Britain’s sole WorldTour cycling team is about to undergo its biggest change since 2019: after seven years being known as Ineos Grenadiers – following almost a decade racing as Team Sky – the team that has won the Tour de France seven times is set to take on a whole new identity. A search for additional title sponsors that has been ongoing for well over a year has found a match: the Danish IT powerhouse Netcompany.
Though that sounds like the name of a start-up business that survived the dot com crash, Netcompany is in fact one of Europe’s fastest-growing businesses in the IT industry, and is targeting significant growth in the UK. As a result of their expected investment – which is likely to be confirmed publicly on the eve of this summer’s Tour de France – Jim Ratcliffe, the owner of the Ineos company and the team, will no longer have to fund the team to the tune of €30-40m each year, with jersey partner TotalEnergies also expecting to increase their contribution; Ratcliffe, however, will remain as the team owner. The big question is: will the financial shake-up herald a new era of Ineos success?
No one needs yet another article of where Ineos have gone wrong in the past few years; their drop-off from the top of the sport has been as well-documented as Tadej Pogačar’s rise. But what is worth repeating is that after the nadir of 2024 – just 14 wins, four of which were in national championships – Ineos Grenadiers have been noticeably better since. 2025 wasn’t a return to their former glories, but multiple stage wins in the Giro d’Italia, Tour de France and Vuelta a España was an improved if imperfect return on Ratcliffe’s investment. The early signs in 2026 is that thing are continuing in an upward trajectory.
French champion Dorian Godon earned his first win for Ineos at Paris-Nice.
Ineos’s estimated €50m budget definitely demands more, but after years scratching around for an identity to replace the outdated Sky Train, the team adopted a more aggressive, audacious and ambitious racing style last season and that appears to have carried over to the 2026 season where already they’ve picked up nine victories. Far greater and more meaningful tests await than what Ineos have raced up until this point, but Geraint Thomas’s crossover from rider to director of racing has seemingly begun well. Having Sir David Brailsford, the team’s founder and sporting guru, above him must help, too.
Though ‘DB’ hasn’t spoken to the media since his return to Ineos management, staff members and riders alike have praised his return. “He’s a huge influence in this team and is a leader of the project,” Ineos sports director Imanol Erviti recently told Spanish newspaper Marca. “He’s the person who pushes us to give the best of ourselves and who really drives things forward.” Only the best is good enough for Brailsford, and the injection of cash from Netcompany ought to make Ineos competitive with UAE Team Emirates-XRG, Visma-Lease a Bike, Lidl-Trek and Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe. It won’t be a quick fix but Ineos have made smart decisions in recent times that should enable them to climb back up the ladder quicker than their various other reset attempts.
For years people in cycling, even people on the Ineos team, couldn’t get their heads around why the British outfit didn’t have a development team. Most other WorldTour teams did and reaped the benefits of it, so why didn’t Ineos? Finally they launched one this winter. They also recruited the most exciting British GC talent out there right now, Oscar Onley. To the surprise of even the rider himself, the Scotsman finished fourth at last year’s Tour de France riding for Picnic PostNL, and just days before Christmas he joined Ineos in a multi-million euro mid-contract purchase. He’s set to be the team’s new poster boy.
Yet he isn’t a Pogačar, Jonas Vingegaard or Remco Evenepoel. There are doubts over whether he can even be a Florian Lipowitz (the man who beat him to third at the Tour) or Giulio Pellizzari. If Ineos really want to win Grand Tours again, they’re probably going to have to dip back into the transfer market and sign one of the top guns. Money from Netcompany allows them to do that.
Team success at Paris-Nice.
In recent years, as they’ve stagnated, they’ve missed out on Remco Evenepoel, Primož Roglič, Juan Ayuso and others. For one simple reason: Ineos just weren’t attractive enough anymore. Netcompany’s investment is designed to shake up that perception, to awaken Ineos from their slumber, and to make them a team that the best stars want to ride for. And that includes Paul Seixas.
The Frenchman is the man – or should that be boy – of the moment, and the 19-year-old is the most coveted figure in the sport. UAE aren’t doing a very good job of pretending they don’t want to sign him, and Decathlon CMA CGM are insisting he’ll stay with them. But it’s clear he is open to discussions. Ineos will surely table an offer, knowing he could be their best chance of winning a yellow jersey this decade (presumably once Pogačar has retired).
With TotalEnergies now on board – a French company – and Brailsford once saying it was a dream of his to win the Tour with a Frenchman, recruiting Seixas wouldn’t just be a coup but it’d make financial, sporting and commercial sense. If they don’t manage to prise him away from Decathlon or deter UAE from snapping him up, they’ll have to look elsewhere to make up the gap to the top. Netcompany’s Euros will help that mission.
Another characteristic of Ineos’s fall from grace has been the exodus of staff members to rival projects. Once they were known for being leaders in the technology, aerodynamics and sports science departments, but they’ve since lost the titles. Ineos must reverse that. A large proportion of Netcompany’s incoming investment must be channeled into these areas if Ineos is going to return to the top of the sport. Brailsford, the man who coined the phrase ‘marginal gains’, will be all too aware of that.
It’s not known if the the team will retain their British licence – though the quartet of Ratcliffe, Brailsford, Thomas and Onley certainly maintains a strong British presence at the top of the tree – and neither is it known what sort of timeline Netcompany will set the team to repeat their former success. There are a lot of challenges facing Ineos, but for the first time in a long time, there seems to be genuine optimism and excitement surrounding the team that used to make winning the Tour de France look like a procession. Are the heady heydays of the 2010s on their way back?
