Ned Boulting has worked on ITV's Tour de France coverage for 23 years, first as a reporter and more recently as commentator. And he says the fact the channel is dropping the race from its schedule, after next year, is part of a long-running decline in British cycling.
Boulting notes while many people have bought bikes and do lots of cycling, they take part in the sport rather than watch it or have deep interest in it. Ultimately, he says ITV is dropping the Tour from its schedule because the race's audience has shrunk to the extent that keeping it on air is not commercially viable.
The loss of ITV's coverage of the Tour means the race will not be available free-to-air on any British channel. And Boulting believes the loss of the event from British TV screens will on serve to accelerate the decline in the sport's popularity. He says that popularity peaked in 2012 and has been shrinking ever since, at least in terms of viewing figures.
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“I mean, let’s face it, of the television deals that have just been announced, the UK is pretty much the only major territory in Europe that doesn’t have a free-to-air offering,” Boulting told The Telegraph of ASO and the European Broadcasting Union revealing the deals for broadcasting the Tour in the years to come.
While most European countries have some form of free-to-air deal - meaning viewers do not have to pay for an extra channel or streaming service to watch the race - Britain will no longer be one of those nations once ITV broadcasts the race for the last time next year.
“I’ve often said one of the things I noticed when I first was introduced to road cycling 20-odd years ago, and that I found so extraordinary about it, was that almost every other sport that you can think of, that punches a certain weight, got its roots and was either invented or codified in Britain," Boulting explained.
"Even those extremely international ones, like Formula One, have got a really deep British heritage. Whereas road racing absolutely hasn’t. It stands alone almost in that regard. It’s kind of up there with sumo and kabaddi. It’s deeply alien to British culture.
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“And I think if this is the beginning of the big decline again, if it is going to recede back into the shadows where it came from, I think that’s the reason; that cycling never actually took root here. So the boom of 2012 was actually very superficial.”
Ultimately, the TV audience ITV's Tour coverage as fallen to an unsustainable level because "not enough people cared".
“I think there was a maybe fatuous, maybe infantile connection that we made within cycling, that we hoped would happen, that success at the Tour by Wiggins and Cavendish and Geraint, would translate into people buying bikes and people getting into the sport.
“Actually I’ve always been amazed by the number of people who bought bikes and got Strava accounts and rode sportives and yet could not give a damn about the sport itself. They just don’t follow it. That’s always struck me as very odd. Again, quite a British phenomenon.
“People who, in inverted commas, ‘love cycling’, who do a lot of it, spend a lot of money on it. But don’t watch a single race other than maybe the Tour de France.
“I’ve ridden at some of these events with people who have no idea about cycling. You try to start a conversation about Peter Sagan and they just stare at you blankly. You wouldn’t get that in football.
"If you went to Hackney Marshes and spoke to amateur footballers just kicking a ball around, they’d all have a view on Arsenal and Liverpool and Manchester United. They probably watch the football.”
