Tickets will go on sale this Friday for what Welcome to Yorkshire is billing as the biggest team presentation in the history of the Tour de France, at the First Direct Arena in Leeds on Thursday, July 3. But if you’re quick there’s a chance to get them earlier by pre-registering, which closes tonight.

Born in Scotland, Simon moved to London aged seven and now lives in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds with his miniature schnauzer, Elodie. He fell in love with cycling one Saturday morning in 1994 while living in Italy when Milan-San Remo went past his front door. A daily cycle commuter in London back before riding to work started to boom, he's been news editor at road.cc since 2009. Handily for work, he speaks French and Italian. He doesn't get to ride his Colnago as often as he'd like, and freely admits he's much more adept at cooking than fettling with bikes.

I've just watched the team presentations at Tour of Flanders, Sheldprijs and Paris-Roubiax. Also been within feet of Cancellara returning to team bus after Flanders and within inches of some of the other riders at the other events, All for free, (well Flanders did involve far too much Belguim beer).

Was hoping to say I was there in Millenium Square. But at that price, hope it's on tv good excuse for more beer and pizza.

They've said on twitter that the money is supposedly going straight on the event, but doing the math of assuming all tickets were the cheapest £45 & given that the arena has a capacity of 13k, that's £585k without taking into consideration the £65 & £85 seats.
Add to that that they've admitted that the Arena isn't charging them for its use, then it looks to be that even with any event costs they will make a fair whack of money from it, possibly a good way to covering the shortfall in the government's funding.
If Welcome to Yorkshire were more transparent and stated that's why they were charging then perhaps I'd be more inclined to buy a ticket (as the resurfaced roads will still be there long after the grand depart has finished), but as it is I certainly won't be going.

They've said on twitter that the money is supposedly going straight on the event, but doing the math of assuming all tickets were the cheapest £45 & given that the arena has a capacity of 13k, that's £585k without taking into consideration the £65 & £85 seats.
Add to that that they've admitted that the Arena isn't charging them for its use, then it looks to be that even with any event costs they will make a fair whack of money from it, possibly a good way to covering the shortfall in the government's funding.
If Welcome to Yorkshire were more transparent and stated that's why they were charging then perhaps I'd be more inclined to buy a ticket (as the resurfaced roads will still be there long after the grand depart has finished), but as it is I certainly won't be going.

They've said on twitter that the money is supposedly going straight on the event, but doing the math of assuming all tickets were the cheapest £45 & given that the arena has a capacity of 13k, that's £585k without taking into consideration the £65 & £85 seats.
Add to that that they've admitted that the Arena isn't charging them for its use, then it looks to be that even with any event costs they will make a fair whack of money from it, possibly a good way to covering the shortfall in the government's funding.
If Welcome to Yorkshire were more transparent and stated that's why they were charging then perhaps I'd be more inclined to buy a ticket (as the resurfaced roads will still be there long after the grand depart has finished), but as it is I certainly won't be going.

It wont be selling to anywhere near 13000 though. I'd imagine that they will lose some capacity due to the stage set up, cameras and screens etc and there will be a very, very high number of guests. All the teams' staff will no doubt need seats, plus partners and friends, sponsors will expect to get in for free too.

First Direct will no doubt have dibs on up to 10% of the capacity as part of it's naming rights as well as freebies for local government bodies and Tour Yorkshire staff etc.

Although they might be getting the arena for free, they will just be getting an empty shell, they'll still have to pay for lighting, sound and staging and such like as well as the associated crews and riggers they will need to bring in.

I still reckon they'll be not far off a quarter of a million in profit after all that though. It'd better be one hell of a show.