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- Four race stages on France Télévisions exceed 5m viewers, up from two in 2021
- Tour de France Femmes’ opening stage scores 3m viewers on France 2
This year’s edition of cycling’s Tour de France pulled in 41.5 million viewers on French public service broadcaster France Télévisions (FTV).
The figure is the biggest Tour de France audience for the network’s main channel since 2011.
Four race stages on FTV exceeded five million viewers, compared to two in 2021. Of that, 6.4 million watched the Briançon-Alpe d’Huez stage, marking the biggest audience for the stage since 2003.
FTV added that viewers watched an average of five hours and 41 minutes of the Grand Tour, which was 17 minutes more than in 2021 and the highest since 2011.
The broadcaster also drew an average of four million viewers for coverage on its FTV2 channel and 2.5 million on FTV3, representing an audience share of 41.3 per cent and 24.3 per cent respectively.
In Germany, an average of 1.2 million viewers watched the Tour de France on ARD, handing the public broadcaster an audience share of 11 per cent. This was up 9.8 per cent on last year’s audience of just over 1.1 million. An additional 279,000 tuned in on ARD’s One channel.
The event’s ninth stage drew the largest viewership for ARD with 1.7 million, representing a 12.5 per cent share.
The broadcaster’s Sportschau streaming platform amassed 11 million viewers, which ARD said was more than twice as many for the 2021 edition.
As the Tour de France wrapped up, the start of the returning women’s Tour de France Femmes saw three million viewers watch on FTV2, securing the channel a 27.8 per cent audience share on the afternoon of 24th July.
