Licensing
The ProTour licences are given to a maximum of 20 teams, to which sponsors must commit multiple years of sponsorship (4 years at the ProTour's inauguration). The exception to this rule was the Phonak team, which was given only a two-year licence due to previous doping allegations. Licence holders can apply for registration each year, which is dependent upon a check on contracts and budgets.
After 2005, the Fassa Bortolo and Domina Vacanze teams folded and the vacant places were given to AG2R Prévoyance and Team Milram respectively. Following the 2006 season the designated replacement principal sponsor for the Phonak Hearing Systems team, iShares, pulled its support as a results of the Floyd Landis doping scandal and the team was disbanded. The Unibet.com Cycling Team received Phonak's ProTour license, and the Swiss-based, Kazakh-backed Astana Team received the license previously owned by Manolo Saiz and his Liberty Seguros-Würth. Unibet.com and Discovery Channel discontinued after the 2007 season, bringing down the number of ProTour teams to 18. At the end of 2008, another two teams dropped out: Crédit Agricole and Gerolsteiner. Their licenses were taken over by Garmin-Slipstream and Team Katusha. Bbox Bouygues Telecom and Cofidis were denied licence renewals for the 2010 season, and new licences were given to Team Sky and Team RadioShack. Although Lampre-Farnese Vini had had its licence renewed until 2013, its registration (a separate process from licensing, concerning finances) was temporarily rejected, but restored after they had missed one race. UCI bylaws were later changed to require a team to be registered before its license is granted or renewed, to avoid a repeat of this situation.
Read more about this topic: UCI ProTour