In my experience, many (if not most) sports aren’t really great to watch as a spectator, versus on TV... if your goal is appreciation of the actual sporting event taking place.
Bike racing? As you say, it’s hours if not days of effort and travel, for about five minutes of seeing the riders zoom past. Motorsport? At least they’re on a circuit and go past lots of times, but it’s actually very hard to have a tactical appreciation of what’s going on from the side of a track. Sports within a stadium (for example soccer, cricket) are better, but it’s still very hard to have a decent appreciation of what’s going on second to second, versus a decent TV presentation. Small court sports (e.g. basketball, tennis, badminton, etc.) are probably the best but there you are very dependent on the quality of the seating position you purchase.
But... this ignores the enjoyment of the travel and being present at the event. Yes, you get a much better appreciation of the racing watching the Le Mans 24 hour race (or indeed a TdF stage) on TV. But travelling, camping, barbecuing, partying, experiencing the event, with friends? That’s a life experience that far transcends enjoyment of the sport of self.
> why do you have to wait in traffic to get to it?
Because someone's closed a bunch of roads :)
Seriously though: You can sell tickets at the starting and finishing lines, or by putting a loop in the course and sending the riders past the spectators 10 times.
But for the rest of the course, the riders will shoot past in a few seconds.
You can't sell a 'party atmosphere' or pad the entertainment out with dancers and marching bands and food trucks because the spectators are spread out over the entire course.
And even if you decided to charge for tickets despite that - the course isn't fenced off, so people without tickets can just walk in. And if you added fences and bouncers checking tickets, you'd need loads of them because the course is far too long to funnel everyone through a single entrance like a music festival does. And even if the fences and bouncers somehow made economic sense, you've gone from blocking a section of road for an hour as the race goes past to blocking it for a day or two as the fences get built.
OP might have been referring to the hours of police/officials/advertising caravan that precede the riders. You can’t just show up 10 minutes before the race passes. On a typical mountain stage the roads are closed mid-morning so anyone who wants to see it either has to drive up in advance (up to a week on the really famous climbs) or ride/walk up on the day then wait for the aforementioned traffic to pass before seeing the race. But it’s okay: it’s a big party. You hang out with new friends, you wait for the media helicopters to appear, and then you see the riders, albeit briefly, producing inhuman levels of effort. Then you go home and watch the race for real on TV, happy with your day out.
On flat terrain in the middle of a stage you might be able to just park up and wait for 30 minutes but you’d also be missing the spectacle surrounding the race itself.
It's an 'event' and the furthest thing from 'spectator sport' because there is literally almost nothing to spectate.
Its 3 hours of 'prep' because the courses are usually way out there, way far away from anything, and near the route traffic is upside down, maybe there is parking maybe there is none, nobody knows.
It doesn't happen at a 'venue' that's designed for sport, it happens out there in the French boondocks.
Many want to watch it on a steep climb, where the riders are going slowest and are spread apart most, giving you optimal viewing time.
Such climbs often are over the only decent roads up the mountain, and those roads will be closed down an hour or so before the riders arrive.
There also will be competition for the best spots (in the outside of corners, where you can overlook the road)
Because of that, for many, it’s easily 3 hours of (traffic and waiting), even ignoring traffic time. But that need not be bad. You bring food and drink, sit in nice weather (hopefully), and watch the stage on tv.
Your views of a “spectator sport” might be skewed by Nascar or other good for tv Americanized sports with plenty of scoring and announcer drama. On-TV cycling is a “hang” and on the side of the road even more.
Well, no. I went seeing some stages of the Giro d'Italia. Time trials are awful on TV but great on the street because you see every single athlete passing by you. Normal stages are great on TV (3+ hours of live feed) but awful on the street because you don't see anything and you know little of what's going on. However in both cases it's great to be at the start, maybe a couple of hours in advance, or at the arrival, especially after the end.
Ciclocross is different. They have as much as 100k paying people (on venue) in the Netherlands and in Belgium. It's also great to be able to move around the track and see the cyclists in different spots. Probably this is possible only in smaller events. I have experience of races in Italy.
MTB, no direct experience. Looks great on TV and YouTube.
And if all cycling would go on pay TV, goodbye. I'll be a little sad but I'll look at something else. I'll keep cycling tough.
3 hours of traffic and waiting ...
And then the anticipation ...
The 'zoom ... zoom zoom zoom' - in 1 minute it's over. That's it.
On the last leg in Paris, you get 5x that, but still.
It's nice to see once but 'paying' for so many reasons is out of the question.
Nice to see a newspaper find a way out of the scourge ...