2014 Le Mans 24 Hours: A resounding success

On the track the 2014 Le Mans 24-Hours race was the theatre of a gripping sporting duel, which attracted an exceptional crowd of 263 300 spectators to the circuit. In addition in terms of media fallout the race surpassed expectations. The early figures speak for themselves: this event will go down in history. Here are the first major figures of this summary.

Spectators at the circuit

- 263 300 spectators at the circuit, 18 300 more than in 2013.
- 29 500 spectators for the first day’s practice (Wednesday 11th June), 54 000 the second day (Thursday 12th June). - 24 000 spectators at the test day (Sunday 1st June).

Press

- 1 423 journalists (written press/radio/photographers/new media) accredited (1 405 en 2013)
- The 1 423 journalists came from 49 different countries (42 in 2013).

In France only there were 4 063 media hits (figures including articles published in the written press or on internet as well as radio and TV reports), the equivalent in terms of space buying of 17 344 000 €.

Television

- 1 023 TV personnel were present at the Le Mans 24 Hours for TV production.
- 104 teams of TV reporters were on the spot.

TV broadcasters

- 31 international TV networks bought the TV broadcasting rights for the 2014 race (30 in 2013). - They covered 190 countries (as many as in 2013). - This gave a potential audience of 802.1-million viewers (707.3 in 2013). - Eurosport: this year 22.6 million TV viewers were able to follow the Le Mans 24 Hours on the Eurosport and Eurosport 2 channels all over Europe thanks to a total of more than 45 hours broadcasting. - France Télévision: on average on the France 2 and France 3 channels, the Le Mans 24 Hours attracted 1 million viewers, 9 % of the audience. France 2 had 1 million TV viewers (11,1 % of the PdA) and France 3 800 000 (6,8 % of the PdA). The best performance of the weekend was on France 2 at the start of the race with 1.1 million TV viewers following the live broadcast at 14 h 50, 12 % of the PdA.

Le Mans 24-Hours Application

The new arrival in the world of Le Mans 24-Hours communications tools the Le Mans 24-Hours application met with immediate success. It was downloaded 225 186 times on iOS and Androïd mobiles. To this number can be added the 76 102 downloads counted on 25th May after the first two rounds of the FIA World Endurance Championship. In total this application was downloaded 301 288 times. With the Le Mans 24 Hours now over the application will be adapted again to enable fans to follow the remaining five rounds of the 2014 FIA WEC.

WebTV

- 6 600 000 connections via the different sharing platforms (compared to 5 743 822 in 2013).
- A spike of 159 300 simultaneous connections at 14 h 54 on Sunday 15th June.
- The WebTV spectators connected from 101 different countries. After the French, the Japanese, the Belgians, the Americans and the British registered the most connections and the last country was Greenland with 232 webspectators!

Internet sites

- The official 24h-lemans.com internet site generated 3 381 000 individual visits from the test day till the end of the Le Mans 24 Hours (2 353 000 in 2013).

Namely: 1 773 000 individual visitors compared to 1 223 000 in 2013.

- There were 899 872 connections from mobiles (tablets and Smartphones) compared to 562 817 in 2013.

A.C.O.