When I stopped racing bikes and started doing my own thing, I was shocked at the value of social media, content, and storytelling for sponsors, which was mostly untapped by teams at the time.

I realized the limitations of these big organizations with 6-8 figure budgets, whose only platform to justify sponsor value is competing at events that they don't own and have little control over, which may not even be televised in their target markets. Seems flimsy...

Some teams made efforts in this direction the last couple years, but you'd think that right now would be a wake-up call that competition and total reliance on someone else's platform isn't a great business.

But what are they doing? "Watch us race on the internet, where it literally doesn't matter what kind of bike or gear you ride, so all of those equipment sponsors who pay the bills get nothing in return."

I know it's hard to pivot but it's a bummer how unprepared they all were. I don't know what they *should* be doing and that's not my job anymore, but hope they figure it out and survive this and find a way to diversify. Status quo wasn't working.