Selling the Yellow Jersey

by Eric Reed

  he preferred to stay home and watch television. A café owner also complained

  that fewer men played cards in his tavern after work because they chose in-

  stead to watch television at home. Wylie noted that watching television —

  especially televised sports — seemed to be replacing after- dinner conversation over coffee in the village’s households.48 Wylie’s insights, although based on

  anecdotal evidence, nevertheless highlight the subtle but powerful infl uence

  of television in shaping French community life and leisure practices after

  the war.49

  3. How “Commercial” Should the Tour Be? French Ambivalence

  to Commercialization amid Les Trente Glorieuses

  At fi rst, France’s quarter- century postwar economic boom did not benefi t

  the Tour de France or French professional sports in general. More and more

  French people cycled and played sports. Active membership in France’s

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  c h a p t e r t h r e e

  national cycling federation rose from 35,000 to 39,000 between 1926 and

  1960, while the number of bicycles in France expanded from nine million

  to 11.5 million machines between 1939 and 1974.50 But the new shape of the

  consumer market and the rise of car culture hurt the French bicycle industry,

  one of the Tour’s most important business partners. In the 1950s, the automo-

  bile replaced the bicycle in the French eye as the primary symbol of personal

  freedom and mobility. Household consumption grew 40 percent between

  1950 and 1957, but the French, once they equipped their homes with appli-

  ances, preferred to spend their rising incomes on automobiles rather than on

  bicycles.51 Demand for bicycles slackened and production plummeted from

  1.3 million units in 1949 to 790,000 units in 1956.52 Many fi rms found it more and more diffi cult to fi nance professional teams and began to retreat from

  sponsorship.53 The teams were expensive. Jean Bobet, a professional cyclist

  and brother of three- time Tour champion Louison Bobet, estimated that the

  cost of assembling and paying the expenses for a top- echelon cycling team for

  a year had risen to at least twenty million francs by the mid- 1950s.54

  The Tour de France also faced fi nancial diffi culties throughout the 1940s

  and 1950s. As the Tour’s organizers feared, expanding radio and television

  coverage of the race eroded the readership of L’Équipe and Le Parisien libéré.

  The Tour ceased to be the powerful sales booster that it had been before the

  Second World War. Between 1948 and 1977, the average number of copies

  per day sold by L’Équipe declined from 421,000 to 262,000.55 The same phenomenon affected the Tour’s other organizing newspaper, Le Parisien libéré.

  In 1961, Le Parisien libéré even experienced, for the fi rst time, a marked drop in circulation during the race.56 These statistics suggest that fewer people followed the race in the daily newspapers and that the French relied more and

  more on the broadcast media for coverage of the Tour.57 In the two decades

  after 1947, the annual event consistently lost money. Although no complete

  budget statistics exist, the organizers indicated that the race ran defi cits in 1947, 1948, and 1949. The race’s budget defi cit in 1953 amounted to twelve million francs.58 Presumably, the race operated in the red in other years, as well.

  Even though more and more fans took in the Tour on television, French

  television did not pay for the Tour’s broadcasting rights until 1960. That year, RTF’s 40,000- franc contribution accounted for just 1.5 percent of the Tour’s

  budget.59 Television’s share of the Tour budget increased slowly after 1960.

  Television fees did not constitute a signifi cant portion of the event’s budget until the 1980s.

  Despite these struggles, the event’s organizers were reluctant to take ad-

  vantage of the new promotional possibilities of the television age. Com-

  mercialization —how to limit, manage, and channel it — was the thorniest

  t h e t o u r a n d t e l e v i s i o n

  63

  problem for the Tour organizers in the two decades after 1945. In particular,

  Jacques Goddet resisted the pressure of professional cycling’s biggest corpo-

  rate backers to resurrect the pre- 1930 corporate team race formula. He and

  other Tour offi cials feared that altering the event’s fi nancial arrangements and publicity structure would lead to uncontrollable commercialization of the

  event. Although the Tour did not fi gure directly in the debates on “Ameri-

  canization,” the race organizers’ attempts to embrace modernity while pre-

  serving the event’s traditional character shed light on the role of businesses in the process and on how this struggle played itself out in other areas of mass

  culture after the war.

  At fi rst glance, it would seem diffi cult to imagine how the Tour could

  become a more commercialized spectacle. As in the prewar era, the Tour

  freely allowed promotion- seeking fi rms to enter the publicity caravan and

  aggressively courted businesses to sponsor the event’s prizes. Between 1948

  and 1952, private enterprise sponsorship grew from a third to more than

  60 percent of the Tour’s budget.60 Because of the highly visible presence of the race’s sponsors, many observers criticized the publicity- oriented character of the Tour spectacle, as they had before the war. Nevertheless, Jacques Goddet

  proclaimed, “As the organizer of the Tour de France, I affi rm that all forms

  and all modes of publicity can express themselves during the race.”61

  In France and elsewhere, the sport of cycling eagerly sought out new,

  wealthy corporate sponsors. More and more enterprises outside the cycling

  community’s traditional business circle ( extra- sportifs) hungered to generate publicity for themselves and recognized the promotional power inher-

