Should you adopted the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift this yr, you would be forgiven for pondering that Zwift ran the entire present. The digital biking platform‘s vivid orange and pink branding was in all places, and the model’s squirrel eclipsed the lion because the race’s mascot. Stage winners had been handed a luxurious model of this furry icon, whereas a life-sized model mingled with the group, distributing caps and posing for photos with followers.
However Zwift’s affect goes far past mascots, branding and including its title to the official race title. Since approaching board because the presenting sponsor in 2022, the corporate has been a driving power behind the occasion’s revival. Its monetary backing and four-year assure introduced the race organisers, the A.S.O, stability and time to determine the occasion and drum up business curiosity for its continuation — a feat earlier renditions of a girls’s Tour de France all did not do.
The 2022 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift was the primary official Tour de France for ladies in 33 years, and already, simply three years into its revival, it’s nearly inconceivable to think about a world the place girls don’t vie for the enduring Maillot Jaune.
Whereas Zwift calls itself girls’s biking’s “greatest followers,” their funding isn’t purely passion-based. Its return on funding is measured in model worth, visibility and affinity. That, and lowering its personal gender hole on the platform, the place girls make up roughly 20% of its consumer base.
“We are able to spend our cash in a whole lot of methods, and we determined to spend it on this. This funding is an extension of our mission to create more room within the sport, to do issues in another way. It is clear that the ladies’s professional peloton was prepared for this publicity,” Kate Veronneau, Zwift Director of Ladies’s Technique, informed Biking Weekly.
“This race has exceeded everyone’s expectations and we’re thrilled with the outcomes. The visibility we get from simply the content material created, the media, the eye of this race, the viewership is phenomenal. This places our model and our values entrance and centre.”
The race has been so profitable that Zwift has prolonged its title sponsorship for an additional yr, bringing it to 5 years.
The newest race content material, interviews, options, opinions and professional shopping for guides, direct to your inbox!
“Sponsoring the Tour is likely one of the most fun issues that we do. We’re actually pleased with it. There is no purpose to cease now,” Veronneau mentioned.
Biking Weekly had the unique alternative to talk with Veronneau and CEO Eric Min concerning the firm’s involvement within the Tour, their imaginative and prescient for the long run, and the broader enterprise case for investing in girls’s biking.
Watch the Femmes
(Picture credit score: Anne-Marije Rook)
Zwift’s sponsorship of the Tour de France Femmes is a part of the corporate’s broader technique to spend money on and develop girls’s biking. It is greater than a monetary sponsorship; it is a motion, Veronneau mentioned.
The motion, named “Watch the Femmes”, was born from the Zwift Academy, a extremely in style expertise identification programme that scouts the very best biking expertise worldwide utilizing the Zwift digital biking platform and locations the winner in knowledgeable crew. It began in 2016 as a girls’s-only programme and gave Zwift an inside look into the ladies’s aspect of the game and, consequently, a need to enhance it.
Zwift’s partnership with the A.S.O. started through the pandemic lockdown in 2020 with a digital Tour de France. It was a stepping stone that laid the groundwork for one thing greater.
“I feel we had been the proper companion to come back on board as title sponsor as a result of we’re not simply sponsors: we’re girls’s biking’s greatest followers,” Veronneau mentioned. “We by no means wished to simply put our title on it. We actually wished to construct this motion.”
The Tour de France Femmes made its debut in 2022 with Zwift because the presenting sponsor, and it was a right away hit. Social media engagement skyrocketed, greater than 23 million viewers tuned in to look at the races dwell, whereas hundreds extra lined the roadside, and media retailers worldwide offered in depth protection. Zwift, too, benefited, experiencing an 8.9% improve in feminine subscribers within the first yr alone.
Three years on, Veronneau confidently describes the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift as “an absolute, clear, plain success.”
The Enterprise Case for Investing in Ladies’s Biking
Zwift’s CEO Eric Min poses for a photograph with race winner Kasia Niewiadoma.
(Picture credit score: Getty Pictures)
Zwift’s funding in girls’s biking isn’t pushed by ardour alone; there’s a enterprise case to be made as effectively.
