{"id":327148,"date":"2025-08-08T06:03:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T06:03:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/327148\/"},"modified":"2025-08-08T06:03:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T06:03:14","slug":"airmail-weekly-news-tdffemmes-turning-point-tdf-viewership-declines-cas-legal-shifts-trump-saves-college-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/327148\/","title":{"rendered":"AIRmail Weekly News: TDFFemmes Turning Point \/ TDF Viewership Declines \/ CAS Legal Shifts \/ Trump Saves College Sports"},"content":{"rendered":"

Latest news analysis from pro cycling and global sports in the latest edition of the AIRmail Weekly Newsletter from The Outer Line.<\/strong> This week, look into pivotal developments shaping the future of the sport\u2014from the landmark 2025 Tour de France Femmes and its powerful impact on women\u2019s racing, to concerning trends in men\u2019s Tour viewership and structural cracks in global cycling. Also unpack significant legal shifts from the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), plus implications of the U.S. President\u2019s executive action on college athletics. With expert insight, data-driven analysis, and bold reflections, AIRmail delivers the essential stories every passionate fan and stakeholder needs to follow right now.<\/p>\n

# Catch up on pro cycling \u2013 and its context within the broader world of sports \u2013 with AIRmail \u2026 Analysis, Insight and Reflections from The Outer Line<\/a>. You can subscribe to AIRmail here<\/a>, and check out The Outer Line\u2019s extensive library of articles on the governance and economics of cycling here<\/a>. #<\/p>\n

Key Takeaways:
<\/strong>\u25cf\u00a0Tour de France Femmes 2025: A Turning Point
<\/strong>\u25cf\u00a0A Detailed Take on the Status of the Women\u2019s Pro Racing
<\/strong>\u25cf\u00a0Men\u2019s TdF Viewership Declines, Wider Implications
<\/strong>\u25cf\u00a0Ground-shaking Developments at CAS
<\/strong>\u25cf\u00a0Bid to \u201cSave College Sports\u201d Falls Short<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Pauline Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot\u2019s popular victory confirmed the Tour de France Femmes\u2019 ascension as the sport\u2019s premier women\u2019s event and provided a pivot point from which to fully develop the sport to its full global potential.<\/strong>\u00a0The race embodied the creativity, strength, cunning, resiliency, and killer instinct demonstrated by many of pro cycling\u2019s best women riders. The narrative of the first half of the race was as much about top challengers who fell out as it was the crashes and drama which affected challengers who remained, with Giro winner Elisa Longo-Borghini (UAE) and Suisse winner Marlen Reusser (Movistar) both exiting. Lorena Wiebes (SDWorx-Protime) rocketed to two sprint wins coming into the weekend\u2019s climbing finale, and Kim Le Court (AG Insurance-Soudal) enjoyed two days in yellow after winning stage 5, while Ma\u00ebva Squiban (UAE) picked up the challenge for her team with two consecutive \u2013 and unexpected \u2013 climbing stage wins leading into the alpine weekend. There, Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot (Visma-LAB) rallied her team to her challenge and \u201cPFP\u201d was simply superlative in stage 8, patiently patrolling the lead group and then countering a strong Sarah Gigante (AG Insurance-Soudal) to take the stage win, the yellow jersey, and establish an insurmountable lead over top challengers like Demi Vollering (FDJ).<\/p>\n

Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot\u2019s race-sealing victory on stage 9 was measured and decisive, and it also provided French cycling fans with their greatest moment of celebration since Julian Alaphilippe\u2019s ill-fated run in yellow during the 2019 men\u2019s event.<\/strong>\u00a0Looking back on the buildup to this edition \u2026 the expected challenge by Vollering and her vastly improved FDJ team fell just short after her untimely early crashes, while Anna van der Breggen (SDWorx) showed few flashes of her previous dominant form \u2013 other than a scintillating final stage \u201chail Mary\u201d attack to get back into the top ten of the GC. Yet there was still much to celebrate as we look down the final top ten of the race: expected challengers like last year\u2019s victor Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney fighting for the podium, and a mix of new and establishing GC riders like Dominika W\u0142odarczyk (UAE), Gigante, and Pauliena Rooijakkers (Fenix-Deceuninck) confirming their considerable talents. Each stage was a microcosm of everything the sport\u2019s current fans wish for in a world-class race: attacks, counters, new faces taking risks, and stars showing their best poker-face before playing what they hoped would be a winning hand.<\/p>\n

