This is a significant change in discourse. While at the very end of 2023, the management of the Paris 2024 Organizing Committee (Cojop) wanted to be reassuring about the sale of tickets for the Paralympic Games, launched at the beginning of October, it is now a little more worried on this subject, classifying it among its points of vigilance.
At issue: the prospect of still having to sell a large part of these tickets between the end of July 2024, date of the start of the Olympic Games (July 26-August 11), and the end of August, date of the start of the Paralympic Games (August 28-September 8). This has led the organizers of the Games to speak today of the need to (re)accelerate the promotional campaigns for the event.
On November 22, 2023, when 830,000 tickets for the Paralympic Games, out of the 2.8 million planned in total, had been purchased, Michaël Aloïsio, the deputy general director of Paris 2024, argued that the sales of these tickets are traditionally “sales that arrive late”. To reassure, he cited the London Games in 2012, where “ 40% of tickets were sold between the start of the Olympic Games and the end of the Paralympic Games.
Two thirds of places still available
This reference is now considered, by Paris 2024, as a scenario in which it would be better not to find itself, as tickets for these Paralympic Games are selling out very slowly. February 28, 2024, guest on the show Telematin on France 2, the president of Cojop, Tony Estanguet, recognized that the ” two-thirds “ around 2.8 million places are still available, Only 900,000 having found takers. “ Do not hesitate to come ! They are the best athletes,” he said.
The call from the Paris 2024 organizers for (re)mobilization reflects, in part, their desire not to have to deal with unfilled stands in stadiums and halls this summer during the Paralympic Games. It is also – or even above all – motivated by another element: their concern to secure ticketing revenue as soon as possible.
This is because the latter, the Olympic and Paralympic Games combined, weigh heavily in the Cojop budget: they represent a third of the 4.4 billion euros in planned revenue. In the final stretch before the start of the Games, the management of Paris 2024 is therefore being scrupulous about everything that could influence the maintenance of the balance of its budget, in accordance with the commitments made – even if it has not hidden that it will use its contingency reserve (120 million euros) to achieve this.
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