Team Ineos owner Jim Ratcliffe is set to expand his sporting portfolio as the billionaire looks set to confirm his purchase of French football club OCG Nice for €100 million.
Reported by L'Equipe, the sale of the Ligue 1 football club for €100m to the boss of multinational chemical and oil company Ineos is 'inevitable' and expected to be confirmed within the coming weeks.
It is believed that the deal is all but done barring the final price of the purchase and smaller details.
Ratcliffe, who is now a Monaco resident having relocated from the UK to reduce his personal tax bill, already owns Swiss football side Lausanne while he has been continlusly linked with a potential takeover bid of Chelsea FC in the Premier League.
Ratcliffe and Ineos are considering a move for the West London club with current owner Romain Abramovich reported to have put a £2.5 billion price tag on the club he bought for £140 million 15 years ago.
Manchester-born businessman Ratcliffe also invested £150 million in Sir Ben Ainslie's America's Cup sailing project.
While Ratcliffe's purchases may not seem too significant to cycling fans at face value, it sheds light on the man who now bankrolls Britain's only WorldTour team and the most successful squad in Tour de France history.
Firstly it proves that Ratcliffe not only has the wealth to act as the owner but is not afraid to use it. Operating costs of football teams can often go into the billions which is significantly more than any cycling team.
It also lends itself to the theory that Ratcliffe is set to increase the team's budget for 2020.
Team Sky currently function on around £38 million a year, of which £25 million was provided by previous primary sponsor Sky, which is the biggest budget in professional cycling by some margin.
Considering the costs of running a football club, even increasing the budget of the now Team Ineos to £50 million per year would not seem such a stretch.
Although this would see the budget of one team increase to over three times that of fellow WorldTour teams such as Dimension Data who currently have a yearly budget of around £15 million.