Vincenzo Nibali was crowned the 2014 winner of the Tour de France on Sunday in Paris as SBS finished its coverage of the world’s most famous cycling race for another year (don’t worry SBS has TDF rights until at least 2023).
While many have suggested that this year’s TDF lacked competitive tension (and therefore viewer interest) due to Chris Froome and Alberto Contador crashing out in the early stages of the race, SBS has reported that its multi platform coverage grew year on year.
SBS reports that:
- its television coverage reached a total of 5.38 million Australians (Metro + Regional), a 2% year on year increase; and
- there were 1.82 million video stream views served via sbs.com.au, SBS On Demand and the SBS Škoda Tour Tracker mobile app, a 49% increase from 2013.
The average TV audience for live stages was 278,000 (196,000 Metro + 81,000 Regional). SBS broadcast most stages from 10PM, however it did start live coverage of three stages from the earlier time of 8:30PM. It seems that audiences lapped up the earlier broadcast slot with Combined Metro + Regional average audiences of:
- 351,000 (stage 1);
- 293,000 (stage 2); and
- 333,000 (stage 14),
easily outperforming the average audience SBS achieved nightly across its three weeks of coverage. It will be interesting to see if SBS adds more 8:30PM broadcast starts to its 2015 Tour de France coverage.
It appears SBS’s biggest year on year increase was the number of video streams recorded across sbs.com.au and SBS On Demand. SBS’s online platform served 1.32 million video streams across the three weeks of racing, which was an 86% increase on the 2013 event. The incredibly useful Tour Tracker app had 170,000 unique users over the course of the race. An interesting statistic would be to see what the Tour Tracker’s average session time was.
SBS Managing Director Michael Ebeid said:
“This year’s Tour de France broadcast demonstrates SBS’s commitment to delivering high quality multiplatform coverage, maximising audiences’ engagement opportunities with the world’s biggest cycling event – exclusive to SBS, free-to-air for all Australians to enjoy. I’m delighted that SBS will be the home of the Tour until 2023.”
Building on SBS’s coverage of the Tour de France and its coverage of the year’s first grand tour the Giro d’Italia, SBS ONE will have daily evening highlights of cycling’s third grand tour of 2014 La Vuelta a’Espana from Sunday 24 August (at 5:30pm AEST), with the last eight stages airing LIVE on SBS ONE and on the Cycling Central website from Saturday 6 September to Sunday 14 September 14.
Reference:
SBS’s multiplatform coverage of the 2014 Tour de France a success