Will the Tour de France be less followed this year? Only 46% of French people are expected to follow the Grande Boucle this year, while it attracted 52% of fans last year. This is what the survey carried out by Odoxa for Winamax and RTL reveals. This lower rate of interest among the French population for the 2024 edition is equivalent to that of 2020, the Covid year when the Tour de France started in September under special conditions. Proof perhaps that citizens’ concerns lie elsewhere.
Odoxa explains that the political news in the country “is a probable explanation of this probable deficit of interest for the 2024 edition”, coming from the high rate of interest of the French in the early legislative elections, i.e. 81%. The event is not spared by the political situation, since the two rounds of elections (June 30 and July 7) take place during the three weeks of the race.
Bardet, the French people’s favorite runner
If the show promises, with the opposition between Pogacar and Vingegaard, Odoxa believes that this lack of concern can also come from the absence of the “French darling Alaphilippe” this year, as well as the lack of French “ambitious in the general” for the general public. Without forgetting “the retirement of the other darling Pinot” who would be missed by the locals for this new edition. However, the French still have a new chance to say goodbye to a tricolor who shone on the Tour. Winner three times, Romain Bardet is approaching his last Tour de France, he who is the favorite rider of 35% of the French.
However, 73% of French people have a good image of the Tour de France according to the survey carried out by Odoxa for Winamax and RTL. Designated as a popular (89%), unifying (76%) and festive (72%) event despite the numerous doping events which have tarnished the image of the race and which persist in the common mind since 67% French people associate the Grande Boucle with these old cheating scandals.
