Tour d’Azerbaidjan three stages to be shown live
By Amina Nazarli
Three stages of the international stage race Tour d’Azerbaidjan 2015 scheduled for May 6-10 will be broadcast live around the world by Eurosport, the Azerbaijan Cycling Federation has announced. Highlights of the days’ stages will be shown on the other days.
“The third, fourth and fifth stages of this year’s Tour will be broadcast live by Eurosport,” said Farhad Aliyev, Secretary General of the Federation.
Eurosport will show highlights of stages one and two on the day they are run. The broadcast of all stages will be repeated after the race. National television will carry all of the stages live.
In 2014, Eurosport broadcast daily highlights of the race and carried the final stage live, to a large international audience, with 28.6 million unique viewers. The average viewer watched 3.7 stages. The last stage, broadcast live, had 830,000 unique viewers.
“We expect these numbers to increase this year, and hope that a lot of people will watch the Tour live,” Aliyev said.
The broadcasts will only further raise interest in the race and Azerbaijan, which will also help in the Federation’s next project. “The race starts just a month before the Baku 2015 first-ever European Games, which increases our responsibilities. In fact, the last stage of the Tour d’Azerbaidjan serves as a sporting test for the European Games road race,” he added.
At least 24 teams from around the world will tackle the competition, facing a five stage race covering various parts of Azerbaijan. The line-up so far features four Professional Continental teams, 16 Continental teams, and four national teams.
The 24 teams of 6 riders each will form a peloton of 144 riders, with a possible 25th team bringing the total to 150.
The main distinctive feature of Tour d'Azerbaidjan-2015 in comparison with last year is that the participants will have a chance to win a ticket for both Baku 2015 European Games and XXXI Summer Olympics 2016 in Rio de Janeiro.
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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on
Twitter: @amina_nazarli
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