Katusha Sports announced Tuesday that it has launched a fundraising campaign to continue its support for Bigla-Katusha, which has had to suspend its financial contributions to the team due to the economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis.Bigla-Katusha Profits from the sale of the Women's Team Collection Kit will be donated to help the athletes race later this season.

"Due to unforeseen circumstances, Katusha Sport has suffered greatly in recent months, causing strong financial hardship for the young company. For this reason, we are temporarily unable to provide financial support to Team Bigla Katusha.

"Nonetheless, we aim to support the players as much as possible. We care about the welfare and long-term careers of our athletes and hope that they will be able to compete in as many races as possible as soon as possible."

"As an immediate step, Katusha-Sports has decided to donate the profits from the sale of kits from the Bigla-Katusha collection through Katusha-Sports.com to support the athletes and enable them to race this season."

Bigla-Katusha announced last week that their future was in jeopardy after being informed that both title sponsors had withdrawn their financial support during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis.Bigla, which has sponsored the team since 2005, has been 100% of the funding The team has notified the team that it is withdrawing it. The team also revealed that Katusha Sports, which became a co-sponsor of the team this year, had refused to pay sponsorship funds to the team for the past month

.

Last October, Katusha Sports announced that it would be co-title sponsor of the Bigla team in 2020, not only as an official clothing partner but also as a financial backer; according to Cyclingnews, it funded just under a third of the team's annual budget this year. The company said it has funded just under one-third of the team's annual budget for this year.

The clothing brand confirmed that it is facing a financial downturn, mainly due to the fact that its factory was closed during the COVID-19 pandemic and has not produced any products for the past two months. in addition to the e-commerce center being closed, the company is not bringing in profits and and inventory sales have also declined, affecting its ability to fulfill its financial sponsorship agreement with the women's cycling team.

The riders of the Bigla Katusha team sent an open letter to their sponsor, requesting support for the team's continued existence.

Katusha Sport has stated that it hopes the financial strain will only be temporary. CyclingNews understands that it plans to provide financial support to the team when investments resume after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Meanwhile, Katusha Sports has launched a fundraising campaign to donate profits from the sale of women's replica kits to support the efforts of the Bigla Katusha athletes.

Additionally, the company stated that any other item purchased with the code B4TBK will donate an additional 10% from the price of that item to the fund.