1.The most popular

Tour de France

Every summer, the same story: "The Tour de France is the third event behind the Olympics and the World Cup." The media and its organizer Amaury Sport Organization are not embarrassed with doubts. Born in 1903, the annual cycling event had time to settle in the landscape Worth of every team in psl.

Which plays in his favor

Christopher Froome, winner of the Tour de France 2015. REUTERS / Benoît Teissier.

In all competitions, the Tour de France is number one in the category of the number of spectators. Between 10 and 12 million rush each year on the roadside: difficult to do better. This is more than the Olympic Games (8.2 million in 2012) or the World Cup football (3.4 million in 2014). The free show contributes to the bubble, but this is not the subject. The Great Loop also boasts of gathering 3.5 billion viewers across 190 countries and being more open than other sporting events. Athletes representing 48 nationalities have participated since its inception , from Belgians to Italians for regulars, through the Chinese and Eritreans for the rarest.

What's missing

Rigor in the census of the spectators. 3.5 billion is a figure to qualify: the audiences of the Tour de France are measured in a cumulative way, which means that the same spectator can be counted several times if he looks at the event at different times. The competition lasts three weeks, some cycling addicts count for twenty! With the same method of calculation, the cumulative audiences of the Olympic Games turn around 35 billion viewers , ten times more than the Tour. Gallic pride would suffer, half of the inhabitants of the Earth does not vibrate each year before the rise of the Col du Tourmalet or Mont Ventoux.

Our opinion

It is not said enough that cycling has a gift for bringing people together. The Tour of Flanders regularly gathers nearly a million Belgians around the roads, about 10% of the country's population and ten to fifteen times more than any Champions League final.