The money in cycling

As it's my first time writing on the blog, I thought I would write about something that everyone knows too well that I am obsessed with CYCLING!!

Although cycling is more famously known for its health benefits, it also has many economic benefits. So as a start to my blogging career, I thought I would talk about the money that the recently finished Tour de France generates.

Cycling is the biggest sporting goods business in the world, worth $15 billion. The reason for this is because the Tour De France is the largest annual sporting event, beating the Champions league and Super bowl. It is for this reason that there is so much money being poured into cycling through sponsorship deals from famous firms such as Europcar, Belkin, AG2R, Mapei, Peugeot, Rabobank and recently 20^th Century fox, these are only some of the famous sponsors in cycling and they all bring a huge sum of money into the sport due to its high viewing figures 3.5 billion annually and its long TV coverage approximately 4,700 hours.

Each year the Tour brings 2,000 journalists and 1,200 rooms are reserved for press, teams, staff and tour personnel which brings a huge amount of money to the area that it visits each, often being the highlight of many of the towns year. Each year the tour attracts 12 million spectators who come and view the sport. Most of the pay money for flights, boats, trains or fuel for cars in order to get to the course, as on spectators drive 130km on average to get to a different stage, which means there is a huge amount of money being injected into the economy, even though it is free to view the spectacle as there are no tickets that need to be purchased like a football match.

This shows the amount of money that one event in such a popular sport brings to an economy. But it isn't the short term affect which the Tour De France has on the French economy, the tour de France inspires many people to get off the couch and buy a bike to get more involved in the sport which has a long term effect not just on the French economy but in other countries because of its huge viewing figure.

Above is a video of some of the interesting facts about cycling, from my second favorite thing in the world the Global cycling network!