The Tour de France, a new playground for “sponsor states”

If the Emirati owners of Manchester City failed in the Champions League final against Chelsea, they dream of an unprecedented double on the Champs-Élysées this summer. Already last year, Tadej Pogacar, a 22-year-old Slovenian racing for UAE Team Emirates, became the youngest winner of a Grande Boucle since 1904 by stealing the yellow jersey from his compatriot Primoz Roglic, the day before the finish. du Tour on the steep bends of the Planche-des-Belles-Filles, in the Vosges mountains. This performance had propelled the team sponsored by the Emirates airline to the summit of world cycling, the Tour de France remaining, more than a hundred years after its creation, the Holy Grail of the little queen.

It must be said that the race offers exceptional exposure. “With a broadcast in 195 countries, we reach 3.5 billion people. As a showcase, on a sport, there is no better”, boasts at the Ile-de-France headquarters of Amaury Sport Organization. We can even say that for the United Arab Emirates, the return on investment was rapid. In football, they released nearly 2 billion euros in player transfers over ten years. As for the bike, the adventure only started in 2017 and is the greatest of their pride for “barely” 30 million euros annually. It was enough to see the youthful gaze of the triumphant Pogacar, whose photo is hoisted on the gigantic Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai, to measure the stakes. “We went from an Italian family team (Lampre, Editor’s note) to a country team”, had however warned the manager, Giuseppe Saroni, at the time of the acquisition of his small structure.

“These new state teams are a bit sulphurous”

It was without imagining that he would so quickly become a driving force in the soft-power of the petromonarchy. “The Emirates are in this strategy of brandin nationg, and whether in football, sailing or cycling, the aim is to project a favorable image of the nation”, says Pascal Boniface, Director General of the Institute of International and Strategic Relations (Iris). For the author of Geopolitics of sport (ed. Armand Colin), this arrival of “State-sponsors” is only a return to basics, the national teams (France, Italy, Belgium…) having enjoyed the heyday of the Tour until 1968. It is now Israel, Bahrain and the Emirates which display their flag on the backs of the runners. “But the first to bring this up to date were Kazakhstan. In the 2000s, they had a star with Alexandre Vinokourov, they built everything around him”, continues Pascal Boniface. For this country of the former USSR, five times larger than France, this investment aims to make its new capital, Astana, a brand in its own right. A center of attraction, both economic and touristic. Moreover, according to figures from the World Bank, the number of visitors rose from 4.7 million in 2006, just before the takeover of the team, to 8.5 million in 2019. And this, despite different doping scandals: suspension of the same Vinokourov (2007-2008), then dismissal of the title of Alberto Contador at the Tour de France 2010 for an incredible story of steak with clenbuterol (a doping product). No matter the jeers, the team is still rolling. The end justifies the means. “At the finish of the tour, you have to see the pride of the ambassadors and consuls of these nations, which exist only through the bicycle. We really feel the importance that it is for them to be there”, blows a regular from the presidential gallery.

Once the finish line is crossed, it is often the time for assessments and always for rumours. A team attracted the wrath of the “on-dit” this spring during the Critérium du Dauphiné, a preparatory race for the Grande Boucle. Unknown to the general public, Ukrainian Mark Padun (Bahrain Victorious), flew over the end of the race in the Alps. It was enough to make the peloton cough, starting with the French teams and their loyal private sponsors. “Many were surprised by what he did. We felt unease. This news teams of State are a bit sulphurous”, explains a member of a tricolor staff, worried for the image of cycling and therefore that of his employer. In the offending camp, we clear mines. “It’s sad to see this kind of questions come back as soon as a runner makes a performance. These accusations help no one, no team, no sponsor”, argues within Bahrain Victorious. For the Kingdom, often criticized for its management of human rights, the bicycle has become a key element of its reputation. “Bahrain has a 2030 vision that aspires to shift to a better economic balance less dependent on oil. The Kingdom offers good conditions for businesses, through tax levels and trade agreements. His Royal Highness Sheikh Nasser bin Hamad Al Khalifa founded the team that makes Bahrain a brand like any team that invests in cycling”, underlines Rayan Ajaji, one of the team’s executives, who recalls in passing that there were “50 cyclists in the whole country ten years ago, and now a few thousand”. With its budget of around twenty million euros per year (the British of Ineos, leader of the peloton, turn 45 million annually), Bahrain has an outsider status, but has already placed the Spaniard Mikel Landa at the foot of the podium last year.

Diplomatic agreements signed

To hope to raise your arms on the line, you need a bit of luck and a lot of gab. This experience is precisely what the Israel Start-Up Nation was looking for by hiring the four-time winner of the Tour, the Briton Chris Froome. Victim of a serious fall in 2019, “he is rebuilding himself, he is a competitor and he will aim for a stage victory”, warns Lionel Marie, one of the sports directors of the team whose budget is similar to Bahrain. At the head of the Israeli bicycle showcase, created from scratch in 2015, we find an Israeli businessman of Quebec origin: Sylvan Adams. Patron of the bicycle, he likes to ride with his proteges during training. In Tel Aviv, he finances cycle paths and a velodrome himself. His goal: “Promote the country to show the true face of Israel”, as he said before the big start of the Tour of Italy 2018, relocated to the Jewish state. A patriotism certainly, but not a national policy for the team with 19 nationalities, a kind of UN of the pedal. “We are based in Spain. Our sponsor is a philanthropist, and the only constraint we have is to organize an internship on the territory once a year and to participate in operations on the history of Israel”, details Lionel Married.

If the official communication consists in praising the technological showcase of the “4th world pole of innovation” as its leaders say, geopolitics is also invited on the road. Since the renewed tension in the region, Palestinian flags have started to fly on the roads again, which worries the organizers of the Tour, in direct line with the French intelligence services. “States are not sponsors like the others, it’s true. But for them the bike is a very good investment”, recognizes Magali Tézenas, general delegate of Sporsora, the association of actors of the economy of French sport. .

Can these new sponsors once again change the face of this popular sport? “They want to attract economic attention to them or convey messages. Moreover, Colombia or Italy have already asked to join our publicity caravans to take advantage of the exhibition”, notes Laurent Lachaux, director of partnerships at ASO. . Only, for the organizer, “the economic model of the Tour de France must remain focused on the influence of France abroad”. Nevertheless, he is increasingly called upon to organize races outside France. This is already the case in Saudi Arabia and Oman. China has also tried and Bahrain dreams of imitating them. How to give birth to an economic diplomacy of the bicycle? “I would very much like to be able to affirm this, especially after the signing in 2020 of the Abraham Accords (treaties, signed in Washington, establishing real official relations between, on the one hand, Israel and Bahrain and, on the other hand , Israel and Abu Dhabi, editor’s note). But it’s a coincidence of history”, tempers Pascal Boniface. Nevertheless, Sylvan Adams had traveled to the Gulf a year before these agreements to grease the wheels a little. In professional sport, the border between State, sponsor and athlete is decidedly more and more porous.