The prospects for the survival of French professional team B&B Hotels-KTM have reached a quiet crisis point as the November 30 sponsorship deadline looms, with no news of last-minute sponsorship deals guaranteeing the team's survival through 2023.

Hopes for a major expansion next season, centered on partnerships with the city of Paris and several big-name sponsors, including a deal with Mark Cavendish, were slowly but surely fading.

However, after news of the team's expansion broke on the final day of the 2022 Tour de France, these deals have so far not materialized.

Deadlines for sponsorship news and submission of documents to the UCI have been pushed back to October 15 and November 22, and the press conference on October 27, the day before the Tour de France, has been canceled. And now unconfirmed rumors are circulating that many of the riders named in the team's current and 2023 candidate lineups have already applied for jobs with other teams.

Team manager Jérôme Pinot has already had to ask the UCI and the DNCG (the French team supervisory body) for a special waiver to extend the final deadline of November 30.

Two weeks ago, Pinault told L'Equipe magazine that he had five leads on potential sponsors and would have a final meeting with them on November 28.

The increasingly deafening silence from team management since then speaks louder than words, even more so than the brief denial by a team spokesman of reports that contract riders were entitled to look for other teams.

As of November 30, the prospect of a men's team of 27 riders and the creation of a new women's team and a new feeder team all hang in the balance.

Riders like Belgian national champion and classics specialist Jens Debusschere are looking for last-minute solutions. He told the Het Laatste Nieuws newspaper, "I'm staying positive. I want to believe that everything will be okay."

"I really hope that this team will continue," UCI President David Lapartient recently told regional TV station 3 Brittany.

"Furthermore, this team, like all teams, has to have training camps and meetings. From a legal point of view, there are many legal issues, notably the relationship with the race organizers and the need for bank guarantees.

With the disappearance of the team, more than 20 top-level athletes could find themselves suddenly on the transfer market just six weeks before the start of the new season.

Rumors persist that Italian sprinter Luca Mozzato will move to Arkea Samsic. Axel Laurens, 22, who finished second in this year's Bretagne Classic, is said to have six teams vying for him, including Ineos Grenadiers; B&B Hotels-KTM won the Polynormand one-day race, one of five wins in 2022 Franck Bonhommeur is also said to be forming a team.

However, well-known riders like Pierre Rolland, who won a stage in the 2011 Tour de France Alpe d'Huez, and another veteran French rider, Jonathan Hyvale, will retire at the end of this year.

"If I hadn't been in contact with Mark and he didn't believe in our project, he would have already signed somewhere else," said Pinault, the first to admit contact with the Manxman.

Not much is heard about potential signings such as current French national champion Audrey Cordon-Lago (Trek Segafredo).

Pinot is rumored to need an annual budget of 15 million euros, almost double its current budget, to inaugurate a team in 2023.

A final decision on the future of B&B Hotels-KTM will be made official in the first half of December, as early as Monday, December 5, when the UCI will announce the team license list for next season.

According to a UCI press release last October, "The committee will evaluate the candidate team files and make a decision based on all five criteria: sport, administration, ethics, finance, and organization."