• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, July 16, 2009

Name one large TV sporting event that has nearly doubled its viewership from a year ago. The NBA, Major League Baseball, NFL, or the NHL would all be wrong answers.

The correct one would be the Tour de France on Versus, which, for its first nine days of coverage has sprinted to an 83% gain, 481,000 viewers against last year's nine-day average of 263,000. Not only that, but Versus has grown its men 18-49 demo even more -- by 138%.

Unless you have bicycled into a cave, you know why: Lance Armstrong, the dominant seven-time winner of the event, the man with an incredible comeback story from cancer, is back after three years in retirement, looking to add another eye-opening storyline to the world's biggest cycling race.

That would be enough. But the storyline goes deeper. Armstrong has returned, not just to ride along easily and ceremonially with the peloton. Though stage 11, he is currently in solid third place just a mere eight seconds behind the current leader, Rinaldo Nocentini.

Even this isn't the most interesting part of the story. The big soap opera storyline is that Armstrong is neck-and-neck with his teammate, Alberto Contador, himself a Tour de France winner in 1997. Contador is just a scant six seconds behind Nocentini, in second place.

All this makes has made for somewhat of a soap-opera drama. Typically teams in the Tour de France know who their leader is going to be entering the big three-week race. This hasn't been true for Astana, the Kazakhstan-sponsored team of Armstrong and Contador.

Will Armstrong help his teammate when and if necessary? Will Contador do the same for Armstrong? Is Armstrong high-fiving Contador after a major team trial? The story is still developing because the race hasn't approached the key Alps stages held the last week of the event. That's where race the will be won.

All this shows that in a heavily marketed, still-scripted TV world, it can be the unexpected, unscripted storyline that brings in tviewership.

That said, Versus was ready to do battle, raising the volume with its on-air promos touting "Lance versus Contador versus Levi.""Levi" is another Astana teammate, Levi Leipheimer, who is also contending for a high TdF placing.

Kobe and LeBron in the NBA finals? We got only half of that -- but still decent NBA Finals numbers. Tiger Woods always draws a TV crowd. But Woods with a noticeably crumbling knee, complete with wincing and groans during the 2008 U.S. Open golf event -- where he went on to win -- drew even bigger TV crowds than he normally gets.

Now, to be fair, a half million TV viewers for cycling doesn't seem much compared to the other sports. Baseball's All Star game pulled in 14 million viewers on Tuesday night, for example.

You get what you pay for. Versus, for example, pays around $70 million a year for the right to air the Tour de France. Fox and CBS, for example, pay around $600 million to $700 million for a season's worth of NFL games.

But in an age of highly marketed and managed TV assets, sporting events can be like candy for adults -- unexpected, quick, and like a sugar rush. Worried about crashing later? Maybe not. Armstrong says this Tour may not be his last.