Spokesmen for the Sport : Advertisers Love It, so National Cycle League Prospers in Its Fifth Season

Los Angeles has not been kind to start-up sport franchises in recent years.

Just ask the Cobras of the Arena Football League, who lasted only one season, or the Lazers of the Major Indoor Soccer League, who struggled before folding in their fifth year.

On Saturday, however, the Los Angeles Wings of the National Cycle League, one of the city’s best-kept secrets, will quietly continue its fifth season in Los Angeles, playing host to a doubleheader at Universal Studios.

“We know that there are people unaware of us,” said Wing owner Bob Frazier, who said the team expects to turn a profit this season. “But we appeal to everyday people who’ve ridden a bike.”

What is the National Cycle League?

It is a professional league founded by Pete O’Neil of Pasadena in 1989. It has eight teams in the United States and three in Europe.

Each team has 10 riders, five of whom compete at a time in road races made up of two 12-lap halves. Every third lap is a sprint, and teams accumulate points by their finishes on those sprint laps. Depending on the course, races cover anywhere from 30 to 50 miles.

The season lasts 10 weeks.

The Wings have been in Los Angeles since the league began in 1989, but they have not received much publicity in the area.

In fact, their only real media attention came last year when a short-lived Arena Football League franchise tried to call itself the Wings.

The Wings and the league came out fighting and threatened to sue. The football team changed its name and eventually moved to Sacramento before ever playing in Los Angeles.

The Cobras and the Lazers folded largely because they could never establish a solid fan base. That’s not a problem for the Wings.

The league has survived because it gets its revenue through sponsorships and sales of league-related cycling merchandise. The league does not collect gate receipts, so attendance is not a make-or-break factor.

“We expect each one of our franchises to break even this season for the first time in five years,” Frazier said. “People are starting to understand us now, and we already have a lot of people (advertisers) lined up for next year.”

Frazier, owner of Frazier Aviation in North Hollywood, bought the Wing franchise in 1989 for $7,500; it will cost $250,000 for a new franchise in 1994. The league is planning to expand by at least two teams next year.

In the past, the primary cycling vehicle for advertisers came by supporting expensive racing teams that competed in major events around the country and in Europe. However, they have found out that they can reach more consumers less expensively with the professional league.

Motorola, which spent about $6.5 million on a racing team that traveled without much success in Europe last year, is now a major sponsor of the professional league and is cutting back on its support of the traveling team.

Universal Studios signed on as one of the Wings’ sponsors last year and has indicated that it wants the relationship to continue. “It’s great exposure for us,” said Chris D’Angelo of Universal Studios.

With teams in New York, Houston, Miami, San Diego, Pittsburgh, Portland (Ore.), Tulsa (Okla.), Amsterdam, London, Milan and Los Angeles, the league gets television coverage throughout the country, Prime Ticket showing the races in the Los Angeles area. The league is carried by 26 regional sports networks in major markets and 110 independent stations.

With that exposure, the league not only is attracting more advertisers, but is also attracting more fans and more top cyclists.

“I’ve been surprised by the fan appreciation around the league,” said John Wike, the Wings’ team captain. “For example, in Miami, the fans knew everyone on the team. They knew each rider, which is pretty wild to see in our country.”

After two races, the Wings, who won the league championship in 1989, are tied for first place in the Pacific Division with Houston.

Along with Wike--California’s 1990 criterium champion--the Wings have attracted several other top riders, including John Brady, Greg Oravetz and Denmark’s Peter Gylling.

In a sport that has traditionally paid only winning riders, the league pays each rider on a team an average of $500 to $600 a race.

“I’ve been involved with cycling since I was 16, and I was excited when the Wings contacted me in 1991,” said Wike, 23, who grew up in El Segundo. “It’s a sport in which the riders get to travel and make money at the same time.

“The NCL is also fun because its geared for sprinting. Not everyone is for the type of race like the Tour de France, where you have to be an animal to have that type of ability and endurance. This is more Americanized.”

Another reason why the league has grown from six teams at the start has been a recent change in cycling that enables riders to keep their amateur status despite being paid on the pro circuit. As long as a rider doesn’t win more than $2,000 on a race, he is still considered an amateur.

Many cycling purists frowned at the thought of the league at first, including the U.S. Cycling Federation--which oversees competitive cycling in the country. But most of the league’s early critics, including the USCF, are supporters now.

Alex Baum has been involved with cycling in the United States since he arrived from France almost 40 years ago. He has served on the board of directors on both the U.S. and Southern California cycling federations.

Baum, 70, thought that the league had a chance when it began, but he knew it would need some help.

“There had never been a private sector involved with cycling before in this country,” Baum said. “That’s because cycling had never been recognized as a major sport here.

“But once it started to get some exposure on television, the sport has really caught on. I think that it has developed because it is something new.”

Wike hopes that the league will help cycling become a major sport in this country, as it was in the early 1900s.

“I don’t think that we will ever have it like it is in Europe,” Wike said. “But I really feel that it has its own niche here and--who knows?--one day cycling may become really big again here in the U.S.”