Sometimes the Vuelta doesn’t get the credit it deserves. The final Grand Tour of the year has to meet lofty expectations, following the Giro and Le Tour, falling at a time of year when both viewers and riders are fatigued by many months of race action in an increasingly congested race calendar. But this year was a rollercoaster from start to finish and reminded us why this race still deserves our attention.
This year’s Vuelta had particular prominence in the PaceUp calendar, as we worked directly on race communication with Unipublic. It was our second Grand Tour of the year (the first we’re technically not allowed to talk about, shhhh) and the first time we’d covered the Spanish race from start to finish, supporting the creation and delivery of content across the La Vuelta social channels.
The circumstances surrounding the first few stages … the “will he, won’t he” around Sepp Kuss … Evenepoel’s implosion and resulting offensive prowess … Jumbo-Visma being Jumbo-Visma. Those are just some of the main highlights covered widely across the race, with many more exciting stories unravelling during each of the three weeks.
In the end, the Eagle of Durango took a well-deserved victory, and it’s probably fair to say we weren’t the only ones happy to see Kuss take the victory as he rolled into Madrid. From our perspective, there were some impressive figures to look back on digitally as the race continues to grow globally.
In total, La Vuelta’s website saw an impressive 5.9 million unique visitors, up 60% from 2022, with 18 million visits. The total social media audience size by the end of the race was 1.8 million followers, which is up 24% on 2022.
The best performing Instagram post of the race was a reel of Sepp Kuss in ‘Beast Mode’ – one that received over 113,600 likes and was watched over 3.1 million times. Elsewhere, a post on X, formerly Twitter, reminding people to drink responsibly after Kuss enjoyed his podium champagne a little too much (for some!) had over 783,000 impressions and received over 6,300 likes. This served to remind us of the importance of the platform for the sport’s coverage … despite its many other pitfalls.
For us, it was awesome to contribute to the success of the race digitally. Playing a key part in the delivery which achieved impactful growth across the board for the race, the Vuelta brand and the partners involved who helped make it all possible. We’re one cog in a very big wheel, but we’re already looking to roll into next year’s Vuelta with a year’s experience under our wheels, as well as working on a certain three-week race in France ahead of then.
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Our race with two of the three Grand Tours in 2023 forms part of our live events coverage delivery within the team, something that also spans other events outside of cycling, with London Marathon Events being another organisation we work with closely.
Alongside these events, we’re often plugged into live events coverage and activations via the different pro cycling teams we work with, including both men’s and women’s Team dsm-firmenich outfits as well as CERATIZIT-WNT.
If you’re part of an endurance sporting event organisation, or a professional team as well, looking to activate sponsorships and tell stories from your events through content and communication, then we’d love to chat.
