British team at risk of collapsing after sponsor pulls out

British Continental women's team Pro-Noctis - 200º Coffee - Hargreaves Contracting might have to "wind up" next season, their manager has said, following the withdrawal of their main title sponsor.

Coaching company Pro-Noctis has decided it will end its partnership with the Lincoln-based squad at the end of the season, after four years of support. 

As a result, the team is now looking for a new title sponsor, and may have to "start from scratch again" if it doesn't find one, manager Rick Lister told Cycling Weekly. 

"In the last 10 days, I've sent out nearly 200 emails to companies," Lister said. "I'm on search engines looking for CEOs and marketing directors and that sort of thing. It's just a case of keeping sending this around, and hopefully you drop on that one person that's interested.

"If we don't get enough sponsorship on the table by the end of August, I've got to make a decision on what we do, because the riders need to know."

According to Lister, a "good, workable" budget would be around £150,000 for his team for the season, which he said could be split between multiple sponsors. 

"We're looking to keep going," the Pro-Noctis team manager said. "We can do three things: either we stay [a] UCI [team], which is pretty much impossible without the budget, take a step back down to club level, which we can do on a lower budget, or we wind it up for a year and aim to restart again in 2026, which isn't the ideal scenario – you lose all your riders, and you've got to start from scratch again."

At the start of this season Pro-Noctis stepped up a tier to UCI Continental level, which brought more international racing opportunities, but also "significantly" increased costs. The team turned to crowdfunding in May, and raised half of its £10,000 target to help ease the financial strain.

Now, Lister said, the team needs to find a new sponsor by November at the latest. "We have to pay a bond, a €20,000 bond to the UCI, at the start of November. That's when the window is for getting all the paperwork into the UCI. You can't keep hoping and hoping and hoping," he said. 

"We've worked too hard to just throw in the towel. We've had four years now, and we've had a fantastic season every year, [although] this year's been a struggle, I'm not going to lie. But we've worked hard to get to where we are, and we've always been really professional in the way we do things." 

At this year's Tour of Britain Women, Pro-Noctis riders Jo Tindley and Lucy Harris won combativity awards for their breakaway attacks. The team also finished as the joint best-ranked British Continental squad at the four-day race. 

Potential sponsors can get in touch with the team at finishlinert@gmail.com.