Press
L'Échappée, the auction-based fantasy cycling game for friends
L'Échappée is a free fantasy cycling game: in each league, players fight over riders at auction before every big race, then score points on the real race.
Get in touchAt a glance
- The game
- Auction-based fantasy cycling with friends
- Launch
- 2026 season, mobile app launched for the Tour de France
- Price
- Free, no ads, no betting or stakes
- Where to play
- On the web, iPhone and Android
- Races
- Grand Tours, Monuments and WorldTour races
- Leagues
- Private, 2 to 16 players, for a single race or the whole season
- Languages
- French, English and Dutch
How it works
Create a league
A player creates a private league for a single race or the whole season, and invites friends with a link.
Fight over the riders
Every rider goes up for sealed-bid auction, over several rounds. A rider belongs to one player only: to get the favourite, you have to bid more than the others and make do with the budget that is left.
The real race decides
Wins, placings, jerseys: riders score points based on their real results, calculated automatically after every stage.
The story
In most fantasy cycling games, everyone builds their team alone on a fixed budget, and everyone ends up with the same leaders. L'Échappée borrows the idea behind the success of MPG, the French fantasy football game: a transfer market between friends, where every player has to win their riders against the others.
The idea was born among friends, on a cycling holiday, talking about MPG and a biathlon fantasy game run on a spreadsheet. The first season was played in 2026, with an iOS and Android app launched for the Tour de France.
The 2026 season in numbers
First season, internal accounts excluded.
72%
of Tour players still active in the third week
92%
still there in the third week in leagues of 8 players or more
1 in 4
visitors arriving through an invitation join a friend's league
In the works for 2027
- The Peloton: play without friends, in a 10-player division, with national standings.
- The season league: one round per big race, from Milan-San Remo to Il Lombardia.
- Breakaway points: riders who spend the day out front score, even if they are caught.
- Community Leagues: a creator, a club or a company opens its own official league, under its name.
The 2027 calendar and a page for each race are on the races page.
Media assets
App screenshots and game access available on request.
Press contact
Clément Michel, founder of L'Échappée
contact@lechappee.appA fifteen-minute demo of the game, or a league for your newsroom, just ask.
Updated on 16 October 2026