The planned mega merger of the Jumbo-Visma team and the Soudal-QuickStep team is over. According to multiple reports in Belgium, Soudal-QuickStep will continue as a world tour team until the end of 2025, with Patrick Lefevere and Czech billionaire Zdenek Bakala continuing to own the team.

That would mean Remco Evenepoel would stay under contract with the team and avoid the fallout and job losses for riders and staff that the merger or acquisition would have caused.

Sporza and Het Nieuwsblad are among the stores reporting the news, and Richard Plugge, Manager of Jumbo-Visma, continues to look for title sponsors after 2024, at which point the Jumbo supermarket chain will end its support.

Cyclingnews understands that Jumbo-Visma notified riders and staff on Friday that the merger had been discontinued. The team decides it is not the best option for the future and they seem confident in securing other supporters to guarantee the team's long-term future.

In another related news, AD reports that amazon will eventually not sponsor Jumbo-Visma, despite rumors linking it to a minor sponsorship deal. The Dutch newspaper reports that instead, PON, the owner of the team's bicycle supplier Cervelo, can participate as a title sponsor.

Reports of a potential merger first surfaced two weeks ago, Lefevere confirmed as much, Soudal is expected to join forces with Visma as title sponsor, and current Soudal-QuickStep riders have moved into the team of Plugge along with Tour de France winners Jonas Vingegaard and Wout van Aert.

However, the team was disappointed in the sport for completing a legally complex contract, facing a battle with time to register with the UCI in the 2024 season and losing a highly successful team.

In the last few days, Lefevere appeared to be trying to keep the team alive without Evenepoel or Soudal. Now it looks like the whole deal is collapsing.

In the meantime, many riders from both teams have signed contracts elsewhere, including Florian Sénèchal (Arkéa-B&B Hotel) in Soudal-QuickStep and Michael Mørkøv (Astana Qazaqstan), and Primoš Roglić, who confirmed on Friday that he would leave Jumbo-Visma for Bora-Hansgrohe in the middle of the contract. to.