Selling the Yellow Jersey
Page 29
points that would raise their world rankings. Thus, the race would “not be
taken seriously in Europe.” Jean- Marie Leblanc, the Tour de France’s direc-
tor and advisor to the Tours de Trump and DuPont in the early 1990s, and
top stars like Greg LeMond urged the event’s organizers to exclude amateurs
from the competition.75 Furthermore, despite signifi cant television cover-
age of the race — the worldwide audience was estimated at 200 million76—
American fan enthusiasm and roadside spectator interest in the event failed
to spike signifi cantly.
Only in 1996, the race’s fi nal year of existence, did the UCI upgrade the
Tour DuPont to full professional status. The race attracted the world’s top
professionals that year, but legal woes beset the organizers, which muddied
the event’s image in the eyes of sponsor DuPont. The Tour’s owners, sports
commentator Billy Packer and Michael Plant, head of the US Cycling Federa-
tion, sued each other over rights to the profi ts from the Tour DuPont as well
as over a proposed Tour of China.77 DuPont also engaged the community of
Greenville, South Carolina, in a public dispute over the local government’s
antihomosexual personnel policies, and DuPont insisted that Tour organiz-
ers rescind their promise to bring the competition to the city.78 The chemical
conglomerate withdrew its sponsorship of the Tour DuPont. Organizers, un-
able to secure adequate corporate sponsorship, canceled the 1997 race.
The story of American road racing in the 1980s and 1990s demonstrates
the process of professional cycling’s globalization in action. During this time, the sport expanded beyond the traditional Western European “core” of nations, and professional road racing established viable roots in North America,
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c h a p t e r s i x
South America, and Australia. By the new millennium, riders from outside
the sport’s “core” competed on a nearly equal footing with the European pro-
fessionals. All the while, the Tour de France remained the most prestigious,
lucrative, and athletically competitive bicycle race in the world. The Ameri-
can story epitomizes how the globalizing sport of bicycling modeled itself af-
ter the classic French Tour and aspired to mimic its form, business plans, and
culture, albeit not always successfully. It also demonstrates how the Tour’s
organizers catalyzed and exploited the sport’s globalization and how France’s
“national bicycle race” remained at the heart of transnational exchanges of
technical expertise and administrative personnel, sponsorship, and athletes.
4. The Tour on Global Television’s Stage
The growth of professional cycling outside Europe and the Tour’s emergence
as a major international television spectacle in the 1980s presented the race’s organizers with enticing business opportunities. Félix Lévitan spearheaded
several initiatives meant to “globalize” the event’s sponsorship, fan base, and racer composition.79 Between 1980 and 1987, the STF expanded the number
of teams and riders invited to compete in the race. The Tour invited thirteen
teams totaling 130 riders to compete in the 1980 race, seventeen teams total-
ing 169 cyclists in 1982, eighteen teams totaling 180 cyclists in 1985, twenty- one teams totaling 210 cyclists in 1986, and twenty- three teams totaling 207 cyclists in 1987.80 As the number of teams ballooned, the peloton’s cross section of sponsors and riders changed. The preponderance of French- sponsored
teams and riders declined markedly during this period, while the percentage
of foreign sponsors and riders in the competition increased. In 1973, French
fi rms funded six of the twelve teams in the race, and nearly 40 percent of
the 132 riders were French. By 1980, the share of French riders and teams
had declined slightly: four of the thirteen teams and almost 35 percent of
the riders that participated in the Tour were French. By the late 1980s, a still smaller proportion of competitors were French, and in 1990, only three of the
twenty- two teams (14 percent) and thirty- four of the 198 riders (17 percent)
were French. The Tour organizers maintained roughly the same proportions
throughout the 1990s.81 In 1996, for example, four of the twenty- two teams
(18 percent) and thirty- eight of the 198 riders (19 percent) were French.82
International team sponsorship increased signifi cantly, and more for-
eign riders competed in the race. During the 1980s, the STF invited teams
from Colombia, Portugal, Britain, Japan, and the United States, peripheral
nations where professional cycling was just taking root.83 In 1990, the Soviet
Union sent a team to compete in the race. Racers from cycling’s peripheral
t h e t o u r ’ s g l o b a l i z i n g a g e n d a
161
nations competed on an equal footing with professionals from France, Italy,
and Belgium, cycling’s traditional powers. American Greg LeMond won the
Tour three times (1986, 1989, and 1990) and Irishman Stephen Roche won in
1987. The Tour’s growing global popularity and television coverage attracted
new, international corporate partners, which diversifi ed the Tour’s sponsor-
ship base. Although French companies continued to account for the larg-
est percentage of Tour sponsors after 1980, their share declined signifi cantly.
