Tejay van Garderen says Tadej Pogačar is “massively underpaid” and should be paid a lot more for his “star power” role in racing.

A former US rider called Tadej Pogačar “massively underpaid” for how much star power he brings to the sport. Pogačar is currently the defending World Champion and has won the Tour de France multiple times. That’s true even though Pogačar is probably already the world’s highest-paid biker.

La Gazzetta dello Sport stated that Pogačar’s contract with UAE Team Emirates had been extended and his salary had been raised after having his best season to date. His deal is now set to end in 2030. He will supposedly make €50 million over six years, and the company can pay €200 million to get him out of the deal.

Remco Evenepoel’s new deal with Soudal-QuickStep brings in close to €5 million a season. Jonas Vingegaard’s pay as boss at Visma-Lease a Bike is about the same.

Van Garderen, who earned two fifth-place finishes at the Tour de France and now works as a directeur sportif for EF Education-EasyPost, said on the NBC podcast “Beyond the Podium” that Pogačar’s recently increased salary was still not enough compared to stars in other sports, especially in the USA.

“I definitely like seeing the rock getting pushed up the hill for cycling, it’s about time that the guys are getting the respect that they deserve.” Van Garderen said this after co-host Brent Bookwalter said that Pogačar’s new contract meant better business deals in the future.

“But I’d still say that Tadej Pogacar, for all the star power he brings to the sport, is massively underpaid.”

“In the NBA, the best basketball league in the US, 8.3 million euros would get you a solid “3 and D” player,” which means a player who can shoot from a lot of different spots. “Probably someone coming off the bench,” Van Garderen said, adding that his explanation was getting better. “Maybe a bit of a journeyman, gets traded to some other teams here.” But Stephen Curry, the best-paid player, makes $45 million a year.

Van Garderen said it was hard to make comparisons between cycling and other big US sports. Nevertheless, he talked about the years he rode between 2008 and 2021 and said that the increase was not as big as it seemed over time.

Van Garden said that Chris Froome and Peter Sagan, who has won three or more World Championships, and other past Tour winners were paid about €4 to €5 million a year. He also said that Pogačar’s new deal was “a big step up.”

He said, “But if you think about it that was all the way back in 2012 or 2013 and if you look at the highest paid basketball player at the time, Kobe Bryant – he was on €25 million and now it’s €45 million for the highest paid guy.”

“I don’t know what cycling needs to do to catch up, because you can’t tell me that people aren’t watching.” The calendar is clear for the Tour de France in July. The NBA is over; their season ends in June, and football hasn’t even begun yet. “Everyone is watching cycling around the world.”

Van Garderen told them he didn’t know how to pay for better wages. But he said that instead of starting with money, Pogačar might want to ask for a small share of the rights to show a race on TV.

“That could be used by the team to say, ‘If you want Tadej to come, you’ll have to pay us this.'” And that could be a way to get some of that money that the teams don’t get, which is one way that we might get closer to some of those ball games.

In another part of the same show, Van Garderen said that some riders who only care about money might lose motivation if their wages went up a lot. The extra stress could make them stop racing so well.

That being said, he made it clear that Pogačar was “cut from a different cloth” and would ride hard no matter how much he was paid. “He’s driven,” Van Garderen said.

No matter how much money Pogacar has, Van Garderen’s idea about rider pay might not work with the UCI’s plans to put some kind of budget cap in place in the coming years. In April, after a meeting of the Professional Cycling Council, the UCI said that “the principle” of putting a cap on how much teams can spend had been agreed upon.

After the first few months of the season, the four best teams on the World Tour won 73% of races. Marc Madiot, manager of the Groupama-FDJ team, strongly pushed for such a cap, saying, “If we don’t cap the budgets, the giant teams will continue to control everything.”

Madiot also mentioned that one of the French teams’ main financial problems is that the salary of riders and staff are much higher in France than in other countries because of stricter rules on business finances.

Van Garderen said he didn’t like “the salary cap idea.” He admitted that he had had different opinions earlier this season, but this time he said, “All you’re going to do is artificially deflate the riders’ value because you won’t pay them what they’re worth.” Cyclists should get paid what they’re worth.