Recommended watching https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tour_de_Pharmacy
How the Tour de France became a $100M business
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Re: How the Tour de France became a $100M business
#12And 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.
> it's really difficult to watch in a lot of countries
please name some?
Re: How the Tour de France became a $100M business
#13That 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?
Sport doesn’t really get 10x multiplier I think. Top tier football club is ~4-5 billions valuation on ~700millions revenue.
Re: How the Tour de France became a $100M business
#14My 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.
Tour de France instead is full of EPO pumped cyclists. (see Armstrong, see Ullrich etc)
Re: How the Tour de France became a $100M business
#15And 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.
That was true up until the last couple seasons (around 2020).
As of today, it is finally easily available cheaply via streaming.
- Peacock TV streaming service which is $5 a month (I got a $20 annual plan deal a few weeks before TdF)
- GCN+ Streaming service which is $8 a month (or $50 a year)
The GCN stream is available globally. I think it is also available on France24 and Sky Sports' streaming app.
If this feels like bad distribution to those reading this, you have no idea how far we have come. TdF used to be on very obscure cable channels only, like Outdoor Network that required very premium satellite plans as it was only included as a specialty channel and not available via many cable or satellite providers, making it entirely inaccessible to most people.
NBC eventually moved it to NBC Sports, which made it better. It was available through almost all providers now and available on more basic packages.
We finally got our first streaming options (meaning you didn't need to have a cable/sattelite subscription) about 6 or so years ago, but it was on a terrible app that had terrible infrastructure and it cost $80-120 per TdF season!
So with mainstream streaming, it is finally pretty accessible, just not discoverable. If you are looking to watch it, you can get it. It's also finally cheap enough for more people to justify it without needing to be a mega-fan. Again, on peacock it is only $5 a month. If you sign up and cancel immediately starting and following the TdF you can watch it all in one billing cycle. So that's pretty fair.
Also, to NBC's credit, they are trying to make it more accessible. The first stage was actually on the main NBC channel, which I think is a first. Stages 2-7 have been on USA Network, which is on all basic cable packages. Stages 8+ now require Peacock. It's obviously not perfect, but progress deserves to be recognized!
Re: How the Tour de France became a $100M business
#16And 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.
Wasn't Eurosport free to view across Europe via satellite on Astra 19.2° East via Luxembourg in the 80s/90s? I guess the sports organizers started charging serious money.
Re: How the Tour de France became a $100M business
#17It'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 me…
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Re: How the Tour de France became a $100M business
#18It'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 me…
The format of the race makes it very difficult to have two separate categories (men and women), IMHO.
They could indeed open the race to anyone so that both men and women could compete in the race, but then women would trail men and have no chance of winning. This means they would also have to impose a number of women per team as otherwise no team would hire women.
So it's not a simple issue.
Re: How the Tour de France became a $100M business
#19Recommended watching https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tour_de_Pharmacy
> a 2017 made-for-television mockumentary sports film [...] starring Andy Samberg, Orlando Bloom, Freddie Highmore, Daveed Diggs, and John Cena
Sold.
Edited now that I started watching it: Narrated by Jon Hamm. about 40 minutes long.
Half-way in: I'm suddenly realizing this is made for americans with the express purpose to excuse Lance Armstrong ("because everyone else is also doing drugs"). It's still funny though.
Re: How the Tour de France became a $100M business
#20It'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 me…
Are women actually disallowed from competing in the men’s version?