This year’s edition of cycling’s iconic Tour de France (TdF) attracted a large audience domestically as over 45 million tuned in across both free-to-air and pay-TV in the country.
The majority of the audience watched the free-to-air coverage of the race on France Télévisions as the public service broadcaster drew in a total of 41.5 million viewers.
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This marked the biggest TdF audience on the broadcaster’s main channel since 2011 as Danish rider Jonas Vingegaard claimed a maiden victory.
Elsewhere, another 4 million viewers tuned in on pan-European sports broadcaster Eurosport across the entire event which ran from July 1 to 24.
On France Télévisions, four stages exceeded 5 million viewers, compared to two in 2021, with a notable 6.4 million people watching the July 14 stage (Briançon-Alpe d'Huez), a record audience since 2003.
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Eurosport also achieved a viewership record for its coverage of the 12th stage which averaged 218,000 viewers.
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By GlobalDataAccording to France Télévisions, each viewer in the country watched an average of five hours and 41 minutes of the tour, 17 minutes more than in 2021, the highest figure since 2011.
The public service broadcaster attracted an average of 4 million viewers for coverage on its France 2 channel (41.3% audience share), and 2.5 million on France 3 (24.3%).
In Germany, an average of 1.2 million viewers watched the TdF on public service network ARD, which represented an audience share of 11%.
This was up 9.8% from last year’s audience of just over 1.1 million.
An additional 279,000 watched the prestigious cycling race on ARD’s in-house One channel.
ARD’s coverage of the ninth stage drew the largest viewership with 1.7 million tuning in (12.5% share).
The broadcaster’s sportschau.de streaming platform attracted 11 million viewers, which ARD claimed was more than twice as many as in 2021.
Eurosport also held pay-TV rights in Germany and drew an average of 235,000 viewers (2.4% share). It was the operator’s highest audience figure in the country since 2017.
In Norway, an average of 60,000 viewers watched the TdF on commercial broadcaster TV2, down 2,000 from last year.
For the final stage on Sunday (July 24), there was an average viewership of 72,000, while the audience peaked at 161,000.
Meanwhile, in the new women’s Tour de France Femmes, 3 million viewers tuned in to watch the start of the race on France 2 last Sunday after the men’s edition concluded.
This gave France 2 a 27.8% audience share on Sunday afternoon.
The women’s TdF has made a return this year after being removed in 2010. The race will run until this Sunday (July 31).
The remaining stages will be shown on France 3 and the Eurosport 1 channel.
