SOME KEY FACTS AND FIGURES ON THE WORLD’S LARGEST ANNUAL SPORTING EVENT
Originally published in 2013, ahead of the Yorkshire Grand Depart 2014 – facts correct at the time of publication.
- The Tour de France is the world’s largest annual sporting event
- It starts at the end of June/beginning of July and lasts 3 weeks
- The entire race covers approximately 3,500 kms
- The Grand Départ is the opening of the race of the Tour de France
- The Grand Départ is regularly held outside of France – in 2012 it was hosted by Belgium
- A worldwide television audience of 3.5billion people watch the Tour de France annually
- Over 188 countries around the world broadcast the Tour de France
- 121 different television channels across the world show the race every year
- There are 4,700 hours of TV coverage annually
- The last hour of every stage is broadcast live across western Europe
- 2,000 journalists representing dozens of nationalities attend the Tour every year
- 1,200 hotel rooms are reserved each night for the teams, staff, press and tour personnel
- The Tour de France attracts 12 million spectators along the route in a typical year’s race
- On average spectators travel 130km to see a stage of Le Tour
- They spend on average six hours at a time at the roadside
- 30% of those spectators are women
- The last time the Tour visited England was in 2007 when it raced from London to Kent
- 2 million people turned out over two days
- It’s estimated it brought £88m to the south-east economy
- It generated £35m worth of media coverage for the area
- Yorkshire’s Brian Robinson was the first Brit to win stage of Tour de France in 1958
- Bradley Wiggins became the first British rider to win the Tour de France in 2012, this was followed up by a second British winner, Chris Froome, in 2013.
- On Monday 7 July, 2014 Stage 3 took riders from Cambridge to Essex with a finish on The Mall in London.