A review of the economic impact studies done on the Tour de France: methodological aspects and first results

This article deals with studies focusing on the economic impact of major sport events. Sport events have an importance in regional development, particularly the Tour de France because it crosses all the French regions every four years. Tour de France is the third event in the world and generates a lot of expenses each year, although cities have to pay to host the event. Therefore, we need to calculate a net economic impact that takes this expense into account. After a literature review of this research field, we shall present two surveys that were conducted during the 2005 edition. According to them the economic impact is quite important locally. However, since these two previous surveys had some methodological weaknesses, a third survey will be carried out during the 2006 edition to include a demand-approach, an offer-approach and a qualitative analysis of the media repercussions. Our article will end on with a reflexion about the most efficient way to share the added value for the major sport events in the world, mostly those owned by the international federations.