Just read an article in today’s NY Times about the iron grip that the Amaury’s have on the Tour de France and the lack of revenue sharing. Nothing particularly shocking given that topic gets discussed frequently in the EC podcasts. However, the one shocker for me was that the teams only receive a paltry $63,000 from ASO for participating in the tour 
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I don’t know if I would describe ownership as an iron grip. ASO, or its predecessor organizations, founded and built the Tour. It’s only reasonable to expect them to hold on to it and not wish to share the fruits of their labors.
As for the paltry appearance money, everyone knows that the teams need the Tour more than the Tour needs them. That imbalance dictates that the ASO has all the power, so it’s no surprise.
ASO makes a small profit on its race organization, with the Tour earning the majority, but it is not a massive amount. Many of the ASO’s races are not huge money-makers, but they all have high organizational costs. I recall reading that if all of the race organizer profits were shared among the teams, it would amount to, at most, $2 million per team. That’s not an insignificant sum, but in the days of $30-$50 million team budgets, it’s not an amount that’s going to transform the teams’ finances.
The tour gets significantly more media exposure than every other race, so participation is needed to get those important sponsors on board.
No tour = little sponsorship income = the teams indeed need the tour!
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After listening to the Acquired podcast episode about Formula 1, I did a back of envelope calculation on what the ASO and potentially other race organisers (RCS, Flanders) could offer the teams with a similar revenue sharing model on broadcast rights. There’s lots of ways of slicing it, but in the end it’s peanuts left over to share with all the teams in comparison with their budgets. Basically, an F1-style ~50% share of broadcast alone in cycling delivers about €3-4 million per WT team, which is ~10% of an average €33 million budget. That pays 2 decent rider salaries.
Perhaps you could spread the revenues across the top 8 teams, and the bottom 10 receive less (or something). That’s still not a game changer. However, it’s a good start and allows the teams to build equity rather than simply being a sponsorship vehicle. For comparison, in Formula 1, Mercedes racing team has a valuation of $6B. In cycling, teams basically build no equity.
F1 earns a large majority of revenue from monetising physical access to a venue: $1bn in promoter fees plus $770m in hospitality. Cycling’s equivalent is a €160k stage host fee (according to NYT article). You can’t fence Alp d’Huez. And cycling’s rights sit deliberately with free-to-air public broadcasters because reach is what the teams sell to sponsors. F1 grew by restricting access and charging for it. Cycling doing the same would raise maybe €5 or 6m per team while devaluing the €500-600m of sponsorship that reach underwrites.
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I agree with everything, but the ASO definitely aren’t the founders of the Tour! Alex Duff wrote a fascinating book on how the ASO acquired the TdF called Le Fric.
I also did a podcast telling the story here if you want the story in an hour: Spotify