Analysis: Far from dead, there was plenty of good news from this year's Tour
With doping positives and the ejection of the yellow jersey, the news from this year’s Tour de France was predictably dour. Indeed, with reporters spending three weeks in the race’s scandal-plagued – and essentially closed – environment, many were prepared to write the obituary for France’s national tour.
But sorting through the numbers and viewing the event from outside the “bubble†of the Tour caravan shows that the race deservedly remains one of the world’s most popular sporting events.
Numbers on the road
This year’s Tour began, with great hope and ambition, on the streets of London. Mayor Ken Livingstone fought hard to host the Grand Départ, estimating that the Tour’s two-day kick-off in England would attract 2 million spectators. While fan counts along the Tour de France race route are notoriously inexact, British officials estimated that crowd size exceeded Livingstone’s prediction. According to police there were some 900,000 fans at the July 7th prologue and 2.1 million along the race route to Canterbury the following day.
To be certain, the Tour’s foray into Britain preceded the doping scandals that later punctuated the race, but Livingstone – in Paris for the final stage on to the famed Champs Élysées on July 29th – told reporters that fans’ enthusiasm for the spectacle that is the Tour de France had not been tempered “by the actions of a few cheats.â€
"We support the efforts to eradicate the drug cheats and we will stand by the sport rather than abandon it,†Livingstone said. "The Grand Depart showed we are able to stage a world-class sporting event in London and there were two amazing days."
Livingstone and other British officials promptly began a campaign to bring the Tour back to London and surrounding communities as quickly as possible.
Back on the continent, big crowds followed the race into Ghent, Belgium, and the turnout was larger than in past years as the Tour entered the Alps. Police in southern France estimated that some three million fans watched the race in the Pyrénées — a 25% increase over 2006. In all, some 15 million people attended the race in person.
Long-time observers, including VeloNews editorial director John Wilcockson, said the race remains healthy.
“The Tour de France is clearly a deep-rooted cultural phenomenon that will out-live this year's doping issues,†he noted. “But on one level the Tour is entertainment, so if there’s more scandal and intrigue – as there was clearly this year – that will increase interest.â€
Television audiences These days, the bread-and-butter of sports are, of course, television numbers. Again, despite scandal, those were up in most countries.
One major exception was Germany, where network officials cancelled Tour coverage after T-Mobile’s Patrik Sinkewitz tested positive for testosterone. So those numbers are obviously skewed. Perhaps more representative of European interest would be the 3.5 million French households (39 percent of households watching television at the time) tuned in to the Tour over the first 19 days of the race.
The numbers are equal to those from a year ago, but Natalie Peyrissac, director communications for France Television, said the Tour was still the most-watched show on the air in France at the time. Viewership peaked for the Tignes stage in the Alps with 7 million households, and a 60 percent audience share, while the Plateau de Beille stage in the Pyrénées saw 6.1 million households, or a 56 percent audience share. "These numbers are simply superb," said Peyrissac. "It's clear that the Tour has lost none of its popularity with French audiences."
Not surprisingly, television audiences for the Tour in Britain and Australia have set records, the former due to the good publicity surrounding the send-off in London, and the latter due to Cadel Evans' run at the yellow jersey.
Closer to home, the Versus television network reported that its 2007 Tour de France television coverage reached 20.5 million households – up from even the healthy 2005 numbers during Lance Armstrong’s final win. The network also claimed an 11 percent increase in total viewership for 2007 over 2006 for its live morning broadcasts when digital video recorder usage (i.e. TiVo) is included.
On the Web If the numbers are to be believed, the Tour's worldwide audience on the Web rivals that of television. Versus.com is reported that its unique visitors for of its Tour coverage are up 15 percent to 1.4 million, and total page visits grew 8 percent to 3.9 million.
