Tour de France Tour de France 2024, Stage 3: Plaisance (Piacenza) > Turin (Torino), 230.8 km

[jmdirt]

Congrats BG!

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Most boring stage in years.

This is the problem with Vaughters' beloved guaranteed invite stage. With no actual wildcards, and pretty much every team having a guarantee of being at all the biggest races, the value of TV time for the sponsor is eroded to almost none, and the expansion of the WT and investment needed to be competitive enough to get to this level means the cost to the kind of sponsor for whom that would be sufficient exposure is prohibitive.

Teams want rid of the sponsor model and more guaranteed money for stability, understandably, but without smaller sponsor-driven teams for whom the TV time is their lifeblood, and an ever dwindling amount of space on startlists at the biggest races for any team but those which have guaranteed invites at ALL the big races so don't need that airtime, we can expect more stages like this in future. Stage 5 2020 likewise had no break and nothing happen.