Tour de France 2014

Tradition and to encourage racing. Two good reasons. Prize money is part of racing at all levels and the amounts at the TDF are relatively generous.

I'm not sure it will be costing the PC teams millions to race. That's more like their annual budget.

If I don't remember wrong, Harmon said during one of the first stages of the tour that the minimum amount that a team needs to have/invest to partecipate is something near the 3 million euros mark. Someone need to verify if correct or not.