Wout van Aert (Visma–Lease a Bike) has challenged one of road cycling’s sacred traditions, calling for fans to pay to watch races from the roadside and branding the current free-access model financially unsustainable.
Speaking to Belgian business newspaper De Tijd on Saturday, the Belgian star argued that relying on the “charm and folklore” of open, unpaid roads is pushing the sport towards crisis. Van Aert floated a nominal ticket of around €5 for key sections of major races, insisting that “the cake can be divided more fairly” between organisers, teams and riders.
“If you ask for a 5 euro entrance fee, that does not mean it is no longer for the people,” he said, in comments also reported by Het Laatste Nieuws. “In cycling, we are a little too focused on the charm and the folklore.”
Cycling is almost unique among global sports in having no systematic ticket income, surviving instead on sponsorship and under-valued TV rights. When a sponsor walks away, teams simply disappear. The looming Lotto–Intermarché WorldTour merger and riders such as Tom Paquot (Intermarché–Wanty) falling out of the system are the human face of that fragility.
Van Aert’s proposal borrows directly from cyclocross, where fans routinely pay €12–15 to enter a fenced circuit, and from small road experiments. "Cyclocross also charges an entry fee, and there's nothing more popular than that," he said. UCI president David Lappartient recently highlighted the Grand Prix de Plumelec, which charged €5 for access to the Côte de Cadoudal to keep the race alive.
Turning the open road into a part-ticketed venue would be a cultural earthquake. Yet Van Aert’s message is reasonable: romance is priceless, but the sport that sells it is running out of cash.
