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What do cycling, lacrosse, and pickleball have in common? NBA superstar Kevin Durant is an investor in pro leagues for all three.
The National Cycling League, the new criterium-style racing league that debuted earlier this year, is getting an additional high-profile investor partway through its first season in Boardroom Sports Holdings which is owned by Durant and his investment partner Rich Kleiman.
The NCL is the latest sports venture for Boardroom Sports Holdings, joining the group’s investments in professional soccer, lacrosse, volleyball, and pickleball.
Alongside Durant, additional new investors to the NCL include DraftKings CEO Jason Robins and former Super Bowl MVP Desmond Howard. The investors were announced by the league via press release on Wednesday.
They join existing investors including NFL players Jalen Ramsey, Derwin James, and Kevin Byard, among other backers of the league.
The additional investors arrive at a tumultuous time for the upstart cycling league, which differentiates itself from traditional criteriums with a system where points are scored every lap and where each team has a men’s and women’s squad whose points contribute to the team’s total.
Only one of the originally planned four events has occurred so far after the second race, in Atlanta, was delayed from May to later this month. The fourth race on the original calendar, in Washington, D.C., has been canceled entirely.
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Meanwhile, multiple shakeups have happened at the executive level of the league. Last month, it announced a new CEO, Andrea Pagnanelli, unexpectedly.
Velo recently reported that the league has also parted ways with Medalist Sports, a sports management company behind events like the Amgen Tour of California that was brought on to plan and promote the four races.
The NCL has moved the remaining two events from city centers, which come with high costs in shutting down roads and hiring police among other expenses, to events centers far removed from downtowns.
The Atlanta race, now set for August 20, will be held at the Porsche Experience Center Atlanta, 10 miles south of the city center, and will be only open to people who pay for $200 VIP hospitality passes.
The Denver race, scheduled for August 13, will be held at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, the home of the Colorado Rapids MLS team, in Commerce City, outside of Denver. It will be free to the public to watch, but fans will need to sign up for a ticket online.
In another sign pointing toward financial difficulty, the two trade teams the NCL created, the Miami Nights and Denver Disruptors, which are intended to be franchises like the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys or NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers, have also pared back the number of racers attending events outside of the NCL. The teams, which consist of eight men, eight women, and a coach, had been participating in American Criterium Cup races.
Denver won the first, and so far only, NCL event in Miami Beach back in April, with the Miami Nights coming in second.
Amidst the personnel shakeups and shrinking calendar, questions also remain about prize money for the league, which originally advertised a $1 million prize purse. That included a $700,000 bonus payout if one team swept all four races in the series — of which there are now only three — and a $100,000 bonus for one team winning three events.
A copy of the NCL rules Velo obtained before the start of the season, contained this clause:
In the case that an entire NCL Cup Series Event is canceled due to force majeure, then the Quadruple/Triple Crown competition will convert to a Triple/Double Crown competition with the same standards applying. ie; a Participating Team must win all three (3) remaining Events with its men’s team and women’s team winning (on Race Points) at least one Race of such Events, then such Fully Participating Team shall be deemed the “NCL Triple Crown Winner” and awarded the $700,000 bonus.
However, there is no longer an easily found mention of the $1 million prize purse, if one exists at all, on the official NCL website. Archived versions of the NCL website from earlier this year states that a championships team will be “awarded the largest prize in the history of crit racing.”
The Google listing for nclracing.com still feature a snippet that says, “The future of professional cycling. 10 teams, 4 race criterium series, over $1 million in prize money.”
A screenshot of the NCL website’s Google listing still mentions a $1 million prize purse.
Velo has reached out to the NCL about an update on the prize money and further details on the latest investment.
This isn’t the first time a top NBA talent has invested in cycling. LeBron James, who has been known to ride to games, invested in Canyon bicycles last summer, and has previously invested in Cannondale. Other former NBA players known for their love of cycling, with the massive frames to prove it, include Reggie Miller and Bill Walton.