March 22, 2007 — A news item yesterday on the Unibet.com team website entitled “New outfit for French races,” tersely reads: “Here’s the design of the team’s outfit for the French races…”

The accompanying photo shows a black-and-orange jersey prominently missing any mention of their major sponsor, Unibet, and instead has Canyon’s name displayed prominently on the jersey. Canyon, a German-based bike manufacturer, supplies bikes to the team and is listed as a “team partner” on the website, along with 16 other companies, including Hyundai and Rudy Project. the team’s official colours are green-and-white, as shown elsewhere on the website. During the controversy over Unibet the team was riding with a green-and-white jersey with a question mark where name “Unibet” should have appeared.

At issue here is an 1891 French law, granting monopoly rights to Francaise des Jeux to advertise gambling on French soil, according to www.bettingmarket.com. Francaise des Jeux is both the name of a French gambling company and the ProTour cycling team it has sponsored since 1997. Unibet (formerly Mr. Bookmaker) is the name of both an online gambling house and the Belgian-Swedish pro cycling team that it sponsors. French authorities have recently been cracking down on gamblers – other than Francaise des Jeux – operating on French soil.

An online press release dated March 7 at www.unibetcycling.com/news claims that, “The Unibet Team is the victim of a battle between the organizers of the Grand Tours (ASO, RCS and Unipublic) and the UCI. The press release points out that Unibet received its ProTour license from the UCI in 2006 and that Unibet simultaneously “made a considerable financial contribution to the team,” that has a budget of 40 million Euros (about $62 million Canadian) for the period of 2007 to 2010.

As reported previously, the recent agreement between the Grand Tours organizers and the UCI that permitted the Paris-Nice race to start, specifically excluded Unibet and Astana teams from many ProTour races.

For more on the controversy click here here and here.

Visit the Unibet site here – www.unibetcycling.com.