With the beginning of a new racing season, January often becomes a bit of a swirling, soupy mess of sponsor swaps as teams unveil new equipment for the upcoming year. So far we haven’t seen a great many substantive changes besides fresh paint and new colours for jerseys, though Astana will be racing on Chinese bikes and Groupama-FDJ has dropped Shimano wheels in favour of Miche, and Maap has entered the WorldTour as the new sponsor of Jayco-AlUla and Liv-AlUla-Jayco.
While the cycling world turns its focus towards the Tour Down Under, and the grey shorts and purple Maap jerseys likely draw the eye more than anything else, what is perhaps most compelling has been going on in the Netherlands, and playing out as the new year begins on some extremely muddy cyclocross courses.
Visma-Lease a Bike’s kit doesn’t look all that different from that of 2024, but underneath the same yellow and black, honeycomb motif - or white with rainbow stripes in the case of Fem van Empel - a small change of logos hints that the team, instead of swapping to a new clothing sponsor for 2025, may perhaps be taking the bull by the horns and producing their own clothing under a ‘Yellow B’ label.
For the last few years Visma has been sponsored by Dutch kit brand Agu, but the partnership ended at the culmination of the 2024 season, reportedly due to Agu facing financial difficulties. Sponsoring a top flight cycling team involves developing and providing a huge number of individual garments, so if the brand is in difficulties as we understand then it isn’t a surprise to see it drop out of the WorldTour.
What is perhaps more surprising is that no company has stepped in to fill the void. Images of Wout van Aert and Fem van Empel at cyclocross races early in the season show them both racing in kit devoid of the Agu logo, but also devoid of any other clothing sponsor logos. Instead, where the Agu logo was, a ‘YB’ logo has been added.
This 'Yellow Bee' motif is what the team is aiming to be known as, according to a report by Wielerflits, in a more formal sense of Soudal Quick-Step calling itself ‘The Wolfpack’, creating a team identity that transcends the comings and goings of sponsorship agreements. It does suggest that the team, instead of finding a new sponsor, has simply taken the decision to produce its own kit.
It wouldn't be the first team to go down this route. Team DSM, nowadays known as Team Picnic PostNL, switched from Craft clothing to its own supply, branded Keep Challenging after the team's slogan, but produced by Bioracer, and later Nalini.
It's unconfirmed at this stage whether Visma's 'Yellow B' brand is being produced in partnership with an established brand in a similar sense, or simply whether a faceless factory setup will provide the supply.
Kit sponsorship in professional cycling is a pretty rough deal on the face of things. Cycling doesn’t have the same fan culture as sports like football, partially as cycling jerseys make little sense to wear off the bike, and partially as there’s a culture of not wearing team kit unless you’ve earned your place on the team. As a thought experiment, try and name the kit sponsors of the major teams at the WorldTour level, and Maap doesn’t count as I’ve given you that one at the start. Hard, isn’t it? The kit sponsors have to provide a huge volume of product in exchange for relatively little exposure in comparison to the prominence of title sponsors like Soudal, Ineos, and UAE.
If Visma are in fact making their own kit, they will have to foot the bill, but also will be in a position to monetise directly any kit sales. Alternatively, if the team is looking to build a team identity beyond the title sponsors, it could look to what is happening at FDJ-Suez, where the team has recently announced a partnership with Nike for team lifestyle apparel, with the actual team kit provided by Gobik (but you already knew that, didn’t you?).
Cyclingnews has approached both Visma-Lease a Bike and Agu for comment.