  ent in sponsoring athletes, teams, and sporting competitions. As television

  coverage of cycling grew, emblazoning corporate names and brand images

  on team jerseys in the hope of generating unauthorized “clandestine” advertising on the commercial- free airwaves became particularly attractive to the

  extra- sportifs. Bicycle fi rms that continued to sponsor cycling teams sought out these extra- sportif businesses to lighten their own fi nancial burdens. In 1954, the organizers of the Tour of Italy (Giro d’Italia), allowed, for the fi rst time, the participation of extra- sportif- sponsored teams in the race, including entries supported by Nivea face cream and a brand of Chianti. The Giro’s

  change of policy brought the contentious issue of extra- sportif involvement in the sport to a head throughout the international cycling community.62 In

  1955, the Fédération Française de Cyclisme (F.F.C.), French cycling’s govern-

  ing association, changed its statutes and allowed extra- sportif advertising to appear on riders’ jerseys and racing shorts. The same year, an agreement between the French branch of British Petroleum (Pétrols B.P.) and Peugeot bi-

  cycles created the “Peugeot- BP” team and opened the door to the wholesale

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  c h a p t e r t h r e e

  penetration of French professional cycling by the extra- sportifs.63 Throughout the mid- and late 1950s, more and more extra- sportifs entered into partnerships with established cycling businesses to profi t from the visibility, both

  on the roads and on the airwaves, that the patronage of famous athletes and

  major sporting events afforded them.

  The arrival of the extra- sportifs in the 1950s brought to
the fore the issue of whether (and how) to restructure France’s national bicycle race. Undoubtedly, the Tour would have welcomed the new revenues that extra- sportif corporate team sponsorship would have generated. Corporate team sponsorship

  would have defrayed the costs of lodging, feeding, and caring for the com-

  petitors, which accounted for approximately a quarter of the Tour’s budget

  by 1948.64 Nevertheless, for nearly fi fteen years Goddet steadfastly refused to revert to the corporate team format and maintained a strict division between

  the Tour’s competitive and publicity structures. Director Goddet and his

  lieutenants voiced many of the arguments put forward by Henri Desgrange

  against the pre- 1930 formula. They pointed out that commercial sponsor-

  ship of the teams could lead potentially to collusion among riders, attempts

  by sponsors to manufacture victories for certain teams and racers, a general

  degradation of the competitiveness and combativeness of the race, and, ulti-

  mately, a dampening of public interest in the event.65

  Even more, Goddet redefi ned the cultural imperative of the Tour after the

  Second World War and employed the race’s new mission as a weapon against

  the advocates of the corporate team format. The original cultural mission

  of the race as outlined by Henri Desgrange — the defense of the bourgeois-

  defi ned social hierarchy and the moral instruction of the working class — no

  longer had the same relevance in postwar French society, since after the war

  new social mores had redefi ned or erased old class distinctions.66 Instead,

  Goddet characterized his opposition to the extra- sportifs as a struggle to save a national cultural institution from an invasion by crass commercial interests.

  The Tour, Goddet argued, was a powerful symbol of French heritage

  and a bulwark against the encroachment of vulgar promotionalism into tra-

  ditional sporting culture. In Goddet’s vision, the Tour embodied a certain

  historic “moral” and “mystique,” and the event’s rebirth in its “traditional”

  form — the national team format, which was less than two decades old and

  had been used only ten times — in 1947 represented a return to normalcy

  for the French nation after the Second World War.67 Goddet believed that

  the national team formula endowed the race with a sporting character, style,

  and internationalist feel similar to the Pierre de Coubertin- inspired Olym-

  pic Games.68 Furthermore, Goddet contended, the prestige, glory, and luster

  of the Tour rested on the “solid framework” of the national team formula,

  t h e t o u r a n d t e l e v i s i o n

  65

  which he considered the event’s “essential principle.”69 In the 1950s, Goddet

  argued that the battle over the extra- sportifs in professional cycling was a crucial facet of the wider struggle to safeguard the character of French sport and its heroes. “To see French champions transformed into sandwich- board men

  ( hommes sandwiches) by extra- sportif interests, as has happened in Italy . . .

  we cannot let that happen.”70 Goddet recognized that his position as director

  of the Tour, the most prestigious race in the world, made him a pivotal infl u-

  ence in shaping the French bicycle industry and professional cycling: “[We

  Tour organizers] are conscious of the fact that we are defending more than

  just the Tour, that we are defending the entire sport of cycling.”71

  Goddet deployed a variety of defenses to resist the movement in favor

  of the corporate team formula. He also used his considerable infl uence in

  the cycling world to prevent, or at least slow, the penetration of the extra-sportifs into French professional cycling. L’Équipe’s near- monopoly ownership of France’s most prestigious bicycle competitions fi gured as Goddet’s

  most powerful weapon. By the mid- 1950s, L’Équipe controlled the Tour de France, the Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré, the Critérium National, the classic Paris – Roubaix and Paris – Tours one- day races, and the Grand Prix des

  Nations time trial championship.72 Goddet simply refused to allow extra-

  sportif participation in these races for most of the 1950s.