At VeloNews.com, unique visitors to the site were up 15 percent to some 4.4 million, with page views up 11 percent to 32 million. Online video views on VeloNews TV grew from 1.1 million views a year ago to 1.3 million views this year. (That increase is at least partly due to a change in technology that allowed viewers with a broader selection of operating systems to access VeloNews videos. - Editor)
On paper The Tour de France continues to be front-page news across American newspapers and magazines, from The New York Times on down to small dailies such as the Santa Cruz Sentinel featuring daily reports, features, with the Rasmussen fired-by-his-team story making the front-page of most papers across the United States.
The print edition of VeloNews also showed a big increase in interest in the Tour, with The Official Tour de France Guide seeing a 50-percent boost in newsstand draw, and placement in stores like Target and all Barnes and Noble stores for the first time. The United States' largest independent bicycle distributor - Quality Bicycle Parts - picked up VeloNews's Tour de France Guide for the first time for distribution to its dealers, and will also be selling the post-Tour wrap-up issue as well. This issue (which shipped Friday August 3) essentially "sold out" on an advertising basis, with no advertisers cancelling record ad lineage despite negative drugs news from the Tour.
VeloNews editor Ben Delaney reported that while many readers are frustrated by drumbeat of drug news from the Tour de France, the typical letter-to-the-editor reaction from such a reader is either "to hell with them, I'm going to go ride my bike," or “all this just makes me more interested in following domestic racing.†Various polls of velonews.com readers reveal few folks who will stop following the Tour because of negative drugs news.
Bike sales A key barometer of the impact of the Tour is the sales of bicycle at the retail level. While the numbers won't be available until mid-month, the anecdotal evidence is that bikes continue to fly off shelves of U.S. bike shops, particularly the high-end road models favored by Tour riders. Manufacturers and distributors report being out-of-stock on carbon-fiber road bikes, and high-end accessories like helmets, sew-up tires, and specialty wheelsets.
And while you might imagine that bike sponsors might be shying away from equipping pro cycling teams in the wake of all the negative news in France, we're hearing that so many American bike brands are courting teams for next year that bidding wars have erupted in some cases. Indeed, there are several brands, such as Jamis, now considering European teams for the first time. For companies with established ProTour histories, like Trek, Specialized and Giant, having top professionals on one's bikes is an essential element for sales success in Europe and increasingly important factor in North America.
Bike shops across the United States are reporting that their shop rides are seeing record participation so far this month, and big boosts in their club memberships.
USA Cycling We spoke with USA Cycling CEO Steve Johnson during the last week of the Tour at its training camp near Lucca Italy. Johnson reported that current annual membership at the sanctioning body for U.S. bicycle racing is at "an all-time-high" of 58,230, and on-track to hit 64,000 by the end of the year.
More tellingly, the critical number of junior annual memberships (ages 16 -18) "has hit 4000, a level not seen since the 1980's." New event sanctions and participation in those events is also at record levels, with many reporting full-fields weeks or months before the starting gun goes off.
And thanks to brand- new sponsorship boss Jess Schwartzkopf the federation is already making good progress on new sponsors, including just signing Nike as official clothing sponsor. "We're not seeing sponsorship impact from the problems in Europe as we're committed to running a good, clean program," concluded Johnson.
What does it all mean? So what is one to make of the conflicting stories regarding the health of the Tour? Frankly, it’s not all bad, nor is it all good. The Tour – and professional cycling in general – need to take dramatic steps to seriously address the problem of doping in the sport.
Yes, the ethics pledge – with its strong enforcement provisions – is a major step. Indeed, the use of those provisions – two-year suspensions from cycling, four from the ProTour and the loss of a year’s salary – may serve as a reminder to future riders that the risks of doping may finally outweigh the potential benefits.
As the U.S.-based Slipstream team ramps up its program for 2008, it may be worth considering the words of manager Jonathan Vaughters, whose team invests hundreds of thousands of dollars in a fully transparent internal anti-doping program.
“Yes we will win, but isn't it really more important to be cool?"
The Tour remains “cool†and the sport is taking major steps to clean up at all levels. As London mayor Livingstone notes, this is the time to “stand by the sport rather than abandon it.â€
A look at the numbers suggests that fans around the world don’t need to be reminded of that.
Return to Press Releases