In 1980, French companies sponsored nearly 70 percent of the Tour’s largest
prizes ( dotations). Overall, twenty- fi ve of the thirty- nine fi rms that funded prizes or that purchased the right to be “exclusive providers” to the 1980 Tour were French.84 By 1995, French fi rms accounted for slightly more than half of
the Tour’s offi cial sponsors ( partenaires and fournisseurs). But two of the four major underwriters of the race (the Club du Tour members) were foreign companies.85
To complement the Tour’s “virtual” expansion over the television air-
waves, Félix Lévitan created itineraries that sent the race to new, emerging
markets. Between 1980 and 1988, the last year in which Lévitan helped to de-
termine the Tour’s itinerary, the race’s prologue took place outside French
borders four times. In 1987, Lévitan formulated his most audacious itinerary.
He added three stages to the schedule — for a total of twenty- fi ve, the most in the event’s history — to allow Berlin to host the Tour’s prologue. In addition, the Tour’s organizers sought to change the gender cross section of their fan
base by enticing more female sports enthusiasts to follow the Tour. To this
end, Lévitan and Goddet created the Women’s Tour de France ( Tour de France
féminin), an all- female bicycle race fashioned along the lines of the Tour de France. The STF staged the fi rst Tour féminin in 1984. A French racer, Jeannie Longo, won the event in three of its fi rst fi ve years.86
Lévitan’s attempts to penetrate the world’s richest sponsorship and con-
sumer market led to his downfall as Tour director in 1987. In the early 1980s,
Lévitan proposed that the East Coast cities of the United States host several
stages of the Tour de France and that the Concorde supersonic jet transport
the riders back to the Continent to continue the race.87 Lévitan helped orga-
nize the short- lived — and money- losing — Tour of America bicycle race that was meant to pique American popular and corporate interest in the Tour de
France. The Amaury Group’s direct
or, Philippe Amaury, son of the group’s
deceased founder, Émilien, claimed that Lévitan had engaged the STF in a
risky business venture without consulting him and lost more than 800,000
francs in the process.88 Following a public scandal in which Amaury accused
Lévitan of gross fi nancial mismanagement during the Tour of America cam-
paign, the Amaury Group dismissed Lévitan. Later that year, 82- year- old
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c h a p t e r s i x
Jacques Goddet returned from a brief retirement to oversee the staging of the
1987 Tour and then retired for good.
The departure of Lévitan and Goddet opened the door for a wholesale
turnover of Tour leadership. Between 1987 and 1993, the Amaury Group as-
sembled a new generation of leaders, many of whom were executives in mar-
keting and advertising industries and held advanced business degrees. The
new leadership instituted new corporate structures that separated the Tour’s
fi nancial fortunes from those of L’Équipe and Le Parisien libéré and tied the interests and profi ts of the Tour, the STF, and the rest of the Amaury Group
more closely together. The post- 1987 Tour developed a leadership structure
in which several executives shared decision- making power.
Philippe Amaury chose Jean- François Naquet- Radiguet as the Tour’s new
director- general in 1987. Naquet- Radiguet was a graduate of the École des
Hautes Études Commerciales (HEC), France’s most prestigious business
school, and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School. Prior to his ap-
pointment, Naquet- Radiguet worked as an international marketing expert
for the French cognac industry. Le Monde compared Naquet- Radiguet’s
leadership style to that of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and character-
ized him as a “young wolf ” reformer who was determined to overturn and
reformulate the Tour’s long- standing commercial strategies and marketing
philosophies.89 Philippe Amaury appointed others with extensive experience
in marketing and advertising to important posts at the Tour and at the STF.
In 1989, after the departure of Naquet- Radiguet, Amaury selected Jean- Pierre
Carenso as the Tour’s director- general.90 Carenso had a business degree from
the HEC and made a name for himself in the advertising industry during
the 1980s by formulating catchy advertising slogans, such as Du pain, du vin, et du Boursin (“Some bread, some wine, and some Boursin cheese”) for the manufacturer of Boursin cheese. Amaury also recruited Jean- Pierre Courcol
as the director of the STF. In 1986, Courcol succeeded Jacques Goddet as
L’Équipe’s general manager, although he had little experience in journalism.
