After World War II, the French government seized the breed from the previous owner, who had collaborated with the Nazis. Then, in 1956, Émilien Amaury, founder of Le Parisien Libéré, another newspaper, and an associate bought the rights, in perpetuity, for 20 million French francs, according to Alex Duff, author of “Le Fric: Family, power and money: the business of the Tour de France”. That equates to about $700,000 in inflation-adjusted terms, a huge figure for a trophy asset that, pre-TV, was losing money.
In 1965, Mr. Amaury bought his partner’s shares, and his son Philippe, who died in 2006, succeeded him, leaving the company in the hands of his widow, Marie-Odile. Obviously, she is formidable and unyielding.
In the late 2000s, a Belgian sports entrepreneur, Wouter Vandenhaute, teamed up with a private equity firm to propose a modernized cycling league with a full season and the Tour as a Super Bowl. The idea came to nothing. Mr. Vandenhaute offered Mr. Duff a theory about why he failed.
“It is the French culture of conservatism that has stopped all progress,” he said.
This culture has been characterized as “economic patriotism,” an idea reinforced in 2005. That year, the government quashed a rumored takeover of Danone by PepsiCo, calling the yogurt maker an “industrial treasure.” The offer never materialized.
For his book, Mr. Duff obtained a rare interview with Jean-Etienne Amaury, who took charge of the Tour when his mother stepped down in 2020. During the conversation, Mr. Amaury ruminated on one of the offers he and his family had hijacked, this one allegedly coming from a group of Silicon Valley billionaires.
