Tour de France heir wants U.S. sponsor for Women’s Cycling Race
By Bloomberg
The Tour de France, which draws sponsors mainly from its home country, is trying to snag a U.S. backer to help bankroll a women's edition of the cycling race.
Jean-Etienne Amaury, chairman of family-owned Amaury Sport Organisation that has controlled the race since 1947, said it wants a backer to finance the extra costs of holding a women's race of as long as one week on the same course as the men's.
Specialized Bicycle Components Inc., a Morgan Hill, California-based bike maker, sponsored an inaugural one-day race for women called La Course on the last day of the men's event in July. Amaury said in a phone interview there was more interest in the race in the U.S. than in most of Europe.
"It would make sense" to have a U.S. company as backer of a longer event, Amaury, 37, said in a phone interview. "There was a pretty strong audience in the United States."
The Tour de France's sponsors are mainly French and include phone company Orange SA, Accor SA's Ibis hotel chain and supermarket chain Carrefour SA. ASO, which also organizes the Dakar rally and Paris marathon, had net income of 36.1 million euros ($45.6 million) last year, an 8 percent increase on a year earlier, according to its latest published accounts.
Staging a longer race would involve the costs of assembling signage and sponsorship hoardings every day along the 2,000-mile (3,200 kilometer) course, Amaury said.
Broadcast Budget
More expensive still, Amaury said, would be the extra costs to broadcast the event. RCS Sport SpA and Italian state broadcaster RAI spend as much as 6 million euros to televise the Giro d'Italia, cycling's next-biggest three-week race. France Television covers the costs of showing the men's Tour.
ASO held a women's Tour de France from 1984 until 1989. The race was discontinued because it didn't catch on with fans or media at the time, according to Amaury. After a petition led by athletes including Olympic road-race champion Marianne Vos in 2013, ASO agreed to hold La Course and has announced plans to do so again next year.
The inaugural race, won by Vos, was shown on Comcast Corp.'s Universal Sports. Barely 18 months after Lance Armstrong confessed to doping in winning his seven Tour titles, the event had "tremendous" feedback from viewers and advertisers, Robert James, Universal Sports senior vice president of content, said in an e-mail. The broadcaster didn't provide audience figures.
A sportswear maker such as Nike Inc. or a phone company such as AT&T Inc. might be receptive to backing a women's Tour de France, provided it's packaged well for U.S. television, according to Rick Burton, a professor of sports management at Syracuse University.
"There's probably going to be a pendulum swing for women in general" in sports sponsorship after National Football League player Ray Rice was filmed punching his then fiancee in an elevator, Burton said. "It's going to be appealing for companies that want to target the earning power of U.S. women."