many races today. Not everything is Flanders, not everything is Belgium. The rest is increasingly loneliness and depression. Go ahead, charge the few willing souls who still show up, then we'll see what remains. Proposal: let's talk about it later, at another time. Maybe never again.

from tuttoBICI January issue