108th Tour de France welcomes back fans, but also looks to offer richer experiences than ever before.
With the Tour de France 2021 set to roll out this weekend, this year’s race looks set to be the most interactive ever thanks to a host of new experiences and services designed to help fans get (virtually) closer to the action. This weekend sees the 108th edition of the world’s biggest cycling event start in Brittany, in the north-west of France, with 184 riders travelling 3300km over the course of the next three weeks. After a year in which fans have been starved of in-person action, and with an expected global television audience numbering in the hundreds of millions, this year’s Tour is looking to utilize big data like never before to offer fans a whole new view of the race. NTT, the official technology partner to race organizers Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO) since 2015, will once again look to offer broadcasters, digital channels and fans a wealth of real-time data on the race. Using small sensors mounted beneath the saddle (pictured below), NTT is able to provide real-time data on speed and GPS location of each rider in the race every 400 milliseconds.
