Blurrt

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The story of Le Tour De France

July 8, 2014 — by

There is no doubt that having the Grand Depart of 101st Tour de France in Yorkshire was a resounding success, but who or what were the winners and losers over the 3 day excursion into the UK?

Since the early hours of Saturday 5th July, Blurrt has been collecting tweets referencing the Tour de France and has so far gathered over 518k tweets (half of those being retweets); of these 53% have been positive, 13% negative and the rest neutral in sentiment. The positive tweets have had an average sentiment of >+2 (on a range of -5 being really negative to +5 being really positive) with a higher volume of tweets during Day 1 (see graphs below).

TourdeFrance:UK 2014-07-08 11.13.06

 

Twitter volume peaked twice in Day 1, and there was a corresponding dip in sentiment expressed around 4.40pm. The conversation trending on Twitter was unsurprisingly centered on Mark Cavendish and Marcel Kittel as the race reached its conclusion.

Screenshot 2014-07-08 11.34.20

The Transport for London came in for a bit of criticism with the road closures and the budget for Le Tour coming out of their budget to promote tourism and cycling.

The real winner was Yorkshire with over 154k people tweeting about Yorkshire – 54% being positive. The positive conversation peaked on Day 1 and people were even more positive when mentioning Yorkshire’s crowds – over 57% of all tweets expressing a positive sentiment. The volume of Twitter activity mentioning Yorkshire and crowds was less on Day 2, suggesting that the crowds on Day 1 was one of the success stories of the event. This seems to back up reports that over 1 million people turned out to support the riders. Another winner was Yorkshire’s roads with over 77.29k tweets mentioned Yorkshire’s roads – over 56% of all tweets expressing a positive sentiment.