How the Tour de France became a $100M business
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How the Tour de France became a $100M business
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Re: How the Tour de France became a $100M business
#2Headlie: How the most...
Artickle: ...one of the world’s most challenging....
It's almost as if the headline needs clarification.
*Aside: just wondering how Orica Greenedge(!) enjoyed the Yates's 1, 2.
Re: How the Tour de France became a $100M business
#3And yet the TV rights are a joke as it's really difficult to watch in a lot of countries and the rave would be worth more to France if the audience was expanded greatly.
Re: How the Tour de France became a $100M business
#4And yet the TV rights are a joke as it's really difficult to watch in a lot of countries and the rave would be worth more to France if the audience was expanded greatly.
I think for most countries you can watch it in the GCN app with a subscription.
Re: How the Tour de France became a $100M business
#5And yet the TV rights are a joke as it's really difficult to watch in a lot of countries and the rave would be worth more to France if the audience was expanded greatly.
If you are in Europe then the Eurosport sub is only €25 for a year. No ads and you also get Wimbledon (and the other majors), Women's Football World Cup, Olympics (not this year of course) etc.
Re: How the Tour de France became a $100M business
#6Sponsored by a crypto exchange? Cancelling my (free) subscription.
Re: How the Tour de France became a $100M business
#7My first thought was, wait, only $100M? If this was an American event it would be pumped up to a $2B affair with a theme song, videogame and plastic figurines.
Re: How the Tour de France became a $100M business
#8It's also important to highlight that the Tour de France is one of the most sexist sporting events still around. Cycling in general.
The cycling establishment refuses to allow equality for women. The women's Tour didn't even exist before 2022. The current women's tour is a pale shadow of the men's. The women are not allowed to ride the same tour, they can only do 8 stages and almost none of the 8 correspond to the men's race (they're 50-100km shorter). The 2023 women's edition got one time trial and one mountain stage. It's pathetic.
The entire UCI behaves like it's the year 1800. There's a written rule that women are not allowed to race the same distances and times as men. It doesn't matter that they can. It doesn't matter that they want to. It doesn't matter if they raise the money to. The rule is, women must be inferior to men in cycling. It's just like with marathon running, you literally have older men in power holding women back for no reason at all.
Women just want to cycle. They aren't demanding the same rewards or the same prize money. They just want to ride the same race! Why wouldn't we allow that? There's pretty good evidence that women are actually better endurance athletes than men. I wonder if one day we'll see the Women's Tour actually beat out the men's.
PS: Someone in a reply said that clearly women can't do this. We know women can. And they can even beat men at it!
Take the RAAM (Race Across America, a gruelling almost 3000 mile race, nearly 5000km). Women are allowed to join in. This is even longer than the Tour. Not only have many women finished RAAM, in Leah Goldstein actually won. Not the women's category. The race outright. Period.
Or the Transcontinental Race (TRC, similar to RAAM but across Europe and without a support team, between 3000-4000km depending on the year). Not only have many women participated and completed it, in 2019 a Fiona Kolbinger won. And again, not the women's category. She won the 10 day race beating out the best man by 10 hours!
Re: How the Tour de France became a $100M business
#9That was a very macro version of the TDF finances. And the title didn't really describe how it got to 100M more the make up of their revenue streams. Also if it's 100M rev its 1B company right?
Re: How the Tour de France became a $100M business
#10And yet the TV rights are a joke as it's really difficult to watch in a lot of countries and the rave would be worth more to France if the audience was expanded greatly.
I think for most countries you can watch it in the GCN app with a subscription.
There’s all kinds of funky geo restrictions for the tdf and a bunch of other races. The rights are a mess. In the US you need to use a vpn to watch the tdf on GCN+.