Cycling in Britain - a niche sport?

So we notice that in the BBC Sports Personality of the Year, Mark Cavendish scored 49.47% of the total votes, beating runner-up Darren Clarke (a golfer) by 169,152 to 42,188 - in other words, by 126,964 votes.

Cycling's a niche sport in Britain, right? The combined total of the votes received by the nine runners-up came to 172,807 - just 3,655 (0.53%) more than Cav won alone.

Notably, there was not a single big-budget-never-off-the-telly footballer on the final list.

Something tells me the television channels are missing an opportunity here.