I'm in my 3rd season and I encountered this problem. Somewhere around the monthly turn something wrecked in my savegame and teams are no longer signing riders, despite lots of great ones out there like Ulissi, Duarte, Rojas etc. The last signing was on 27 August. This problem is there for all tiers so when I enter my next season most PRT teams have about 18 riders, and lots of Conti teams are stuck with about 7-8 riders. I also tried with previous weekly saves but to no avail. Is there a solution to fix this problem?
I cannot remember if I heard about your problem or a solution for it before.
But if you really want to continue, you could add the riders to the teams manually with an editor. This would be a lot of editing, so better search the forum first and maybe wait for other help.
Edit:
Open the save of your career with an editor, which can be found in the download section. The save is here: my documents\pcm13\users\your name\database\solo\name of db\
Add a contract in DYN_contract_cyclist for each rider. Then edit the columns fkIDteam and fkIDcontract in the table DYN_cyclist.
Maybe use a paper to make notes, f.e. noting the IDs of the teams which can be found in the table DYN_team.
Good luck and just ask if you have editing questions.
I was searching the forum but unfortunately I didn't find anything similar to this. I was hoping that I could somehow avoid manual editing as my hair is going to turn grey when I finish with this. Well, at least I can listen to some music as I'm working on it...
I did just like you told Lachi. It took me about 2 weeks to create a contract for about 800 riders. Everything went fine, but of course, I have the same problem again the next season.
Just a reminder for those who might face the same story, it seems like there's no solution for this one New career.