Underneath the black stairs at OGC Nice Football Club’s training ground, a colourful photo wall illustrates INEOS’ sporting ventures.

The men’s teams of Manchester United, Ligue 1 side Nice and Swiss outfit Lausanne-Sport are pictured celebrating, and an INEOS Grenadiers cyclist speeds past. INEOS Britannia, the boat for the America’s Cup, stands majestically. Eliud Kipchoge, sporting a white INEOS shirt, smiles as he becomes the first person to run a marathon in less than two hours, and Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One drivers George Russell and Kimi Antonelli walk side by side. Seven-time F1 world champion Lewis Hamilton, then also with Mercedes, perches atop an INEOS Grenadiers vehicle alongside Sir Jim Ratcliffe.

Between Ratcliffe and INEOS — the petrochemicals company he founded, co-owns and chairs — more than £2.5billion ($3.3bn) has been invested in the past eight years across sports including football, cycling, sailing and running, according to publicly available information.

Yet the interest in women’s sports seems practically non-existent.

In cycling, INEOS took control of Team Sky in April 2019 — now competing as INEOS Grenadiers — and was urged to start a women’s team by many, including the former head of the UCI, cycling’s world governing body, Brian Cookson. It never happened.

“It’s a surefire miss,” one former professional cyclist tells The Athletic. “I’m baffled as to why Ratcliffe hasn’t done it.”

In F1, INEOS is a partner and one-third owner of Mercedes-AMG Petronas, which has a French driver, 21-year-old Doriane Pin, in the sport’s all-women F1 Academy series.

Ratcliffe has also backed women in leadership positions across the business side of INEOS.

Lynn Calder is chief executive of INEOS automotive, makers of the Grenadier 4×4, and Florence Bardot and Natalina Arena hold senior finance roles in the petrochemicals field. Fran Millar was made CEO of Team Sky, INEOS Grenadiers and INEOS’ former fashion business Belstaff, since bought by sportswear group Castore in August but in which INEOS retains an interest through a strategic investment agreed as part of that sale. Her successor was Kerry Byrne. But there are currently no female CEOs across INEOS’ sports interests.

In sailing, Ratcliffe’s daughters, Julia Ratcliffe and Romane Polli, were named godmothers of INEOS’ boat, Britannia, competing at the America’s Cup off Barcelona, Spain, last year and christened the boat by spraying Nyetimber English sparkling wine on the bow for good luck. INEOS, however, was not the title sponsor for last year’s women’s America’s Cup, the first of its kind.

After INEOS bought a minority stake in Manchester United in 2024, Ratcliffe has always been forthright about where the women’s team lie among his priorities. “The men’s team make £800million, the women’s team cost £10m,” he told The Sunday Times in August 2024.

Ratcliffe has repeatedly said his focus has been on United’s men’s team because that is “what moves the needle”, as he told BBC Sport in March. “Of our £650million of income, £640m of that comes from the men’s team and £10m comes from the women’s team,” he added.

United’s 2023-24 accounts show the club lost £130.7million ($174m at current rates) and the women’s team contributed £100,000 to that loss, around 0.08 per cent.

Revenues in women’s elite sports, according to finance experts Deloitte, are predicted to have risen by 240 per cent from 2022 to 2025. The same firm forecasts global revenues to reach at least $2.35billion (£1.75bn) in 2025. The two highest revenue-generating sports are basketball and football/soccer, and, while this predicted growth does not extend to all disciplines, Deloitte has stated “the growth of women’s sport has continued to exceed expectations”.

So is INEOS’ apparent lack of interest in women’s sport purely commercially driven? On the INEOS ‘compass’, which the company states was devised by Ratcliffe “as a fun way of attempting to capture how INEOS works”, “kids and sport”, “fitness and health” and “do the right thing” are all in the “things we like” section.

And when it launched its support for Kipchoge’s sub-two-hour marathon attempt in May 2019, Ratcliffe said: “We make six or seven billion dollars a year in profit, so what’s wrong with investing a bit of that in sport? On some good challenges, good people, try to inspire people? It’s good fun.”