The event has now taken on a life of its own, for fans, riders, media and sponsors \u2013 and has broken through as a globally recognized sports event.<\/strong>\u00a0There was a sense of excitement and potential around the entire event, reminiscent of the early days of gravel racing a decade ago. Also noticeable at this year\u2019s race was the number of American content creators and influencers who were in attendance \u2013 most of whom made the trip specifically for the women\u2019s race. As they do for the men\u2019s race, event owner ASO put on a L\u2019\u00c9tape mass start event \u2013 utilizing the challenging Stage 8 route that finished up the brutal Col de la Madeleine. Of the 6,000 participants, about 2,500 were women. That massive women\u2019s attendance underscored both the growing level of mass participation as well as the exciting racing by the pros on the same course.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n But with race fans delighted and a winner in the books, what can we expect next for women\u2019s pro road cycling?<\/p>\n

The race can either grow from here, or conversely, wither on the vine. Its future is dependent on how the UCI moves forward to encourage development of women\u2019s cycling and how the race\u2019s organizers, ASO, position the event within a spectrum of rising women\u2019s sports. Regarding development of women\u2019s cycling, the sport is still struggling to diversify and expand its talent development pipelines; beyond a handful of well-capitalized women\u2019s teams and the sport\u2019s top-tier riders, there are deep rifts emerging. The WWT is virtually dominated by its top six teams, and while there are some outlier stars rising in the periphery, most of the current \u201cfuoriclasse\u201d stars are approaching 30 years of age and many are closing in towards the edge of 40 \u2013 apologies to the evergreen Marianne Vos and Mavi Garcia, both of whom won superlative stages in this year\u2019s race. The sport\u2019s under-21 talent pipeline hasn\u2019t kept pace with the rapid expansion of the WWT, with ramifications that could impact the sport\u2019s sustainability or delay its growth. According to NXTG Racing founder and women\u2019s racing expert\u00a0Natascha Knaven-den Ouden<\/a>, who relayed in a recent post what a 17 year-old rider told her, \u201c\u2026 \u2018If I don\u2019t get picked up this season, I think it\u2019s over.\u2019 Not because she isn\u2019t good enough. But because we\u2019ve built a system where you have to be visible, signed, and successful by 19, or disappear.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/strong>Ellen Van Rooijen at the Baloise Tour<\/p>\n

The UCI calendar presents a similar challenge, as the race quickly forces a tipping point where the entire sport orbits a mid-season climax and lands in the same hot water as the men\u2019s Tour de France: flagging viewership numbers, zero growth, and a contracting fan base.<\/strong>\u00a0Men\u2019s pro cycling is burdened by a calendar that can\u2019t thrive with the Tour de France or without it, because a sport with a mid-season climax and an end-of-season whimper hasn\u2019t been able to connect to modern audiences in the sport\u2019s sponsorship target demographics. We have\u00a0commented many times<\/a>\u00a0on the\u00a0tabula rasa\u00a0available to women\u2019s cycling \u2013 the opportunity to create a new and differently structured sport \u2013 rather than simply copying the men\u2019s often dysfunctional systems and tired old model. Yet the UCI seems content to let ASO dictate a model for the Women\u2019s WorldTour that simply recreates the myriad problems it faces with the men\u2019s sport. This predicament will eventually recapitulate the sponsorship bottleneck of the men\u2019s WT in which teams and races scrap for the same sponsors, a handful of over-capitalized teams privatizing talent development and creating \u201cverticals\u201d in which talent is siloed, a small number of races of any consequence in the calendar other than those which curry favor with ASO for a TdF wildcard, and fractured media rights that dilute the broadcast value and reach of the sport. There is a huge opportunity here which the UCI is watching slip through its fingers.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/strong>The ASO paints a rosy picture of media viewing, but other sources differ.<\/p>\n

To understand this problem further, let\u2019s contrast the exciting women\u2019s finale with the finish of this year\u2019s men\u2019s Tour.\u00a0<\/strong>The men\u2019s race\u2019s revamped stage on the Champs Elysees was not enough to reverse the race\u2019s long-ebbing viewership tide. Metrics observed for the first two weeks of the event were in line with prior year-over-year declines in the race\u2019s broadcast audience in its European and external markets, and\u00a0week three numbers<\/a>\u00a0were an exclamation point. Moreover, the drop in fan interest confirmed the UCI\u2019s own observations, as its recent report highlighted (or rather, bemoaned) the lack of competition beyond the sport\u2019s top four or five teams. The dominance of these squads, lack of diversity among the major race winners, and an over-bloated calendar continues to dampen the enthusiasm of fans to tune in part due to the expectation that only one of just a small handful of five or six riders be the winner in the races which actually matter. The brief Tadej Poga\u010dar-Wout Van Aert duel injected octane into the new Paris circuit finale and supercharged what is usually a low-key and routine stage. But this was fleeting, like a Major League Baseball broadcast in which a pitcher is carrying a perfect game into the 8th inning and fans rush to the channel to potentially witness history. By most measures, the Tour hasn\u2019t had such an exciting final day of racing since Greg LeMond\u2019s heroic 1989 time trial into Paris to win by eight seconds, yet this late boost could not correct the overall viewership trajectory of a race in which the outcome was all but decided two and a half weeks prior.<\/p>\n

