"Not enough people watched. Simple as that" - Explanation behind ITV's lack of interest in Tour de France renewal

Across Europe, ASO have recently agreed a deal to ensure the Tour de France, the Vuelta a Espana and other major races have a long term presence on free-to-air TV in a landmark deal. From 2026 onwards in the UK however, the Tour de France will depart its familiar home on ITV, signing an exclusive deal with Discovery+.

This has been a much discussed topic ever since the announcement, with fears for the future of the sport in Great Britain, given the lack of free-to-view coverage both acting as a gateway for casual fans to get more seriously into cycling, but also for kids watching the Tour de France on TV, dreaming of becoming the next Tadej Pogacar, Jonas Vingegaard or Remco Evenepoel.

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"In the 23 years of my participation, first as a reporter, and over the last nine years as the commentator, I have watched the audience grow and then shrink back," says seasoned Tour de France reporter for ITV, Ned Boulting in a column for Bike Radar. "The peak of the viewership, it goes without saying, was in 2012. But since then, it has been slowly declining most years; retreating to a sizeable number (certainly bigger than when I began in 2003), but no longer big enough to merit its profitable inclusion in the schedules."

As such, there was something of a lack of impetus from within ITV Sport to rival the big money bids for Tour de France coverage. "ITV, obviously enough, needs to generate enough advertising revenue to fund the programme production, as well as paying for the broadcast rights, which have been pushed ever higher by increasing pressure from subscription services. It was only a matter of time before the tipping point would be reached," Boulting explains. "There is no blame attached to any of the parties in this negotiation. ASO has a right to sell to the highest bidder and ITV is not a charity – nor is it in receipt of the licence fee, which can sometimes justify a wider public responsibility to the viewer. The bottom line is not enough people watched. It’s as simple as that."

"The free-to-air market is considerably bigger than any audience subscription services can command. The difference between accessing the race on an open-source TV channel like ITV4 and adding another subscription to our already subscription-heavy lives is significant," the commentator continues. "The argument has been made that Eurosport’s subscriber base has been, at least to some extent, built by the platforms (the BBC included) that have promoted the sport to a far wider audience in the first place. There is no way of knowing this, and it remains only a suggestion; albeit a logical enough theory. It is hard to know how many disenfranchised ITV viewers will now take up subscriptions to follow the Tour going forward. I suspect there will be many, but I have no idea how many."

"Either way, I understand how unsatisfactory it must have been for Eurosport, that does such an outstanding job showing the vast amount of racing all-year long, to have to share the rights to the Tour de France. The Tour eclipses absolutely everything else. It towers over the calendar, and for the vast majority of the cycling public, it is literally the only race of the year they will watch," he concludes. "But, in the end, the bitter truth at the core of this sad turn of events is this: not enough of us cared. Not really."

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