Kenya’s Eliud Kipchoge became the first person to run a marathon in less than two hours in October 2019 (Alex Halada/AFP via Getty Images)

Kipchoge, a member of the NN running team, which had a performance partnership with INEOS until it ended last week, was the athlete in the world most likely to stand any chance of running the marathon’s 26.2 miles in less than two hours. It is understandable INEOS backed a man in its pursuit of smashing such a significant human barrier.

However, when three-time Olympic and five-time world champion Faith Kipyegon, who has the same coach as Kipchoge and is also a NN athlete, attempted in June this year to be the first woman to run a mile in under four minutes — a Nike-backed project called Breaking4 — INEOS was not publicly involved. Kipyegon missed the mark by 6.42 seconds.

As INEOS closes in on the two-year anniversary of its investment in United, The Athletic has spoken to people familiar with its sporting endeavours, many of whom will remain anonymous to protect relationships, about the firm’s approach to women’s sport and women athletes.

“INEOS missed the boat,” is a phrase repeated by many.

An INEOS spokesperson said: “We are totally committed to supporting our female teams and athletes across all of our sports activities. This is most apparent in football, but also in our support for female cyclists and runners.”

Team Sky’s Bradley Wiggins, Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas dominated the Tour de France during the mid-2010s.

When INEOS took over Team Sky in 2019, it inherited an imperious operation led by Sir Dave Brailsford, who left British Cycling in 2014 after overseeing unprecedented success for men and women at World Championship and Olympic level. It also inherited a team facing questions about whether it had crossed the line in its dominance on the road.

In 2017, an independent review of British Cycling’s culture from 2012-16 was published, reporting that the “environment was one which some female riders… found uncomfortable” and there were “failings in British Cycling’s governance and leadership”. In February of that year, ahead of the review, Brailsford wrote in The Times that the team was “medallist, not sexist”.

Millar told magazine Rouleur in 2021 that, after the 2012 Olympics in London, she and rider Lizzie Deignan (then Armitstead) raised the prospect of starting a women’s team “at every board meeting” for Team Sky. Some argued a women’s team was not warranted, given the struggling financial landscape of women’s cycling but by the late 2010s and early 2020s, several major men’s teams such as Visma-Lease a Bike, Lidl-Trek and Movistar, which still exist today, had launched women’s teams. Paris-Roubaix started a women’s race in 2021, won by Deignan riding for Trek-Segafredo, and the Tour de France Femmes was revived in 2022.

However, INEOS, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, Team Bahrain Victorious, Decathlon–AG2R La Mondiale and XDS-Astana still have only men’s outfits.

In 2018, Natascha Knaven-den Ouden and her husband Servais Knaven, Team Sky’s sports director, set up APB, an under-19 women’s development team with six riders. Along with a French junior men’s team, APB’s women cycled with Team Sky’s pro riders on part of the cobbled Paris-Roubaix course ahead of the main event — for men only — in 2018.

In a Team Sky video from the time, Brailsford says: “When you’re a team like Team Sky at the highest level, what can you do for younger riders in the sport? Try to inspire. It’s something they and we’ll remember, something for the sport; just enjoyable. Without the fundamentals, the clubs, the youngsters in the sport, we have nothing.”

Brailsford speaks to APB’s young riders in the Team Sky video from 2018

At the 2018 Belgian Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Knaven-den Ouden recalls Team Sky allowing APB riders to see first-hand how a team operates from the inside. They stayed, she says, in the same hotel as Team Sky, had dinner with the men’s riders and staff and were part of the support team on race day, holding wheels and water bottles on the side of the road. And from then until the end of 2020, Team Sky and then INEOS gave APB riders equipment, such as wheels, chains, bike bags and cool boxes.

Knaven-den Ouden then set up an under-23 women’s team, which became a UCI continental team called NXTG Racing. In February 2021, NXTG CEO Marion de Cocq says she sent a proposal via email to INEOS. The vision was to set up a continental team, using NXTG Racing’s under-23s as a feeder, which would cost an estimated €1.5million for the first year — about three per cent of the INEOS men’s team’s €45m (£39.4m/$52.7m at the current rates) budget.

“We need partners who think outside of the box, who want to innovate and pioneer,” it read, according to two people who have seen the email. “Together with INEOS, we can create history in cycling.”

Knaven-den Ouden and De Cocq say they never received a reply. INEOS declined to comment.