Forthcoming viewership metrics of the women\u2019s race will provide an important bellwether of the sport but Tour organizer ASO has been guarded in revealing its internal findings in recent years.<\/p>\n

Hence, measurements provided by experts like our contributing colleague, professor Daam Van Reeth, provide invaluable keys to unlock the race\u2019s actual broadcast value.\u00a0A recent analysis<\/a>\u00a0of the U.S.\u2019s Major League Soccer bears important examination and offers strong clues as to why ASO\u2019s numbers haven\u2019t added up. AppleTV, which owns exclusive MLS rights, claims that games streamed over its service are averaging 120,000 confirmed sessions (full game streams). Previously, when the MLS was exclusive to ESPN, that number was 343,000; the difference is due to Nielsen Rating methodologies in linear broadcasting to measure average-minute audience size, whereas streaming focuses on unique views with a confirmed duration \u2013 not just impressions and auto-played panels in sports and news websites. The Tour de France (and much of pro cycling) has migrated behind expensive paywalls \u2013 and will continue to do so as juggernauts like the NFL and FIFA eat up licensing budgets and bundled subscription space \u2013 and true streaming metrics trend far lower than linear and free-to-air TV delivery. Therefore, it will be interesting to compare what ASO shares publicly in the coming weeks and compare these figures to expert, third party observations \u2013 the results of which could indicate the overall health of the sport. Most importantly \u2013 it could help to define a new path to success for women\u2019s racing.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a potentially\u00a0earthshaking decision<\/a>\u00a0last week, the European Court of Justice ruled that decisions made by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) can now be reviewed by national courts to ensure that they comply with European Union (EU) laws.<\/p>\n

The CAS, based in a stately mansion in Lausanne, Switzerland has previously been essentially a power unto itself, with respect to legal disputes in Olympic and international sports. The highly secretive organization, often accused on being a blatant tool for the wishes of the International Olympic Committee, is best known for handling significant sports cases involving doping controversies or contract disputes, and previously has had essentially no oversight or further appeal process. But the EU ruling stated that the national courts of member countries \u201cmust be empowered to carry out \u2026. an in-depth judicial review as to whether arbitral awards made by CAS are consistent with EU public policy.\u201d Thus, the ruling would effectively end the power and absolute finality of CAS decisions. Although perhaps best known for its rulings on various disputes regarding FIFA and world football, the decision could potentially have major impacts on cycling as well. The Court has previously ruled on a number of cycling doping controversies, including Alberto Contador\u2019s clenbuterol case, and the doping cases of Floyd Landis, Nairo Quintana and Miguel \u00c1ngel L\u00f3pez, upholding the findings of the UCI in each of those cases \u2013 while mysteriously\u00a0ruling against others<\/a>\u00a0in higher-profile tennis cases, for example. Subjecting the Court to the oversight and protocols of individual state laws would seem to be a positive step for athlete rights and greater transparency.<\/p>\n

\"shaver\"
\n The U.S. President recently issued his 176th\u00a0Executive Order since taking office \u2013 this one grandiosely entitled \u201cPresident Donald J. Trump Saves College Sports.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, as\u00a0\u201cThe Athletic\u201d noted<\/a>, \u201cif only it was that simple.\u201d The NCAA, and its legacy policies around strict amateurism has been under attack for years, particularly around the issue of paying college athletes. Several legal decisions over the past few years have chipped away at that policy, and the recent House vs. NCAA case \u2013 just signed a couple months ago \u2013 essentially allows the direct remuneration of college athletes, up to a level of $20.5 million a year for certain universities. The agreement also dictates \u201cback pay\u201d for earlier college athletes from a certain time period who did not have the opportunity to receive such payments. College sports today\u00a0is akin to the days of the wild west<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 \u201cbeneath the surface of packed stadiums and thrilling games lies a chaotic, poorly regulated, and rapidly evolving landscape \u2026 (highlighting) deep issues around governance, money, power, and freedom that define the current state of college sports.\u201d Furthermore, the College Sports Commission subsequently\u00a0loosened restrictions<\/a>\u00a0on NIL collectives directly paying athletes, which\u00a0de facto\u00a0undermined the recent Executive Order, anyhow. This on-going lack of well-understood or enforceable rules is creating huge and often under-the-table competition between schools, agents, and sponsors, all angling for an advantage \u2013 for the same sort of \u201cgold\u201d that drove the American wild west 150 years ago.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n


\n Like PEZ? Why not subscribe to our weekly newsletter to receive updates and reminders on what’s cool in road cycling? \n <\/p>\n

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