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Howard
Jimmy_Fingers
Oleg got into cycling as a vanity project, then discovered there wasn't a lot of money in the sport when you are both owner and sponsor, so spent the rest of the time lobbying to monetarise the sport more. Problem is when the sport takes place in the open air on public roads there's not you can charge people for. And to watch most of it you do need a subscription to Eurosport/Sky anyway, in this country at least. I mean how much is on ITV? TdF, Vuelta, Tour of Britain IIRC.
I think if there was profit in charging people to watch cycling on telly it would be happening already, and if the majority of cycling went to pay-to-watch you might generate more revenue but you run the risk of losing or alienating a lot of cycling's audience. His callous reference to losing the old ladies who like to look at the French countryside shows the dissonance between him and the average fan. I don't know if it was in the most recent interview but I recall him arguing for much more inner-city criteriums, which would probably come at the expense of plenty of the more traditional races.
Bottom line the man is an unrelenting cunt and the sport is better off without him. And I think some of the elements of the cycling media should hang their heads in shame in giving him platforms to spout his Trump-esque bollocks, considering the horrible stuff he regularly vomited forth on Twitter.
Oops tl:dr Oleg Tinkov is a bellend of monstrous proportions