Maintaining the Tour de France at all costs: a vital question for the 22 participating teams, whose raison d’être is largely based on a single race in the season, that of the yellow jersey. “It would be a total disaster” if the race was canceled, explained Patrick Lefevere, boss of the Deceuninck-Quick Step team at the end of March, when the decision had not yet been taken to preserve the event by shifting it two months on the calendar. “The organizers, ASO, can afford to take a break, but the teams cannot, added the Belgian manager to the Dutch-speaking daily Het Nieuwsblad. If there is no Tour de France, the whole model of cycling can collapse. ” A former team leader qualifies: “State sponsored trainings may eventually survive cancellation. Teams sponsored by large insurance groups too. For everyone else, the danger is enormous. A sponsor could withdraw if he loses the Tour advertising display. ”
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The economic argument beneficial to the whole peloton is invoked by the organizers to keep the event on the calendar and not postpone it to 2021. The teams, whose budget varies between 6 and 8 million euros annually (B & B Hôtels-Vital Concept) and 46 million (Team Ineos), are more than 90% financed by private partners. No spectator ticketing, almost no sales of derivative products, no tax levied on the transfer market or, more surprisingly, a share of the television rights collected by the organizers, including those of the Tour de France.
But the teams live indirectly from the Tour, since their sponsor derives most of its returns on media investment. La Grande Boucle remains firmly the third world sporting event (behind the Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup) and the first that takes place every year: 100 TV channels on all continents, 108 hours of images broadcast in 21 stages, tens of millions of viewers … The French team AG2R la Mondiale, successful for six years thanks to its leader, Romain Bardet, recorded in 2018 47 million euros exclusive of tax in equivalent purchases of advertising space, which allowed its main sponsor to recover more than four times its initial stake. Vincent Lavenu, manager of the team, confirms this week that he “Expect a different experience” on the run but that “The Tour is essential to the survival of our sport”.
Pierre Carrey
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