Media outlets’ coverage on Le Tour de Langkawi 2019

Last Saturday, Le Tour de Langkawi (LTdL) ended its multistage bicycle run in Langkawi. Despite losing his bike in a crash that forced him to make a switch, Australian cyclist Benjamin Dyball took home the overall title at the Le Tour de Langkawi. The result below was retrieved from LTdL official website.

 

Malaysia, Malaysia Indicator, sports, Le Tour de langkawi

 

The cross-state event lasted a week from April 6 to April 13 in multiple stages across a few states, starting from Tampin and continued through Melaka, Putrajaya, Genting, Taiping, Alor Setar, and ending in Langkawi.

 

LTdL is the brainchild of Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad as an effort to put Malaysia on the world sporting and tourism map. First held in 1996, it was the largest bicycle race in Asia with a prize pool of RM 1.1 million.

 

Based on the graph, news on LTdL soared during the month of April. It is observed that most of the news outlets were keeping up with the scores in stages as the event unfolds each day.

 

Malaysia, Malaysia Indicator, sports, Le Tour de langkawi

 

For the media share, Bernama produced more news on the cycling tournament compared to their other media counterparts. Moreover, the number of news produced by Utusan, which is in the second spot, is almost half the amount of news by Bernama. Another point to observe is most of media that reported on the cycling event were of Malay language medium.

 

Malaysia, Malaysia Indicator, sports, Le Tour de langkawi

 

Grazing through Bernama’s coverage, besides publishing articles that were tracking almost every event that happened during the week, Bernama also reported road closures, articles about how Tun M initiated the event, and down to minor details like the amount of cyclists participating in the race.

 

In comparison, in a search through English medium news outlets, the Star online had minimal reports on the event, as the articles on the first search page dated back to February and March. Compared to Malay medium Utusan, where almost all articles on the first search page were for the month of April.

 

Judging by this, perhaps it is safe to assume that the sporting event appeals more to the Malay audience.