After serving in the French navy, Courcol received a business degree from the
HEC and was the director of Parisian advertising fi rm Avenir Publicité before
he joined L’Équipe.91
Former professional cyclists also joined the Tour organization in impor-
tant management roles. Naquet- Radiguet appointed recently retired, fi ve-
time Tour champion Bernard Hinault as a special advisor to the STF’s man-
agement team. During planning sessions, Hinault offered insights on the
Tour’s rules and itinerary that were based on his vast, insider’s knowledge of
the race’s technical and strategic intricacies. The charismatic, popular Hinault acted as the Tour’s public face and added star appeal to press conferences
t h e t o u r ’ s g l o b a l i z i n g a g e n d a
163
involving the event’s sponsors.92 In 1988, Jean- Pierre Courcol tapped Jean-
Marie Leblanc as the Tour’s director of competition. Leblanc competed in
two Tours de France (1968 and 1970) before embarking on a career as a sports
journalist, including a stint as L’Équipe’s cycling section editor. In 1993, the Amaury Group appointed Leblanc as director- general of the Tour.93
Several key members of the new management team knew little about the
Tour as a sporting event. During the fi rst week of the 1987 Tour, Naquet-
Radiguet admitted, “I have to say that I am just discovering the sport,” and
thanked Bernard Hinault for explaining to him the basic principles of the
race.94 Jean- Pierre Carenso also had to familiarize himself quickly with the
workings of the Tour when he joined the front offi ce at the end of 1988.95
The Amaury Group added executives with vast experience in the inter-
national sports business. Philippe Amaury recruited several members of the
1992 Albertville Winter Olympics organizing committee, including Jean-
Claude Killy, downhill skiing hero of the 1968 Grenoble Olympics. After his
retirement from skiing, Killy worked as a high- profi le marketing executive
for General Motors, United Airlines, Rolex, Evian, and Coca- Cola France.96
Killy cochaired France’s Olympic Committee for the 1992 Winter Games in
Albertville, which amassed nearly $300 million in television rights fees.97
The new management team members built a corporate structure that led
to a greater specialization of management tasks and allowed the group as a
whole to profi t more effi ciently from the television marketplace. In 1993, they created the Amaury Sports Organization (A.S.O.), an umbrella corporation
for the Amaury Group’s professional sports concerns, and named Killy as
its president. The A.S.O. and its subsidiaries included marketing and pub-
licity agencies and media production companies. These entities took over
many marketing, business, legal, and media production tasks from the STF.
Tour management could focus more squarely on organizing the myriad of
competitions that the Amaury Group owned. By the mid- 1990s, the group’s
other cycling races included the Paris –
Roubaix, Liège –
Bastogne –
Liège,
Paris – Tours, the Grand Prix des Nations, the Criterium International, and
the Flèche Wallonne.98
The Tour’s new executives used their business acumen and marketing
expertise to transform the event’s commercial philosophy and promotional
style. Naquet- Radiguet employed the jargon of the marketing industry when
discussing his plans to reform the Tour: he referred to the Tour as a “prod-
uct,” and he promised to “sell” the event abroad in the same manner that he
had sold the image of France around the world while working for the cognac
industry.99 The new director spearheaded initiatives meant to remake the
Tour into a worldwide television spectacle: “We have to present the Tour on a
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c h a p t e r s i x
global scale. . . . We must think of our 12 – 13 – 14 million [roadside spectators]
but also keep in mind our billion telespectators.”100 The STF expanded the
Tour’s network of television outlets quickly after 1987. Between 1987 and 1994, the number of countries that received some form of televised race coverage
more than doubled, from seventy- two in 1986 to more than 150 in 1994.101
The STF refi ned the television presentation of the race in ways that rejuve-
nated the Tour’s prestigious image. Naquet- Radiguet used the Tour’s growing
revenues to pay for a much- needed upgrade of the event’s physical infrastruc-
ture, including new, mobile stages for the televised daily award ceremonies
and cyclist interviews
. Naquet- Radiguet and others in the Tour’s leadership
and several key sponsors agreed that oversaturation of sponsors reduced the
overall effectiveness of each fi rm’s marketing efforts.102 The overabundance
of advertising banners and posters on the itinerary degraded the race’s pres-
tigious image. In a news conference during the fi rst week of the 1987 Tour,
Naquet- Radiguet declared, “The Tour de France must not be a circus.”103
In the early 1980s, nearly forty companies per year sponsored the Tour in
some fashion, approximately one for each of the Tour’s prizes or “offi cial
services.”104 Between 1986 and 1989, the STF ended partnerships with some of
the Tour’s longest- standing sponsors, including Perrier (spring water, spon-
sor since 1933) and Peugeot (the offi cial vehicle supplier since 1953). By 1995, the STF had reduced the number of sponsors to sixteen, and the number of
offi cial prizes to fi ve.105
The STF redesigned the Tour’s sponsorship structure to allow the event’s
biggest corporate partners to extract the maximum advertising benefi t from
the race. In 1994, the STF created three graduated categories of sponsorship.
Each category carried with it special privileges and marketing rights. The
“Tour Club,” whose members were permitted by the STF to use the Tour
de France brand name in their advertising, included the event’s four largest
sponsors, Crédit Lyonnais, Fiat, Coca- Cola, and Champion supermarkets.
Tour Club members committed themselves to long- term sponsorship con-
tracts, benefi ted from unique marketing privileges, and exerted considerable
infl uence in shaping the event’s commercial strategies. A slightly larger num-
ber of fi rms paid less money to join the Tour caravan as “Offi cial Partners,”
which could employ the Tour de France brand name in their marketing cam-
paigns. The “Offi cial Providers” paid less than the Offi cial Partners and could not employ the Tour branding in their advertising.106
Race organizers altered the physical appearance of the Tour and its car-
avan to shower television exposure on the top sponsors. After 1987, when
Crédit Lyonnais became the exclusive sponsor of the yellow jersey, the STF
changed the color of the jersey to a rich gold hue that matched the bank’s