How Much Do Professional Cyclists Make in 2024?
Source: instagram.com/tadejpogacar/
The salary of a professional cyclist can range from zero (roughly 25% of female riders) to almost $6 million.
A professional cyclist’s salary is primarily based on their win rate, potential, gender, popularity, and marketability.
A team’s budget plays a role in determining salaries. For example, Jumbo-Visma riders have lower salaries than Ineos despite being more successful in recent years.
Unfortunately for riders, hard work, determination, and sacrifice aren’t sufficient to achieve success and earn more, but they are necessary.
Curious about who earns the most in professional cycling and why? In this article, we’ll list and discuss the highest earnings in the cycling world and the factors contributing to these amounts.
The Salaries of Top-Earning Professional Cyclists
Cycling is a relatively small sport in terms of viewership and popularity globally, so the amount of money available to the athletes is lower than sports like soccer, basketball, or football.
For example, the average men’s WorldTour cyclist earns $200,000 to $300,000 per year, compared to the average Premier League soccer player, who earns between $2.5 and $3 million per year.
Now, let’s have a look at some of the top salaries in cycling, starting with top earner and two-time Tour de France winner Tadej Pogacar. These salaries are all reported and are not exact numbers.
1. Tadej Pogacar’s Salary: $6.6M/Year
The top salary in professional cycling is Team UAE Emirates’ Tadej Pogacar, who reportedly earns $6.6M per year.
As he is arguably the best cyclist in the world, with two grand tour wins and three of cycling’s five monument races under his belt, and he’s young, Pogacar certainly merits the top salary in the sport.
Although not as marketable or popular as, say, Peter Sagan, Pogacar’s unbelievable palmares and incredible potential put him at the top.
2. Chris Froome’s Salary: $6M/Year
Four-time Tour de France winner Chris Froome will go down in history as one of the greatest grand tour riders ever. Froome also won the Giro d’Italia once and Vuelta a España twice.
His salary, an estimated $6M per year, is the second highest in the men’s peloton. This salary is based solely on Froome’s past results and marketability.
Following his life-changing crash in the 2019 Tour de France, Froome hasn’t reached the same heights of performance. His current team, Isreal-Premier Tech, signed him with the hopes that he would return to grand tour-winning form, but this never materialized.
In the summer of 2023, his manager was quoted saying his salary didn’t offer “value for money,” which might be an understatement.
3. Peter Sagan’s Salary: $6M/Year
Peter Sagan is one of the most decorated cyclists of the modern era. He’s a three-time World Champion and one-time European Champion.
He won the points classification at the Tour de France a record seven times, has 18 grand tour victories across all three, and has won the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix.
Aside from his victories, Sagan is one of the most popular and flamboyant cyclists in the peloton, known for his displays of technical prowess and playful wheelies to groups of fans during races.
This popularity and success have earned him a top salary of roughly $6M and a personal sponsorship from Specialized. Peter Sagan has retired for the 2024 season.
4. Primoz Roglic’s Salary: $5.5M/Year
Primoz Roglic is another of cycling’s most decorated riders, with four grand tour wins: three in the Vuelta a España and the 2023 Giro d’Italia. Additionally, he’s won dozens of stage races and one-day races.
Roglic’s illustrious eight-year stint with Jumbo-Visma came to an end in October 2023, with the German team Bora-Hansgrohe buying out his contract and offering a pay increase on the $2.2M he was earning at Jumbo.
Reports suggest that Roglic will be earning close to $5.5 per season during his two-year contract with Bora.
5. Remco Evenepoel’s Salary: $4.4M/Year
The 23-year-old Belgian phenom Remco Evenepoel earns a reported $4.4M per year, making him the third or fourth-highest earner for the 2024 season. This salary came off the back of his prestigious World Championship and Vuelta a España wins in 2022.
Evenepoel is undoubtedly one of the brightest talents in the sport and he frequently earns headlines for his fiery temper and aggressive riding style. Given that, we expect him to quickly reach a salary similar to Pogacar’s.
6. Geraint Thomas’s Salary: $3.8M/Year
The Ineos Grenadiers veteran Geraint Thomas is another popular rider with excellent palmares. The Tour de France-winning Welshman reportedly earns $3.8M, placing him as the fifth-highest earner in the peloton.
Thomas has been public about his intention to retire in 2025 and has recently signed a two-year contract extension with Ineos. We’re unsure if the extension came with a salary reduction, but there’s no doubt of his ability and drive to win, narrowly finishing second to Primoz Roglic in the 2023 Giro d’Italia.
7. Jonas Vingegaard‘s Salary: $2M+/Year
With two Tour de France wins under his belt, Jonas Vingegaard is currently regarded as the best grand tour rider in the world, twice dominating his main rival Tadej Pogacar over the most grueling three weeks in professional sport.
The Danish cycling star signed a new long-term contract with his team Jumbo-Visma (now Visma-Lease a Bike) in early 2023, with an undisclosed salary.
We assume, given his potential, the figure put him at or close to the top of the team’s roster alongside Primoz Roglic and Wout van Aert, who were earning over $2M.
8. Wout van Aert’s Salary: $2.5M/Year
Wout van Aert is one of cycling’s superstars, with a huge list of victories in cyclocross and on the road in some of the most competitive races.
In the 2022 Tour de France, he won the green jersey, the most combative rider, and three stages and played a key role in Jonas Vingegaard’s overall victory.
Van Aert’s salary is reported to be around $2.5M, which puts him at the top of Jumbo-Visma’s roster. His salary is a long way off that of Tadej Pogacar and the top riders at Ineos Grenadiers, who, due to their large budgets, can afford to pay higher salaries to less valuable (in terms of wins) riders.
However, he certainly has other sources of income, as he has recently invested in the Belgian handmade candle company Mon Dada along with his wife Sarah de Bie.
9. Sepp Kuss’s Salary
The 2023 was the most important in the career of Jumbo-Visma’s mountain domestique, Sepp Kuss. Firstly, he assisted his teammates Primoz Roglic and Jonas Vingegaard to win the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France. Then, he went on to win the Vuelta a España, completing the first grand tour whitewash in cycling history.
There are no reliable reports on Sepp Kuss’s salary, but we expect that his next contract negotiation will bring about a significant raise because offers from other teams will undoubtedly be aplenty.
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