“On the finish of the day, we’re a enterprise,” Veronneau mentioned. “[Our investment] must contribute to the underside line. And it does. It completely does.”
Zwift’s CEO Eric Min agrees, stating, “I feel it’s good enterprise. Have a look at what number of eyeballs we’re getting on a per-day foundation. The chance for us is that there is simply a lot upside on the ladies’s aspect in comparison with the lads’s aspect – a lot headroom when it comes to progress, funding, viewership, and girls’s participation. That is the apparent place to speculate for those who’re a client model.”
The acquire comes primarily within the type of visibility, model consciousness and model affinity.
“I truthfully suppose that this sponsorship is the explanation why we by no means dipped after COVID. We went from exponential progress to progress. It’s the visibility of this sponsorship and Paris-Roubaix Femmes avec Zwift as effectively,” Veronneau mentioned.
“The entire Watch the Femmes marketing campaign places us within the highlight and I feel that for those who had been already on Zwift, you stayed on Zwift since you felt good about how we had been investing our cash. And for those who did not find out about Zwift and now you do.
“As girls’s biking grows, that progress is mirrored in our progress.”
One in every of Zwift’s goals was to lower its personal gender hole. Earlier than 2022, girls made up solely 9% of its consumer base. At the moment, that quantity sits round 22%.
“All indicators level to it being a really optimistic factor for the enterprise and, in fact, an extremely optimistic factor for the game. And people go hand in hand,” Veronneau mentioned.
The business success of the Tour de France Femmes is essential in guaranteeing the occasion’s continuation and demonstrating to the A.S.O. {that a} girls’s race is a worthwhile funding. Traditionally, the organisation hasn’t been the largest advocate of girls’s biking, arguing that public curiosity and business viability had been missing.
“With A.S.O, to be completely frank, it must work of their portfolio, as they run the very best profile races,” admitted Veronneau. “Seeing the affect, seeing the followers and the viewership numbers, I feel that we have efficiently satisfied them that girls’s biking is a reputable, thrilling alternative. That is what followers need. It not solely makes them look good, however it achieves their enterprise targets.”
The Future
Stage winner Justine Ghekiere
(Picture credit score: Getty Pictures)
As is true for ladies’s biking on the whole, the historical past of a girls’s Tour de France has been marred by inconsistency, with promising races vanishing after just some seasons. Nevertheless, Veronneau is satisfied that the Tour de France Femmes is right here to remain.
“The Tour will not go away. No person will let that occur. That is too massive. Actually, it is too profitable,” mentioned Veronneau. “I’ve seen such great developments and evolution of their content material and in the way in which that A.S.O is speaking concerning the race. You may undoubtedly really feel it. A.S.O. believes on this.”
That doesn’t imply the work is finished, nonetheless. Veronneau mentioned she’ll be pushing for extra in depth broadcasting, investments from different manufacturers and a much bigger worth purse.
“Now that we now have confirmed that the race is profitable and that it’s a worthwhile entity, that should get again to the riders,” Veronneau acknowledged. “I firmly consider in that.”
At the moment, the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift prize purse, set by the A.S.O, is €250,000, with €50,000 for the winner. In distinction, the lads’s Tour de France prize purse in 2024 was €2.5 million, with €500,000 for the winner. In fact, the ladies race for fewer days than the lads; nonetheless, these numbers equate to €31,250 per stage vs. €119,047 per stage.
Trying forward, the 2025 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift would be the longest but, with 9 levels unfold over one week and two weekends. That also pales compared to the lads’s 21 levels. Nevertheless, few are calling for a three-week race and in accordance with race director Marion Rousse, sluggish progress is vital to the occasion’s survival.
“We definitely don’t need to broaden too rapidly,” Rousse informed Biking Weekly. “I would like the race to nonetheless exist in 100 years’ time, and never shut down in a couple of years. We’ve got to take it little by little.”
Veronneau and Min agreed that so long as the race exists, Zwift needs to be a part of it indirectly.
“You’re going to see far more Zwift,” Min promised, hinting at doable developments corresponding to a L’Étape du Tour cyclosportive on the Tour de France Femmes in future years.
“Getting extra individuals on bikes, that’s our final objective – indoor or outdoor.”
