2013 Le Mans 24 Hours – A year of record audiences!

The Le Mans 24-Hours anniversary race, marred by the tragic death of Allan Simonsen, was a huge popular success with record audiences. The first analyses speak for themselves and this event will remain in the annals for a long time. Here are the main figures.

Spectators at the circuit

· 245 000 spectators at the circuit, 5 000 more than in 2012.

· 24 000 spectators on the first day of practice (Wednesday 19th June), 47 000 the second day (Thursday 20th June).

· 23 000 spectators at the test day (Sunday 9th June).

· 15 000 spectators at the Earth, Wind & Fire experience’s concert featuring Al McKay on Saturday 22nd June.

Press

· 1 405 journalists from 42 different countries (written press/radio/photographers/new media) accredited (1 345 in 2012).

· They represented 652 different media.

Television

· 1 178 television personnel, including 430 for televised production, compared to 914 in 2012.

· 30 international television networks bought the rights to show the 2013 race (23 in 2012).

· They covered 190 countries (same as in 2012).

· They enabled 707.3 million viewers to follow it (579.75 million in 2012).

· 126 TV commentary teams from all over the world were at Le Mans (85 in 2012).

Records for the race TV broadcasters

· Eurosport: new record audience with 24.4 million TV viewers over the coverage as a whole (17.7 million during the race) on the Eurosport and Eurosport 2 channels throughout Europe for a total of 44 hours broadcasting.

· France Télévision: a big increase. Sunday 23rd June, France 3 doubled its audience compared to 2012 with a peak of 2.3 million at the finish (16,7 % of the PdA). On all the broadcasts during the Le Mans 24 Hours France 2 and France 3 attracted an average of 1.3 million TV viewers (11.1% of the PdA), a significant increase compared to 2012. (the global audience figures will be announced at a later date).

Web TV

· 5 743 822 connections (3 200 000 in 2012).

· A peak of 111 570 simultaneous connections at 13 h 00 on Sunday 23rd June (new DailyMotion record, the previous ones were the recent election of the new Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and David Beckham’s Parisian press conference)!

· 531 580 connections came from mobile equipment (tablets, Smartphones, including 11 000 simultaneously).

· WebTV spectators connected from 70 countries. After the French, the Japanese and the Americans had the most connections, and the 70th country on the list was Uruguay with 1 032 webspectators.

Social networks

· 149 453 fans on the Le Mans 24-Hours Facebook « ACO Officials ». (90 000 in 2012)

· 13 700 000 impressions of Facebook contents either on the ACO wall or the fans wall.

· 370 000 : Number of tweets on the race (132 000 in 2012)

· 147 500 clicks.

· 55 550 subscribers on the French and English Twitter accounts #LM24. (25 000 in 2012)

· 627 messages sent by the ACO to its followers during the week of the Le Mans 24 Hours.

Internet sites

· The internet sites 24h-lemans.com, lemans.org and lemans-tv.com (outside Web TV) received 2 353 000 visits during the Le Mans 24-Hours weekend (1 456 000 in 2012) .

· 562 817 connections from mobile equipment (tablets and Smartphones) compared to 164 910 in 2012.

On the radio

· The Radio France Group, partner of the event mobilised more than 60 people to cover the race from the circuit.

· 30 hours live were broadcast over the race weekend including nine devoted to the night of the event (from 21 h 00 to 6 h 00) put out on the 43 stations France Bleu in France.

· France Bleu Maine broadcast over 100 reports devoted to the race and France Bleu National fifteen.

· 30 live reports and 40 flashes were broadcast by France before, during and after the race.