Tour de France to be postponed due to pandemic
Tour de France to be postponed due to pandemic
The Tour de France looks set to be postponed following the French government's extension of a ban on mass gatherings because of the coronavirus pandemic.

TEHRAN (Iran News) – The Tour de France looks set to be postponed following the French government’s extension of a ban on mass gatherings because of the coronavirus pandemic.

President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday that restrictions on public events, including Tour de France, would continue until mid-July due to the pandemic, BBC Sport reported.

Cycling’s biggest race, won by Team Ineos’ Egan Bernal last year, is due to run from June 27 to July 19.

The Tour, due to start in Nice, is being contested by Bernal’s Ineos teammate and four-time winner Chris Froome after the Briton broke his neck, femur, elbow, hip, and ribs in a crash preparing for last year’s event.

Colombian Bernal won last year’s race following a battle with Britain’s Geraint Thomas, who won the 2018 edition.

On April 10, cycling’s governing body furloughed staff and cut leaders’ salaries as a result of the global pandemic.

 ‘Economic meltdown’

 

The “Grande Boucle,” as the Tour is known in France, is the central economic pillar supporting the 22 professional teams scheduled to compete in 2020.

An announcement is expected this week on either a postponement or an outright cancellation of the 21-day extravaganza, The Japan Times reported.

“Cancelation opens the door to a possible economic meltdown in the cycling sector,” said Jean-Francois Mignot of the French National Center for Scientific Research and author of the book “A History of the Tour de France.”

Up 12 million fans usually line the roads as the Tour makes its way through the French countryside, with the finish line in Paris, for three weeks every summer.

“It’s as simple as this. If the Tour does not take place, teams could disappear, riders and staff alike would find themselves unemployed,” said Marc Madiot, head of the French team Groupama-FDJ.

His team budget is estimated at €20 million ($21.8 million) per year and is bankrolled by the state lottery and an insurance company.

Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), the Tour de France organizer, paid €2.3 million in total prize money for the 2019 edition.

The Tour rakes in revenue but the giant cost of staging the event, featuring logistics that are as spectacular as any mountainside showdown on two wheels, eat into the margins of all road races.

Sponsors are paying for the daily hours-long television coverage and even the smallest teams can get involved in a breakaway and hence command screen time.

“Most sponsors are in cycling for this reason alone, the whole thing is centered around the Tour de France,” Mignot claimed.

“If these sponsors invest money it is because television viewers recognize the team jerseys, it is the only cycling race watched by such a vast audience.”

Bruno Bianzina, the general manager of the agency Sport Market, said the Tour is a unique event in many ways.

“There are very few other sports with so much riding on one event,” Bianzina said.

Mignot estimated ASO’s Tour revenue has climbed from €5 million in the 1980s to €50 million today.

Another group, Sporsora, put the turnover for the 2019 Tour de France at €130 million.

Some 40-50 percent comes from sponsors, television rights make up around half, and host regions of the race also contribute around five percent.

“The Tour de France props up the whole of cycling, but the Tour needs the rest of the cycling calendar too,” said Madiot, a two-time winner of the Paris-Roubaix one-day race.

Even the smallest sponsor pays €250,000 to ASO while it is estimated that the yellow jersey sponsor, the LCL bank, pays €10 million.

“But it goes much deeper than that because the Tour de France is also a huge advert for France and French tourism,” Bianzina said.

 

  • source : Iran Daily, Irannews