4.3 Million People in France Tuned In for Demi Vollering’s Epic Win on the Tourmalet at the TDFF
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By many anecdotal accounts, it seemed as though tons of people were tuned into this year’s Tour de France Femmes. If you scrolled through your socials or talked to your riding buddies on your weekend group rides, this year’s race felt special in a way that last year’s didn’t, despite the fact that last year’s race was a big victory for women’s racing unto itself.
If we’re just basing our analysis off vibes, it felt like the 2023 Tour de France Femmes was a huge success.
However, vibes won’t get you television deals for future races. And anecdotes won’t attract sponsorship dollars. You need hard, verifiable data for that.
Luckily, thanks to an infographic released on the Tour’s official Twitter account, we have some hard data to confirm those anecdotes and bolster those vibes; hard data that will hopefully lead to even bigger investments in women’s racing in the future.
Arguably the most eye-opening number is the fact that 4.3-million viewers tuned in on French television to watch Demi Vollering’s absolutely epic run up the Tourmalet on stage 7, accounting for a whopping 34.6 percent audience share.
Across the entire race, an average of 2-million people tuned in for each stage, which is 24.8 percent of the national audience share.
Of course, France is a cycling-crazed nation and the Tour de France is one of their country’s marquee events. Still, a whole quarter of the audience share over the race’s eight stages is a stunning result.
To put those numbers into a domestic context, an average of 11.7-million people tuned into last year’s World Series and an average of 11.6-million people tuned into this year’s NBA finals.
In other words, about 4.5 percent of all Americans watched the most recent World Series and NBA Finals. 3 percent of all French people watched the Tour de France Femmes.
Over the seven nations in Europe, the Tour de France Femmes garnered over 80-million viewed hours. Eurosport’s coverage alone reached 15-million viewers, which is a 7.14% increase over 2022’s race.
Digitally, the letourfemmes.fr site saw an 80% increase in unique visitors over 2022 and over a 60 percent increase in site visits.
The race’s social channels saw the biggest bump, as its 1.87-million members across all social channels equaled a 797 percent bump from 2022. That cumulatively lead to over 100-million views across the race’s social properties.
The infographic also broke down the most successful posts on each of the race’s social channels. Yara Kastelijn’s emotional win garnered 1.4-million views on TikTok. Demi Vollering racing to the top of the Tourmalet in the thick fog reached 856,000 people on Instagram. Stage 5 highlights posted to Facebook reached 790,000 people. And the final kilometers of stage 3 reached 361,000 Twitter users.
Huge numbers for a huge race that deserved the chance to reach as many eyeballs as possible. And, judging by these numbers, it’s a chance that wasn’t wasted.
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