There were other opportunities to invest in women’s cycling, however.

In November 2022, INEOS signed France’s reigning mountain bike and gravel world champion Pauline Ferrand-Prevot on a two-year contract. She had gold at the 2024 Paris Olympics in her sights, which she duly won, but INEOS did not build a team around Ferrand-Prevot, who then returned to road racing, signed for Visma-Lease A Bike and won the 2025 Tour de France Femmes.

Ferrand-Prevot competes in INEOS colours in Belgium in November 2022 (Luc Claessen/Getty Images)

“They’ve given so many young British men a start in the sport at that level,” says the same former professional cyclist quoted earlier in this article. “They really have the opportunity to lift up women’s cycling in Britain in the same way. They signed quality male cyclists, but are only going to sign the top woman ever.”

INEOS has two women among 65 staff members on the racing side, and 12 of 85 overall when including administrative personnel. Visma-Lease A Bike, Ferrand-Prevot’s new team, has 29 female staff overall.

The same former professional cyclist described INEOS as a “men’s’ club” with an “old-school, blokey mentality” that is “palpable” around the cycling paddock. “It wouldn’t be a welcoming place for a female team unless they have the staff dedicated to making a concerted shift in the culture,” was the person’s verdict.

The America’s Cup is the oldest international sports competition, and one the British entrant has not won since 1851.

Ratcliffe, though, loves a challenge and invested in INEOS’ Britannia’s campaigns in the 36th and 37th America’s Cups in 2021 and 2024, led by team principal and skipper Sir Ben Ainslie. Its financial accounts detail a total of £226.5million of sponsorship income from 2019 to 2024, though there were other sponsorship sources besides INEOS.

Sir Jim Ratcliffe celebrates during the 37th America’s Cup in October 2024 (David Ramos/Getty Images)

In order to compete in the 2024 America’s Cup, each team had to supply a women’s and youth team for their respective regattas.

Britain entered under the name Athena Pathway, part of Ainslie’s Athena Sports Group, which was set up in 2022 by the world’s most successful Olympic sailors, Ainslie and Hannah Mills. The programme gives women and younger sailors, male and female, more opportunities in high-performance sailing and tries to increase diversity in the sport.

The women’s edition was the first in history but Athena Pathway had no involvement with or sponsorship from INEOS. Instead, it was sponsored by Cobham-Ultra, an innovator in aerospace and maritime technology. By contrast, Italy, France, Switzerland, New Zealand and the United States all sponsored their men’s, women’s and youth teams in their respective regattas.

INEOS’ website proudly details how INEOS Britannia “made history as the first British team in 60 years to reach the Cup Match, the first in 90 years to score points, and the first ever to win the Challenger Series — marking Britain’s most successful campaign”. Athena Pathway women’s team, led by Mills, also made history by advancing to the final, narrowly finishing second in a single match-race shootout, while the youth team finished third.

In April this year, INEOS Britannia withdrew its challenge for the next America’s Cup in 2027, saying its decision was due to “protracted negotiations” with Athena Racing.

Speaking to The Athletic in April, Ainslie said: “We competed under Athena Pathway and part of the Athena Sports Group. We had some other sponsors, that were fantastic, who came in to back them (the women’s team). It’s not for me to comment on INEOS’ approach.”

On the football front, as well as being co-owners of Manchester United, INEOS has owned Swiss club Lausanne since 2017 and French side Nice since 2019. All three have women’s teams, and the latter two sport INEOS’ logo on their shirts.

In November 2023, Nice’s former general manager Jean-Luc Donati told local newspaper Nice-Matin there were more registered girls than boys in their youth sector. His goal was for the senior women’s team to one day reach the top flight too, and stay there. In the 2023-24 season, Nice’s women finished fourth in the French second division.

In French football, clubs are associations and the vast majority have just one commercial entity, usually the men’s team. The rest, such as the men’s academy, women’s team and football school fall under the management of the association. They do not tend to generate enough revenue to sustain costs and so require funding from the men’s side to support them.

The men’s first-team budget at Nice is estimated to be around €80million (£70m; $93.7m) per year. Before the 2024-25 season, the women’s team’s annual budget was around €1.4m. INEOS reduced that figure to €1m, and its support has been capped at €350,000 per year. Also ahead of that same 2024-25 campaign, around 10 players and former head coach Matthieu Esposito’s assistant and physios left the club, followed by Esposito himself in February.

