SBS is undoubtedly Australia's premier cycling network. While it lost the rights of the Town Down Under in 2012, it shows the biggest and best UCI World Tour events like the Paris to Roubaix, Giro d'Italia, the Tour de France. It has invested money, time and effort to grow the sport of cycling in Australia. They dedicate TV time to women's cycling during Cycling Central.
Last year it showed the men's National Road Championship live for the very first time in Australia. It will do the same again this year.
The face of cycling in Australia, Mike Tomalaris, said “Last year SBS broadcast the men’s road race at the Cycling Australia National Road Championships live for the very first time and we are excited to be showing this flagship event live once again. January is an exciting month for cycling fans on SBS as we continue our commitment to Australian cycling.”
But not all the National Road Championships will be shown live. Just the men's road race.
Surely the National Road Championships is more than just the men's road race. What happened to the women's road race, the time trials?
Women's cycling is exciting. The women's road race at the 2012 Olympics Games proved that. While the men's road race can be summed up as being a boring affair over 260kms, the women's race was packed full of action and constant attacks.
But the inequalities in the financial support available and the media coverage of female versus male participants in cycling is well known. Cyclingtips blog has written a comprehensive article on women's cycling. http://www.cyclingtips.com.au/2012/11/womens-cycling-moving-ahead/
Yet, television companies both here in Australia and in the rest of the world do not show enough women's cycling. I recall that SBS did not show the whole women's road race at the World Championships live either - through webcast or on TV.
The UCI is trying to address some of the disparities in the sport. The UCI Management Committee this week approved a proposal for equal prize money for men and women at all UCI World Championships from 2013. Except the road time-trial race, which seems to be strange to me. The Mitchelton Bay Cycling Classic race organisers announced last week that there would be equal prize money for the top male and female riders.
To grow the sport of women's cycling, we need TV stations like SBS to get on board and televise these races. Sponsors will only get on board if they can get value for money. The decision of marketing managers are easy. Sponsor a male cycling team, they will get TV coverage and its company name splashed across the biggest newspapers and cycling magazines around the world. Whereas for the same investment in a women's cycling team the company will get limited or no TV coverage.
So why does not SBS show the women's race live and in full? Setting up the production vans, cameras and crew cannot be cheap for SBS. But the marginal cost of setting it up 24 hours earlier to show the women's race cannot be huge.
Developing the women's cycling scene will need the likes of SBS to take a huge risk and start televising these events. We need to deal with the 'chicken and egg' mentality on women's cycling. That is, television companies will start to show the races when people want to watch it or follow it. But people will only watch it when the races are televised on TV.
We should not forget that 22 years ago SBS's decided to televise the Tour de France. It took time to build an audience. But it has not looked back. In fact, it is now Australia's cycling network.
Let's go the next step SBS and start by televising the women's National road race from 2014.
