24 Hours of Le Mans

Le Mans: record crowd, overall audience figures reach new peak

The spectator attendance, 230 000 in all, an increase of 15% in relation to the previous year (based on the crowd at the 1974 event) is not the only good news to come from the 2005 Le Mans 24 Hours.

On the television front 1.43 million viewers followed the start on France 2 (2.6 points on Mediamat*) an increase of 37% in relation to last year (1.9 points). One out of 5 TV viewers watched the start of the greatest endurance race in the world (19.7% of the PDM), which is an excellent score for the time slot considering the beautiful weather.

Almost the same number saw the finish on France 3 the next day (2.5 points) with a total of 16.6% market share (the average audience on this channel at the time in question is around 14%). World wide 325 million TV viewers watched the race on the five continents.

According to the UBM index from the TNS-Sport Institute (the index analyses the media impact caused by the event in 80 leading French media supports) the Le Mans 24 Hours was way out in front of the sporting events during the week with 538 UBM as against 488 for the USA Grand Prix - despite the enormous coverage linked to the tyre controversy - and 191 for the France South Africa Test match. It is a score comparable to the start of the Tour de France, Greece’s victory in the Euro 2004 or the finish of the Route du Rhum.

Another symbol of this exceptional year: 1854 journalists from 36 countries (as against 27 in 2004) were given accreditation for the race. 51 million enthusiasts consulted the Internet pages on the lemans.org site live coverage compared with 35 million in 2004 (23% French, 20% Japanese, 13% American and 9% Danish, fans of outright Le Mans victory record holder, Tom Kristensen).

© 2005 Planetlemans.com.