i edited it down to multi-million but I guess it's somewhere in between.
Cycling is a big sport in Europe, South-America and Australia. In many countries it's the most popular sport after football (especially in Spain, Italy, Belgium, France) The 3 big staged multi week tours (France, Italy and Spain) are shown live on television in most of the world. Like literally 4-5 hours per day for 3 weeks per event. They draw million's of viewers globally, and there are hundred's of thousands of people spectating the pack as it passes on the road. Cities actually lobby and pay big money for being a stop/finish place. Utrecht was start of the Tour de France last year and hosted a time-trial and the start of the first stage, they drew around 500k tourists/fans in those two days. Big sponsors jump into this exposure (Banks, telecom, insurance etc etc)
All combined it's big business and winning a tour makes you a national hero.
The big cycling events where actually started by the newspapers in the early 1900's to have exiting stuff to write about in the summer months. The reason the leader in the Giro wears pink, is it's the color the Italian daily sporting paper "la gazetta del sport" is printed on. (same with yellow in tour de France).
HAHAHA yeah that was a good color! Can you explain to me why/how a bicycling event is a billion dollar industry?