TSN continued it’s “tour” of buying major sports properties today as it picked up exclusive Canadian coverage of the Tour de France. The 98th edition of the Tour will be the first to air on TSN and the first to air in high definition. This year’s race will be run from July 2 until July 24 covering approximately 3500km over 21 stages. I think that we will see most coverage air on TSN2, especially early on because TSN will be airing Wimbledon. TSN’s coverage of The Open Championship will also certainly send coverage over to TSN2 for a few days.
At the end of last year’s Tour de France OLN, which has broadcast the Tour in Canada for many years, made a quite announcement that it would no longer carry the premiere cycling event. This is the second big mainstream deal for cycling in Canada, previously a World Cup race in Quebec was aired on Sportsnet One last September. I give credit to both TSN and Sportsnet for airing this Olympic sport in the years leading up to their London 2012 coverage. I expect that TSN will use the Versus broadcast from the United States that we have saw in Canada on OLN for many years. I think that Versus’ coverage is okay, but not amazing.
A Rouge Point 
This is fabulous news for anyone who enjoys professional cycling. Rogers OLN programming is not worth the bandwidth granted to it with its multple repeats of low brow programs.
How about the Giro de Italia.
No news yet. I wouldn’t be surprised if it ended up on Sportsnet One though. I honestly thought they would get rights to all 3 Grand Tour races, but I guess TSN outbid them for the Tour de France.
Great news! OLN did a poor job last year as it only broadcast the race during the day, when most people work. The best part is watching the race with Bobke and friends in the evening.
I ejoyed watching the tour after work, But last year not able and you see the poor shows that OLN broadcast. Is TSN going to give the coverage of each stage in the evening?
I can’t guarantee it. I’m not even sure if they know yet. If they do it will probably be on TSN2 and only on weekdays where there isn’t anything else happening. Having said that, TSN2 has almost no live primetime summer programming, so I think they will. Just don’t quote me on it.
Looks like it TSN2 will be covering all stages. They only mention daytime airings starting at 8am ET on most days: http://www.tsn.ca/cycling/feature/?id=43897
See more information here. There will be nightly repeats on either TSN or TSN2.
TSN is carrying both daytime and nightime coverage of the race. Check the schedual at their web site