Future of WorldTour team in doubt as sponsors set to pull out

Arkéa-B&B Hotels will lose both naming sponsors at end of 2025, putting men's and women's team's future into question

Kevin Vauquelin
(Image credit: Getty Images)

The future of Frenchmen's WorldTour squad Arkéa-B&B Hotels and its women's ProTeam equivalent is in doubt with both of the team’s naming sponsors set to pull out at the end of the 2025 season.

As first reported by Daniel Benson on his Substack, a memo was sent to riders and staff this morning by the team’s general manager, former French pro Emmanuel Hubert, which confirmed both of the two sponsors would be leaving the team.

"Our profession pushes us to live in movement, in itinerancy, and this is what prevents me from bringing you together in person today," Hubert wrote. "I would have preferred to speak to you face to face—but it is with this message that I address these words to you. Sponsors Arkéa and B&B Hotels have informed us that they will not be renewing their commitment after the 2025 season. We have nothing but gratitude to express to them. Their loyalty over the years has allowed our adventure to exist, to grow, and to shine."

The team’s long term identity had been in question since the turn of the year, with Hubert previously telling L’Equipe that he expected to know more about the status of the team’s relationship with it’s partners by April.

Arkéa-B&B Hotels' future in the men's WorldTour was already further in doubt due to the team being currently outside of the top 18 teams in the world, with WorldTour licences set for renewal at the end of the year. If the season ended now, Arkéa would no longer be a WorldTour squad.

With the future of the team in doubt, it throws open the door for rival squads to pursue star riders currently on Arkéa-B&B Hotels, including Kévin Vauquelin, who recently finished second at the Tour de Suisse. The Frenchman won the second stage of last year's Tour de France In Bologna and will not be short of admirers, with sources previously informing Cycling Weekly that Ineos Grenadiers have previously held a strong interest in the 24-year-old.

"I send you all my affection, all my gratitude, and all my confidence. Where some see an end, I see a new beginning. What we have sown bears within it the promise of new fruits. The future belongs to those who refuse to give up—and I am, without hesitation, one of them.

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Tom Thewlis
News and Features Writer

After previously working in higher education, Tom joined Cycling Weekly in 2022 and hasn't looked back. He's been covering professional cycling ever since; reporting on the ground from some of the sport's biggest races and events, including the Tour de France, Paris-Roubaix and the World Championships. His earliest memory of a bike race is watching the Tour on holiday in the early 2000's in the south of France - he even made it on to the podium in Pau afterwards. His favourite place that cycling has taken him is Montréal in Canada.

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