Tour de France vs. Wimbledon: Which Will Draw More Fan and Media Engagement?

Two of the world’s biggest annual sporting events will kick off in the coming days.

Tour de France ‍♀️

• One of the three major European professional cycling stage races
• Dates: July 1-12
• Location: France and Spain

Wimbledon Championships

• One of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments
• Dates: July 3-16
• Location: London, England

On one side, we have the Tour de France, the pinnacle of cycling. On the other, we have Wimbledon, the most significant tennis competition of the year. In this article, we will analyze and compare the two events’ digital performance and what it reveals about their overall popularity.

Website traffic: Ready, set, match!

Let’s start with the main takeaway. The official website of the Tour de France attracts significantly more traffic than Wimbledon’s website. This demonstrates that the Tour de France is pretty much in a league of its own.

Tennis breaks away from the pack

Tennis as a sport is significantly more popular than cycling. This is evident in the website traffic of the governing bodies for both sports championships: the Union Cycliste Internationale for cycling and the ATP (Men’s governing body) and WTA (Women’s governing body) for tennis.

Furthermore, when comparing the second and third biggest cycling events of the year, the Giro D’Italia and Vuelta a España, to the two other main tennis Grand Slams, the Australian Open and France’s Roland Garros, tennis holds on to its advantage.

Naturally, the difference in popularity between the sports events is also reflected in the popularity of the sports’ main athletes. Comparing the search volume for three leading candidates to win the competitions, Tadej Pogačar (Tour de France), Aryna Sabalenka (Women’s Wimbledon) and Novak Djokovic (Men’s Wimbledon), the tennis players get more attention.

Despite coming from neighboring countries, Slovenia and Serbia, Pogačar’s and Djokovic’s social media following is galaxies apart. Slovenia’s Pogačar is followed by 890K people on Instagram, whereas Serbia’s Djokovic boasts more than 13 million followers.

So, what makes the Tour de France so popular?

The Tour de France is a unique competition that transcends its sport, attracting a wide audience who may not necessarily follow cycling regularly. Here are some of the possible reasons:

1. Longevity: Tour de France started in 1903, making it one of the longest-running sport competitions globally. Its rich history has contributed significantly to the large audience it amassed throughout the years.
2. Level of athletic prowess: it is impossible not to appreciate the immense physical and mental effort required to complete the challenging course. Bicycling serves as a day-to-day means of transportation for billions worldwide, and witnessing riders tackle uphill stretches of 29 km with a 5.2% gradient is awe-inspiring.
3. Scenery: the route of the Tour de France takes riders through changing, beautiful landscapes such as the alps, picturesque villages, and all the way through central Paris. It’s a 2 in 1 deal of sports at its best combined with visuals that could have easily been taken from National Geographic.
4. Tactics and strategies: besides the immense physical effort, a lot of what makes the Tour great lies beyond face value. The teamwork, breakaways, and decisions when to sprint, are all orchestrated by the riders and teams and provide fans with a lot to analyze and think about.

Competition for audiences is intense

The 2023 editions of the Tour de France and Wimbledon overlap for 13 days, meaning they will compete for headlines and attention of the sports media. However, our insights show there is room for both, as the fans of the two competitions are quite distinct. The audience overlap between the two competitions comprises only 3.9% of the visitors to the Tour de France’s website and 3.7% of Wimbledon’s website.

This can be explained by the fact that tennis and cycling are very different sports, but also by the audience’s geography. Both competitions are a huge source of national pride for France and the UK, but also see surges in interest based on the leading athletes at a given time. You can see countries like Slovenia and Denmark sending an increasing amount of traffic, attributed to the success of Pogačar, and last year’s winner, Jonas Vingegaard, hailing from the Scandinavian nation.

It’s a global game

With all due respect to tradition and locale, in order to grow, sporting events need to have as big of a global appeal as possible. This is determined by several factors, one of which is the success of athletes from different countries. For example, Slovenia ranking 12th in traffic share for the Tour de France can be attributed to Pogačar’s realistic chance to win the competition. It is likely that if the country had a larger population than 2.1 million people, it would rank much higher.

The table below shows the traffic share of visitors to the Tour de France by country over the last 12 months and the month-over-month (MoM) change, compared to May. Overall, the MoM growth is expected as we approach the beginning of annual events that take place over a short period of time:

The Tour de France holds an advantage over Wimbledon in the attempt to expand to new audiences due to its ability to travel through different countries. Last year, it kicked off in Copenhagen, Denmark, amplifying the growing popularity in the country due to Vingegaard’s success. Or as the Tour de France Director said in the Netflix documentary: “It makes sense that the world’s biggest cycling event will take place in the world’s biggest cycling city.” You can see below the growth in traffic from Denmark to the Tour’s website in July 2022 when it came to the country, compared to July 2021:

Moving on to Wimbledon, we can see huge hype building up in Spain and Australia. The Western European nation boasts the men’s number 1 seed, Carlos Alcaraz, whereas the land of down under hopes to see last year’s finalist, Nick Kyrgios make one more step forward and lift the trophy, despite sustaining a back injury. The table below shows the traffic share of visitors to Wimbledon by country over the last 12 months and the MoM change, compared to May:

To sum up, the comparison between the Tour de France and Wimbledon offers a fascinating glimpse into the world of sports and (website) competition. Even though the Tour de France has more website visits, tennis is more widely enjoyed as a sport. In this day and age, it is essential to gain new viewers through a digital-first approach that is backed by data, and it will be intriguing to observe if and how the Tour de France’s traffic advantage will affect the development of the competition in the years to come.