Discovery Sports' Guy Voisin on Data, Emergence of Women's Cycling, The Cube By Will Strauss, Contributing Editor
Wednesday, March 30, 2022 - 12:00 pm
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Discovery Sports will bring more women's cycling to TV viewers than any other broadcaster in the world this year having added new rights in territories outside its Europe-wide offering, including the inaugural and much anticipated Tour de France Femmes.
And this increased focus on women's cycling is no accident. It's been several years in the making, as Discovery Sports director of cycling Guy Voisin told SVG Europe.
SVG Europe: Where are we with women's cycling, in general, but also on TV? With the Tour de France Femmes starting this year, have we reached a tipping point?
Guy Voisin: I think it's over the edge. When I came in 2019, to take over the pillar of cycling at Discovery, the first thing I did was look at the calendar while looking at my budgets, and ask: Where are all the women's races? Then, I had long conversations with my rights guys. We actively went out to buy them.
Did you get strong support for this initiative from within Discovery?
Voisin: We don't ever think we're broadcasting the women or we're broadcasting the men. That's a 1990s way of thinking.
We've taken a real step forward here and the company has shown a real commitment to women's cycling. Both through the breadth of coverage and stories we share across our platforms, as well as the new live rights we have secured - the Tour de France Femmes and Paris-Roubaix Femmes to name only two.
Beyond the rights themselves, it's important to us that we give equal treatment to the presentation of all our events. This is why it's particularly exciting to be showcasing the Tour de France Femmes from the award-winning Cube studio, just like we plan for the Tour de France.
Whether through investing in rights or delivering compelling coverage through our platforms, we've seen a major opportunity to tell the story of the riders and help grow the audience for women's cycling over the coming years.
What have you been doing with women's cycling up to now?
In our weekly show, we actively went out and covered the women's cycling, and the women's cycling stories, which are so freaking interesting because you've got doctors, and nurses, and concert pianists. There were women who were leaving the racing during COVID to go into the COVID wards to help. They just had these great stories. It was really easy to get all the producers and all the crew aligned [after that]. Now it's just become like business as usual. It's great racing and they're incredible cyclists and incredible stars of the sport.
Does the way you cover the races change if it's a women's competition?
We do cover them differently, but not technically. Production-wise, we cover them the same, but we cover them differently in the storytelling because there are a lot of stories that haven't been told on the women's side, that have been told a million times on the men's side. With the Tour de France Femmes, which is a new one, we have the responsibility of creating what the men's tour had for a hundred years already. They've got that history, the women's tour, doesn't. The women's tour had a failed tour in the 80s, which was a great tour, publicly, super well-liked. Then, it was let go by the producers. This tour, we have the responsibility of creating that history so that it makes it impossible for the production of it to let it go.
Does Discovery Sport have a part to play in its potential success, particularly with the scheduling?
We're by far the biggest cycling broadcaster in the world. We have to play our role in making sure that we make it a huge space for the women's tour and for all women's racing. We learnt something during production with the Flanders Classics: the Ronde van Vlaanderen, Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Gent-Wevelge.
After chatting with them, and experimenting with them, we discovered that if we start the women's race in between [the men's race] and finish it an hour later, I can cut straight from the men's live race to the women's live race. We don't do any podiums or anything, direct hit: the viewership goes crazy! The viewership stays there. If I hit that peak, when the guys cross over at 1.8 million or 2 million, and it goes to the women's, I will retain those viewers on the women's race. This is super important to give that visibility to that race. If you can get that peak and hook them in, they stay longer. And that last hour of the women's race actually gets better viewership sometimes than the last hour of the men's race.
There is a common misconception amongst the public that men watch men's sports and women watch women's sport. Which is generally not the case. The demographics are often the same, just the audience size differs. Is that the same with cycling?
We don't ever think we're broadcasting the women or we're broadcasting the men. That's a 1990s way of thinking. But there are people who actually do that. I guess some people do it in other [genres] but in sport, you're broadcasting to sports fans and cycling sports fans are super knowledgeable. They really know their sport, they love their sport. They spend hours talking about their sport on [social media]. I don't see a difference, honestly, in our viewership. It's heavily viewed by men still as a sport, but they watch both men's and women's racing.
How about the pundits? Are they happy to analyze both?
Not always. The professional women who retire and want to participate or work with us, such as Iris Slappendel, she's very honest. Iris is s
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Discovery Sports' Guy Voisin on Data, Emergence of Women's Cycling, The Cube By Will Strauss, Contributing Editor 