  The Tour organizers also transformed the question of the extra- sportifs

  into a turf battle for administrative control over the sport of cycling in France and abroad. Goddet and his lieutenants dominated this arena. In 1956, Goddet founded the Association Internationale des Organisateurs de Courses

  Cyclistes (International Association of Bicycle Race Organizers, A.I.O.C.C.).

  The bylaws of the A.I.O.C.C. indicated that the goal of the association was

  “the encouragement, development, and safeguarding of the sport of cycling”

  through increased cooperation among the organizers of major international

  bicycle races.73 The unwritten purpose of the organization, according to

  member Jacques Marchand, was to wrest, or at least loosen, the administra-

  tive control of cycling from the existing national and international governing

  bodies like the F.F.C. and the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), which

  had adopted the stance that the extra- sportif teams should be allowed to participate in sanctioned competitions.74 Goddet presided over the A.I.O.C.C.,

  and L’Équipe’s staff contributed seven of the twenty- two members of the organization.75 The members of the A.I.O.C.C. worked to resolve some of the

  long- standing confl icts among international race organizers, such as agreeing on the annual competition schedule to avoid race overlaps. Such initiatives

  brought the race organizers into direct confl ict with the F.F.C. and the UCI.

  In addition to these purposes, Goddet also used the power of the associa-

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  c h a p t e r t h r e e

  tion to stem the “fl ood” of the extra- sportif entry into international cycling, which brought him into direct confl ict with the other race organizers, especially the Italians.76 The Goddet- run A.I.O.C.C. adopted rules that inhibited

  extra- sportif entry into many of the international races until the late 1950s.

  Although Italian and Belgian race organizers, as well as many professional

  riders whose livelihoods depended on extra- sportif- paid contracts, refused to abide by many of the association’s guidelines on the issue, the A.I.O.C.C.

  nevertheless helped Goddet protect the Tour and other L’Équipe- managed events from the extra- sportifs.

  The Tour de France’s struggle against the extra- sportifs ended in the early 1960s. Powerful interests inside the Tour’s management and in the camp of

  the extra- sportif groups forced Goddet to accept a return to the corporate team format. His second- in- command, Félix Lévitan, publicly backed Goddet during the battles over the extra- sportifs throughout the 1950s but privately favored reinstituting the pre- 1930 formula.77 Lévitan, editor in chief of Le Parisien libéré’s sports section, was the de facto voice of L’Équipe’s major fi nancial partner in the Tour and his opinion possessed considerable weight. More

  importantly, the extra- sportif team sponsors held a crucial trump card — their contracts with star cyclists — that forced Goddet to reevaluate his opposition to the corporate team formula. The head- to- head battles waged on French

  country roads among cycling’s biggest stars fueled the drama of the Tour and

  maintained its popular appeal. Beginning in the late 1950s, several of the most powerful extra- sportif teams pressured their featured riders to forgo participation in the Tour de France. The dominant cyclists of the late 1950s and

  early 1960s, Belgian Rik Van Looy and Frenc
hman Jacques Anquetil, avoided

  competing in the Tour to honor contracts with their extra- sportif sponsors.

  The decision of Anquetil, the world’s leading rider between 1957 and 1965, to

  participate in the 1960 Tour of Italy but not in the Tour de France delivered

  a particularly strong blow to Goddet’s position. France’s 1960 national team

  found itself with no top- rank star riders since veteran racers Louison Bobet,

  Jean Robic, and Raphaël Geminiani had retired from the Tour. The follow-

  ing year, Antonin Magne, the former Tour champion and manager of the

  Mercier- BP team, convinced his rising star, Raymond Poulidor, to skip the

  Tour because racing in the national team format would undermine his young

  champion’s “commercial value.”78

  Goddet and his supporters resorted to empty threats in an attempt to

  salvage the national team Tour. After the 1959 event, Goddet threatened to

  quit his post as race organizer and abandon the Tour to the F.F.C. The fol-

  lowing year, several journalists insinuated that the French government might

  withdraw its support of the event and refuse permission to use the national

  t h e t o u r a n d t e l e v i s i o n

  67

  highway system if the Tour’s organizers adopted the corporate team format.79

  Nevertheless, the lack of competitiveness during the 1961 Tour — termed a

  “fi asco” by Goddet80— forced the organizers to reverse their stance on the

  extra- sportifs. After the race, Goddet and Lévitan agreed to reinstitute the corporate team formula the following year.

  In retrospect, Goddet characterized the return to the pre- 1930 formula as

  “necessary” and “inevitable” since by the late 1950s bicycle businesses alone

  could no longer effectively “nourish” the sport of cycling.81 Nevertheless,

  Goddet effectively defended the Tour’s national team formula for nearly two

  decades during a period in which extra- sportif sponsorship became the major source of fi nancing for professional cycling in most of Western Europe. After

  1962, the Tour evolved into an even more formidable mechanism for generat-

  ing large- scale commercial publicity, and scores of new enterprises entered