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What Made the Tour Successful? Competitive Balance in the Tour de France, 1947-2017

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  • Jean-François Mignot

    (GEMASS - Groupe d'Etude des Méthodes de l'Analyse Sociologique de la Sorbonne - FMSH - Fondation Maison des sciences de l'homme - SU - Sorbonne Université - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Vladimir Bačik

    (Comenius University in Bratislava)

  • Michal Klobučník

    (Comenius University in Bratislava)

Abstract

The Tour de France is the most popular and prestigious bicycle race in the world. Since the 1980s, it has also had increasing economic success. Is such economic success related to improvements in competitive balance among riders, i.e. the degree of parity among opponents and the resulting difficulty to predict the competition's end result? We compute several measures of static (annual) and dynamic (year-to-year) competitive balance for the yellow jersey from 1947 to 2017, both among the top five riders and among team leaders. Our main result is that competitive balance in the Tour de France has not improved much since 1947: the time performances of top riders and team leaders have not become closer to each other – or harder to predict from one year to the next. Therefore, the increasing economic success of the Tour since the 1980s cannot be attributed to improvements in the race's competitive balance. Other factors must have been driving the increasing demand for the Tour, including better-quality television broadcasting of the event.

Suggested Citation

  • Jean-François Mignot & Vladimir Bačik & Michal Klobučník, 2019. "What Made the Tour Successful? Competitive Balance in the Tour de France, 1947-2017," Post-Print halshs-02144696, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-02144696
    DOI: 10.1080/17430437.2019.1621844
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-02144696
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Daniel Read & Aaron C.T. Smith & James Skinner, 2021. "A Comparative Analysis of Competitive Balance Between a Closed and an Open League in Rugby League," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 22(8), pages 871-892, December.

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    Keywords

    Cycling; competitive balance; sport performance; competitive intensity; Tour de France; quantitative history;
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