Tour de France Femmes gets Europe wide TV coverage and €250,000 prize fund

The Tour de France Femmes 2022 has announced that Discovery Sports will broadcast the race across Europe, while a €250,000 prize fund across the different stage, jersey, and team competitions has also been revealed too.  

An exclusive rights agreement between Discovery Sports and Eurovision Sport means that the Tour de France Femmes will be broadcast across Europe in more than 50 markets in July 2022. Viewers can watch the live, ad-free coverage via Discovery Sports' portfolio of channels, including Eurosport's linear channels and relevant streaming platforms. 

>>> Tour de France Femmes 2022 route revealed

Guy Voisin, director of cycling at Discovery Sports, said: “The first-ever women’s edition of the Tour de France has been a long time in the making so we’re absolutely thrilled to have reached an agreement with the EBU that guarantees every stage will be able to watch live and on-demand across our channels and platforms.  

“We have made it our mission to invest in more world-class women’s races because it is just great sport, to help grow cycling further and to meet the expectations of our viewers everywhere. We will now harness our deep cycling expertise and unrivalled scale to bring coverage to the widest possible audience in Europe, truly unlocking the power of the sport.”

The Tour de France Femmes will also have a prize fund of €250,000, making it the richest race on the women's cycling calendar. The general classification winner will receive €50,000 of that, while the remainder will be awarded to stage winners, jersey holders and winners, and other general classification finishers. 

The prized fund for the women's race is still comparably low to the men's, which had a total prize pot of €2,288,450 in 2021.

The eight-stage Tour de France begins on July 24 as the men's Tour de France finishes in Paris, and finishes on July 31. The route will take the riders from the capital across north-eastern France, before ending at the iconic Super Planche Des Belles Filles. 

The long-term TV deal, which runs until 2025, also includes live coverage of Paris-Roubaix Femmes, as Discovery Sports aims to showcase even more of women's cycling, after showing every race on the UCI Women's World Tour in 2021.