France TV reports record TV figures for Tour de France Femmes
France TV released their record figures on Monday claiming almost 26 million people watched the event in its home country.
The French national broadcaster, France Télévisions has reported record viewer numbers for this year’s edition of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift.
The fourth edition of the event finished on Sunday and the broadcaster’s published numbers show an average audience of 2.7 million viewers per stage, an increase of more than 500,000 for each and every stage, the race accounting for a 31.6% audience share. Across the nine stages the broadcaster produced more than 25 hours of live coverage which was shown on France 2, France 3 and france.tv digital platform.
This year’s event brought the first home winner since the race was recreated in 2022, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (Visma | Lease a Bike) winning the final two stages in the Alps on Saturday and Sunday. It also witnessed the emergence of a new French talent, Maeva Squiban (UAE Team ADQ) winning two stages. Indeed, between Squiban and Ferrand-Prévot France won the final four stages of the nine day race.
Before this year’s race there had only been one home stage win, so the increased viewership corresponds directly to improved French performance.
Also unsurprisingly, Sunday’s final stage, where Ferrand-Prévot soloed to her second successive stage win, securing her yellow jersey, was the most watched stage, with 4.4 million viewers, more than 10% up on the previous best for a Tour de France Femmes stage. That was a huge 41.2% audience share and peaked at 7.7 million.
The press release also detailed 3.8 million videos viewed on the france.tv and franceinfo digital platforms, and a staggering 34 million videos were viewed on their social media platforms, a claimed increase of 600%. This does seem to correspond with an increase 15-24 year-olds watching the race on TV.
The increased TV and online viewing figures were reinforced by larger crowds at the roadside, an indication that the women’s Tour de France is coming close to matching its male counterpart. This creates a virtuous circle, increasing sponsor exposure and attracting more investment, though, of course there is the danger of accentuating the difference between those teams which do race the Tour and those which do not.
