SPORT
Matt Dickinson
Le Fric Family, Power and
Money: The Business of the
Tour de France by Alex Duff
Constable £22 pp352
In 1902 a junior reporter at
the sports newspaper L’Auto
suggested to his boss that
flagging sales might be
improved by organising a
bicycle race around the
country. They could grip the
nation with tales of derring-do
and suffering from “the most
courageous champions since
antiquity”. The plan was
extraordinarily successful.
The Tour de France has
become one of the most
established races on the planet
— the centrepiece of an entire
sport — and you might imagine
that, with such popularity,
its ownership would have
spread from a newspaper
the Second World War,
resolutely hold on.
Does it matter? In a
saturated market of cycling
books, this different take by
an experienced business
journalist inevitably lacks the
thrill of Mark Cavendish
describing a 75km/h sprint
or the grim fascination of a
doping confessional. But it
is well told, with dashes of
wartime resistance, cycling
action and characters such as
Lance Armstrong to keep the
plot moving, and raises some
important questions.
We see the obvious conflict
of interest in the story of the
matriarchal Marie-Odile
Amaury complaining about
too many doping stories
appearing in L’Equipe,
undermining the sparkle of
the Tour. It is not the first time
that her newspaper has been
accused of pulling punches
to protect the family’s most
profitable asset.
Le Fric also raises questions
far beyond cycling about who
owns professional sport — and
for what purpose. You couldsay that is a preoccupation
of sports writers these days
almost as much as who has
won the race or scored the
winning goal. Is sport a
vehicle for sportswashing
Middle Eastern states? For
American speculators buying
English football clubs in
search of profit? As the
journalist Gideon Haigh once
asked of cricket, does it exist
to make money or make
money to exist?
Sport’s governing bodies
have become marketing
agencies forever devising
glitzier competitions. The
blazers have been replaced
by salesmen in sharp suits;
sometimes for the better but
frequently for worse if profit
becomes the goal, the cause.
It feels like a very
21st-century debate, but Le
Fric shows that, even at the
outset, the Tour was founded
as a marketing idea to flog
newspapers. The best way
to do that was, inevitably, to
exaggerate some of the stories
of these intrepid cyclists
pedalling around dirt roads in
France with spare tyres slung
around their shoulders.
There was glory — and
prize money — for the
winner but it was the
organisers who profited
most handsomely from
the heroism, drama
and even the
scandal. “Plus ça
change”, as they
no doubt say
at Amaury
headquarters
in Paris. cAs Duff writes, the race is
“a feudal business model” in
an age when we are used to
the power in sport shifting
to superstar athletes and
super-clubs. Not at the Tour,
which is estimated to
generate about €100 million
annual revenue, only a
fraction of which goes in
prize money; €50,000 to the
most successful team and
€500,000 to the victorious
rider. That is much less than
for winning, say, Wimbledon
or a big golf championship.
The main outgoing is the
€20 million dividends for the
Amaury family.
This has profound
implications for a sport and
for cycling teams that have
considered various rebellions
and breakaways to wrest
some control and financial
stake. None has amounted
to anything. They need the
race more than the Amaury
family need them.
The Tour’s profile
represents about 80 per cent
of exposure to teams that, as
businesses, function purely
as vehicles for sponsors who
may pull out at any moment,
leaving nothing more than
worthless contracts and a
truck full of second-hand
bikes. It is an ecosystem that
is very fragile, except for
one family, who own the
crown jewels.
Silicon Valley wealth,
private equity and billionaire
egos intermittently circle
around the Tour wondering
how to muscle in and yet the
Amaury family, owners sinceALAMYoffice into the control of the
big cycling organisations, the
big teams, perhaps even the
French state.
To millions of spectators
who watch from an armchair,
or head roadside to see this
three-week festival of torture,
it can feel as if we all own a
part of this famous institution.
Instead, as recounted in
Alex Duff ’s book Le Fric —
The Cash — it is an
octogenarian widow and her
two children who sign off the
Tour’s annual accounts,
collect their multimillion-euro
spoils and maintain tight
control in the face of bids and
hostile takeovers.
The Amaury family own
the Tour — as well as L’Equipe,
the successor to L’A u t o
— which is, first and foremost,
a remarkable peculiarity.
Imagine the FA Cup rights
and profits belonging to an
English family who decide
where and how the final
should be staged each year.Who owns
the Tour?
Meet the widow who pockets the millions
generated by the race that defines France
BOOKS
Eyes on
the prize
The Tour
de France
reaches
Paris in
2012.
Below,
Marie-
Odile
AmauryIn a fragile
system one
family
has the
crown
jewels
CHRISTIAN LIEWIG/ALAMY24 5 June 2022