Before that season, the French Football Federation introduced new rules to professionalise the women’s second division and stated teams must have a minimum of 11 players under federal contracts, similar to professional contracts, with working hours at least equal to part-time. If not, a club could be fined €1,250 per match.

Last season, Nice, according to French media, only had three players on such contracts, the lowest in the league. Some teams in division three had more players on federal contracts than they did.

Brailsford and Ratcliffe watch Nice’s men in September 2023 (Jean Catuffe/Getty Images)

Nice managed to avoid relegation by two points, finishing ninth, last season. They sit in the same position in this campaign.

Lausanne’s women play in the third division and are the only club in the men’s elite competition not to have a women’s team in Switzerland’s top two divisions.

In November, an article on the club website detailed how the youth team ran laps around a pitch and raised 20,000 Swiss francs (around £18,800; $25,100) to support the women’s development section. The money, the report stated, will be used to pay for bus travel, team meals and a training camp, as well as team-building activities.

“INEOS does not really show it wants to have a truly successful women’s team,” says Florian Paccaud, a sports journalist covering women’s football in Switzerland.

At Manchester United, over two years, INEOS has injected £238.5million into the club, excluding the cost of buying shares.

The women’s team’s total expenditure from the 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons was £16million, as per club accounts. That is slightly inferior to Manchester City (£18m) and dwarfed by the outlay at Arsenal (£26m) and Chelsea (£33m).

Dr Christina Philippou, associate professor in sport finance at the University of Portsmouth, thinks INEOS is missing a trick by not investing more in United’s women’s team, given the “insane” growth in the Women’s Super League.

“There’s still a lot of potential money coming in,” says Philippou. “If you invest, there is potential for money to keep coming your way.

Manchester United won the Women’s FA Cup in 2024 (Stephanie Meek/CameraSport via Getty Images)

“If you don’t invest now, and others are willing to, that can be very problematic for your brand. You can fall away pretty quickly. Just because you have a big name in men’s football does not mean you will be thought of from a brand and commercial perspective if your women’s team is not competitive. That is the problem with not investing… If you don’t invest now, you could miss the boat for quite a few years.”

But, for some, women’s football is also a corporate social responsibility project or a positive PR move, and old-school perceptions remain.

“You can’t remove the sexism angle,” says Philippou, talking generally about the attitude to investment in women’s football in the UK. “There is definitely an element of that, and you see it a lot with how women’s sport is still viewed by executives, fans and media.”

A major organisation such as INEOS could significantly influence the culture of women’s sport — if it wanted to. “They’ll be on the wrong side of history if they don’t,” says the ex-pro cyclist.

The overwhelming sentiment expressed by many is that 73-year-old Ratcliffe and key decision-makers are from a past generation, one in which women’s professional sport did not exist in anything like the same way it does today. Ratcliffe, Andrew Currie, John Reece, Jonathan Ginns and Simon Morland form an all-male board at INEOS Limited, the parent company which sits at the top of the sprawling INEOS group. The board’s average age is 60.

INEOS says it has a number of female CEOs and CEO-level executives, but they are on the petrochemicals side of the organisation. When asked who sits on the INEOS sports board alongside CEO Jean-Claude Blanc, it said it does not publish details of individual board members.

INEOS’ sporting success on the men’s side has also been mixed, despite the huge investment.

Ratcliffe remarked in March, via BBC Sport, that Manchester United’s women’s team “are frankly doing better than the men’s team”, pointing to their second-place league position at the time and 2024 FA Cup final win, while a sale of Nice is being explored, as reported in May.

Kipchoge’s feat was historic, but INEOS ended its NN running team partnership and also withdrew from the America’s Cup challenge, having split with Ainslie in January. INEOS Grenadiers are in decline, registering their worst performance at the Tour de France since 2010 this summer, and INEOS settled a sponsorship dispute with New Zealand Rugby (NZR) in April, and another case with Tottenham Hotspur of the Premier League last month.

“Five years ago, they could have done a lot,” says one observer with experience in the field. “Now… most people would say, ‘Focus on what you have, because you’re not doing very well’.”