GP Archive - Why Protouch is Folding: A Conversation with Manager Rebecca Eliot
December 2022
In November, South African continental team, Protouch, announced that they would not be renewing their continental license for the 2023 season.
Since they began, the team has raced in four continents with 26 riders, picking up nine UCI wins. The team has enabled riders from six African countries to experience racing at a higher level. In 2022, they contracted riders from South Africa, Rwanda, Eritrea, Uganda and Burkina Faso.
There has been widespread disappointment among cycling fans that the team has been unable to continue.
Rebecca Eliot is a founding member and Team Manager of Protouch. She was part of launching the team when her son, Mitchell Eliot, was racing. She gave me her perspective on the team’s closing.
“There's always a sadness when something comes to an end,” said Eliot. “I kind of look at it differently. We've been involved with this project for a fair amount of time. What's important to realise is how the current model is so broken. It reiterates that even the top team in Africa - we have seven times more points than any other African team, we get to more events, our riders are ranked higher - even with that ranking, we still aren't able to attract sponsors or investors.”
Alongside the running of the team, Eliot runs Protouch Africa, a sports tech business. They work with a number of sports teams, brands and federations representing Swiss-based company, Blocksport. The business provides their clients with the tools to increase fan engagement.
Eliot’s company has also launched the Protouch Africa app. The app “aggregates African Cycling while providing African Cycling Fans a new way to engage, connect and support the sport they love.”
The work and investment needed to scale this business is the main reason for the team folding.
“The decision to not go ahead next year with registering a team is that a lot of the work in the business is starting to scale but I can never scale the business because all the spare cash goes into funding the team. It becomes a vicious circle.”
The team has been self-funded since its inception. Before the 2022 season, team management were unsure whether to continue with the team. Then they secured the agreement of a new sponsor which would make the team more financially secure. However, things didn’t work out as hoped.
“On the basis of this sponsorship we decided to do the team for another year. As it turned out, they never paid anything. In the end, they are now being investigated for money laundering. In reality, what happened was that we just limped along this year. It's put us back another year.”
The team announced its demise on November the 14th. This gives riders just seven weeks to find new teams before the new season begins. Eliot explained to me that the folding of the team wasn’t a surprise to the riders.
“Like us, everyone has been hoping that something was going to change that somebody's going to look at what we're doing and be part of it. Riders are given twelve-month contracts at a time, with no expectation of anything further.
“I think all of the riders in the team have been well aware of the challenges which face cycling. I think deep down they were all hoping that there was going to be some rabbit that was pulled out of the hat. It certainly shouldn't have been any surprise to them.
“Just like them, we're as sad, but we're also exploring different options for them. There are a couple of irons in the fire. To a point, a lot of the teams are looking for much younger riders.”
Up to this point, none of the riders have announced new teams for next season. One rider has secured a place in a continental team. Others will likely race their national amateur calendars in 2023 and may get opportunities to ride for national squads.
Problems
The team had a number of issues off the bike this year.
They struggled to gain invitations to races, especially in Africa. Eliot says that this is mostly due to the UCI system in Africa.
“Everywhere else in the world, if you are the top three ranked continental teams, you automatically get invitations to races on that continent. In Africa, the top-3 nations get access to those invitations, which means we in essence actually compete with our federation to get the invite.
“I've tried with the UCI for the last two years to table this change and I understood that five years ago when that ruling was made that there weren't many conti teams from Africa so it made sense, but over the last few years we've had as many as five continental teams. Sidi-Ali have similar issues to us. The UCI have acknowledged that it is an issue but seemingly nothing is being done about it.”
This ruling has meant that the team has only managed to race one African UCI race this season, the Tour du Rwanda. The squad have raced in three other continents over the year, adding to the expense of running the team.
In September, Protouch raced the Maryland Cycling Classic. Although a big race with top-level competition, this was a low-point for the team.
Rwandan rider Samuel Mugisha was selected for the race, but was a surprise DNS on the results sheet. The team released a statement which said that Mugisha had flown into the country, met some friends at the airport and was now unreachable.
After the race, top Eritrean prospect Mehari Tewelde, who finished a decent 37th place, is reported to have never got on his plane home.
Both riders seemingly continue to be in the USA today.
The news came as a big surprise to Eliot, who was still in South Africa at the time.
“Do you know how many people have said to me that they are amazed that we haven't had that problem in any of the years previously? We do know of other teams who have had African riders that have had this situation happen on an ongoing basis. Worldwide in sport, this concept of going to an Olympics or another competition and disappearing before or after the event apparently is common, I didn't realise how common it was. It never really occurred to us at all that this could be a real thing. It was quite shocking.”
Clearly this is a significant issue which needs greater treatment at another time. These two are not the only Africans to have gone missing during the season.
The Future
With all the issues facing African continental teams, are they even viable? Eliot thinks so.
“We run our team on $250,000 per year. Most continental teams in Europe are running on twice that, if not four-times that.
“So the reality is, is it viable? Yes. You can run a reasonably successful continental team - that's no bells and whistles. We're riding bikes that are two years old, we don't have two bikes per rider. Every rider has his bike and we have two spares. We're still riding rim-brake. We're using carbon wheels that we invested in in 2019.
“Yet we can still go to Tour of Langkawi and have a number of top-15s and get a 13th on GC against World Tour teams.”
Even though the team is folding, Eliot doesn’t see this as the end of the line.
“We're not leaving cycling in its entirety. We are looking at new ways of making the industry more sustainable, particularly within the African context.”
Eliot is planning to scale the Protouch Africa business as a way of funding the team and supporting the development of African cycling in the future. She plans to leverage the popularity of African cyclists through the app.
“Of the 380 riders that we feature in our Pro Touch Africa app, they have about 1.5 million people who follow them globally. If you just got a percentage of the 1.5 million people to get behind African cycling. There are various ways that one can monetise it.”
“I want to build a more sustainable revenue stream that is not dependent on sponsorships. That model in my mind is flawed. It almost needs to be that the other revenue streams that come in are the things that fund the team and when you get a sponsorship that could almost be the cherry on the top.”
If the team does come back, it may not be registered in South Africa.
“In South Africa, it is not advantageous right now to even have a registered Continental Team. Because the country is ranked in a higher UCI tier, we pay more to be registered as a continental team than in Rwanda and other lower ranked nations.
“We'd register it in another country and still have some South African riders but it might be easier and cheaper to run a continental team elsewhere.”
In the meantime, Eliot may support some riders on an individual basis to help continue their development.
Without doubt, Protouch have had a positive effect on cycling in Africa since their launch four years ago. Riders have had opportunities to race at a good level and riders like Kent Main, Moise Mugisha, Gustav Basson and Callum Ormiston have impressed and improved under the team.
Clearly there are many issues to overcome for continental teams in Africa to be sustainable. It remains to be seen as to whether Eliot’s business plan can create a sustainable model which will accelerate African cycling development.