Wednesday 18 March 2015 at 23h31
Like every year, there will be some changes in the sponsors of the Tour de France again this year. Amaury Sport Organisation (A.S.O.) already announced its partnership with Dimension Data just before Paris-Nice, but there will be quite some other changes. And the most awaited announcement was of course the one for the sponsor of the green jersey since the moment PMU announced it would stop sponsoring it.
And since we're talking about the green jersey ... we'll also have to talk about the white jersey! Find out why below!
The musical chairs of the jerseys
We already knew it before the Tour de France 2014 arrived back in Paris: PMU would no longer figure on the green jersey of the Tour de France 2015 and A.S.O. was thus looking for a new sponsor for this jersey which is awarded to the leader and winner of the points classification which is dominated by the sprinters.On 24 Novembre last year, L'Equipe dedicated its last page to this, with an article called "Maillot vert cherche équipier" (green jersey looking for a supplier), in which the newspaper of the Amaury group (which also includes A.S.O.) reminded that PMU, sponsor of the green jersey since 1991, leaves the Tour de France after having been part of it for 25 years. According to the newspaper, the company now focuses on sponsoring football, much more interesting in the betting world, and thus didn't want to satisfy A.S.O.'s wish to move up from the official partner status to being a member of the Club du Tour like the other jersey sponsors (LCL for the yellow jersey, Carrefour for the polka dot jersey, Škoda for the white jersey and Vittel). According to the French sports newspaper, the sponsor at the Club du Tour level pay an amount between 3.5 and 7 M€ to the Tour de France while an official partner, which was PMU's status, pays around 1.5 M€.
The newspaper also interviewed Laurent Lachaux, commercial director and director of partnerships with A.S.O., indicating that the profil of the ideal sponsor is somewhere in between "a big French company which wants to get a name abroad or a foreign company which wants to develop its notoriety thanks to the Tour". The article by L'Equipe ended with a comment indicating that in order to attract sponsors, ASO offers the possibility to add, given a higher fee, other races in the package like the Tour of Qatar or the Tour of Oman. This almost looked like an advertorial in L'Equipe in order to remind potential sponsors of the opportunity which was up for grabs!
And when we see who will be the new sponsor of the green jersey, we realise that it's indeed a foreign company which wants to develop its notoriety thanks to the Tour (and which is by the way used to do this!) and also that the company also is the sponsor of the green jersey of at least the Tour of Qatar* (for the Tour of Oman it's difficult to verify since the list of sponsors is not available on the website).
For Paris-Nice last week, Škoda was not the sponsor of the green jersey of the points classification since this classification was sponsored by RAGT Semences which also sponsored the stage victory. This is either because Škoda didn't choose, like PMU, to sponsor this jersey in other stage races organised by A.S.O. or simply because the official announcement was planned too late and they didn't want to give out any hints before Paris-Nice.
Next Monday, Škoda organises a press conference at the Embassy of the Czech Republic with the presence of the ambassadors of Škoda France and winners of the Tour, Bernard Hinault and Stephen Roche, the director of Škoda France, Christian Prudhomme and Yann Le Moenner, the general director of A.S.O., and the new partnership with A.S.O. will officially be announced during this press conference. We'll probably get to know a bit more about the list of races the company will sponsor.
* with the VW brand of the Volkswagen Group to which Škoda belongs since 1991 next to the Volkswagen, Audi and Seat brands
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So what about the white jersey?
And this sponsor has also been found among the existing sponsors of the Tour de France, in a much more recent sponsor (since 2014 the company is a sponsor of the Tour de France as we know it in cycling but also of the Tour de France à la voile (sailing), which is now also organised by A.S.O.). Maybe you start to see a bit clearer in this already, the company in question is of course Krys (opticians) which becomes the sponsor of the white jersey, right from their second year of sponsoring the Tour de France.
note: I got this information a while ago already; with Paris-Nice I didn't have the occasion to publish it any earlier!
The other changes for the sponsors of the Tour de France 2015
Dimension Data
As indicated in the introduction of this article, A.S.O. officially announced a new partnership, just before Paris-Nice, with Dimension Data. The company, which is a daughter company of the Japanese NTT Group and international supplier of ICT solutions and services, signed a 5 year contract with Amaury Sport Organisation in order to become the official technical partner of the organisor for its different cycling races.The type of services the company will supply has not been detailed yet but the goal of this sponsorship is to enrich the visual experience of millions of cycling fans around the world providing all the informations about the race in real time to the commentators of the race and all its spectators. Although we don't really have any further specific information about this for now, we can thus expect to see even more real time information available for TV broadcasts and the different digital platforms like the website letour.fr or the mobile application of the Tour de France.
The video below gives a first idea of what Dimension Data plans to do in the Tour de France, based on digital, big data analytics and the cloud.
The other sponsors
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It's over and out for ...
Several brands are no longer in the list of sponsors of the Tour de France. In addition to PMU, this concerns:- Belin, so we'll no longer have any snacks in the Tour!
- Sodexo, which should however still be present in the Tour de France
- Vision Plus: the Krys brand has thus completely taken over this sponsorship, stepping up to become the white jersey sponsor
- P&O Ferries which was a temporary sponsor for the trip to and from the UK for the Tour de France 2014
- Courtepaille which stopped its sponsoring after 3 years out of a contract which was initially planned for 5 years
- Europcar
- the Fédération Nationale des sapeurs-pompiers de France which will no longer be an institutional sponsor but which will still be present in the Tour, like before 2014 when it didn't have the sponsor status either
- the Centre des Monuments Nationaux
The new sponsors
For now, there's only one new sponsor which will join the Tour de France, as an official supplier, the Le Gaulois brand.As we can see in the video below, they should have a caravan with probably no less than 6 vehicles!
The Kleber brand, which was a technical sponsor of the race so far, steps up in 2015 to become an official supplier of the Tour de France.
this article might be updated based on new announcements or other informations concerning the sponsors of the Tour de France 2015 between now and July! door Thomas Vergouwen
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