There are all sorts of rules that have had to be modified and the entire world has been turned upside down, so the fact they’re able to put on a race of this calibre should be commended not penalised.” “And for me there have to be some considerations to the pandemic and the situation that we’re in right now. They highlight the race, they highlight the areas, they promote and do a really good job of showing what a good spectacle it is. “I’m definitely for progress and requiring this but I think a race that is able to put on a highlights package like they have been able to do is better than a poorly produced live stream.
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“Obviously the ideal is for live TV, but one thing you know about this race is that if they’re going to do something they’re going to do it well,” said Rachel Hedderman, DS at American team Tibco-Silicon Valley Bank. “If we don’t follow the rules then we all are not going to be a WorldTour team, so I think if you cannot have live coverage then you don’t deserve to be WorldTour race.”īut Stam was a lone voice among those we spoke with, whether on or off the record all told us the race deserves to be cut some slack. “There are rules and we have to follow and that is what organisers need to do,” SDWorx team manager Danny Stam told us. “The race has put a lot of effort into developing each year, from offering more challenging stages, travelling to different locations of the country and really promoting us through the media and offering coverage.”Ĭertainly the race’s social media coverage is class-leading, with more Twitter and Instagram followers than any other standalone women’s race, but that is not a requirement of being a WorldTour event.
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“It has developed from my first year to now,” says Canadian, Leah Kirchmann (DSM) who is one of only two riders to have raced each edition. GCN/Eurosport will not provide viewing figures for their live broadcasts, so any comparison to, say, the Simac Ladies Tour, a six-day Dutch race, is impossible.ĭespite courses that sometimes don’t challenge some of the world’s highest-profile racers, over its seven editions the Women’s Tour has been regarded as the gold standard, with prestige to match. There is no doubt of the value of live coverage, and it must be the way forward, but with the current highlights achieving such figures it could be argued the highlights have greater reach. In 2019 this was watched by an average of 218,000 people per day, and the same package is distributed internationally.
Top of the world tour live tv#
Since its inception in 2014 the Women’s Tour has provided a comprehensive highlights package broadcast in the UK on national terrestrial TV channel, ITV4. Policing for instance this year cost more than £200,000 and that’s before accommodation which nearly doubled as Covid protocols required single rooms. There are other expenses UK races face that some in Europe don’t. For instance, we tried sending a photo from the Felixstowe finish line and failed. However, while the quality is generally sufficient to hit the UCI’s broadcast requirements, UK network coverage is patchy. The sum would be greatly reduced using 4G technology as some other European races do. While they intend to show the race live in 2022, this year that is money they don’t have. While the differential between showing some of a stage and all of it is relatively low, organisers told Cycling Weekly that to put on an identical production to that of the Tour of Britain would cost a minimum of £400,000.
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“But it’s just commercial reality that they don’t get the return that they would like from the Women’s Tour, and there’s no way around that.”Įssentially if the broadcaster does not want to pay for the coverage then organisers must, and the costs are eye-watering. “The simple answer is that we were contracted to do that with ITV4,” race director Mick Bennett told Cycling Weekly. In response, some have pointed to Sweetspot’s other international race, the Tour of Britain which was shown live in it entirety. However, in the days before the event they released a statement: “As a result of these commercial realities, we will not be able to expand the coverage of the Women’s Tour in 2021 to include a live broadcast.”
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Could that happen to the Women’s Tour?Įarlier this year it seemed the race would be shown live, organisers Sweetspot announcing a deal with Eurosport/GCN. In 2020 the Giro Rosa - as it was then - had no live coverage, and this year the rebranded Giro Donne was a ProSeries event, despite a livestream.