The Logic Behind The Rumored Jumbo-Visma/Soudal-QuickStep Superteam Merger

Attempting to make sense of a wild week in professional cycling

The world of professional cycling has been thrown into disarray this week with reports that a merger between two of the sport’s top teams, Jumbo-Visma and Soudal-QuickStep, is imminent and will be in place before the 2024 season, and that Jumbo-Visma star Primož Roglič will announce his intention to move to a new team for the 2024 in the coming days, with Ineos, Israel Premier Tech, Lidl-Trek, Bahrain and Movistar rumored as the leading potential landing spots.

Due to the fact Jumbo-Visma is coming off the most successful season by any team in modern cycling, has a collection of the sport’s best riders in Wout van Aert, Jonas Vingegaard, and Primož Roglič (plus recent Vuelta winner Sepp Kuss), and the Belgian Soudal-QuickStep team has the young superstar Remco Evenepoel, and has been a rival of the Dutch Jumbo-Visma teams throughout the years, this was extremely shocking news, and is shaping up one of the biggest bombshells in a long while.

• Adding more layers to the chaos, the past 24 hours have rumors emerge and later shot down, that Amazon has signed on to sponsor the newly combined Jumbo-Visma/Soudal-QuickStep for the 2024 season (newer reporting suggests Amazon will simply be paying Jumbo €15 million for exclusive footage to air on their Prime Video service).

The barrage of news has been confusing and disorienting for even the most plugged-in viewers, so let’s take a step back to review how and why this rumored merger would happen and where it could leave some of the sport’s biggest stars.

Why Would This Happen?