Tour de France. Images from Israel broadcast every few minutes
Photo: EPA
Israel among Tour de France sponsors
Hundreds of ads and commercials promoting Holy Land are being broadcast on Eurosport during annual bicycle race as part of €500,000 contract signed with Israeli Tourism Ministry.
Those of you watching the Tour de France broadcasts on Eurosport may have been surprised to discover that Israel's Tourism Ministry is one of the sponsors of the world's most famous bicycle race, which began this weekend, alongside companies like Nike and Coca-Cola.
The clips and commercials will also be broadcast during the three-week race, presenting tourist sites in Israel and captions reading "Israel: Once in a lifetime," noting that the Tour De France raise is being sponsored by Israel's Tourism Ministry.
Under an agreement signed about a year ago between the Tourism Ministry and Eurosport, which is considered the most watched sports channel in the world, the channel will broadcast videos and commercials about Israel throughout 2014, in a bid to encourage tourism to the country and present a trip to Israel as "a once in a lifetime" visit.
Expensive Vacation
Foreign visitors rate tour guides and archeological sites as most satisfying components of their Holy Land trip, Tourism Ministry survey shows.
The clips include images of landscapes from Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, the Dead Sea and other tourism sites and mention sports events such as the Tel Aviv Marathon, the Jerusalem Marathon and the Tiberias Marathon along the Sea of Galilee.
The Tourism Ministry is paying Eurosport about €1 million (about $1.36 million) for the year-long broadcast of its commercials, €500,000 of the sum during the race.
The agreement was initiated by Tourism Ministry Director-General Amir Halevy, who is a cyclist himself. "The ministry sought to reach a wide audience, and Eurosport is exactly the place to do that," he explained.
Ministry officials noted that Israel was gaining a lot of exposure following the agreement, as images from the country are broadcast and its name is mentioned every few minutes on the popular channel.
