Paris 2024: The IPC on Making the Paralympic Games the Best Ever While Changing Culture and Attitudes Towards Disability

Paris 2024: The IPC on making the Paralympic Games the best ever while changing culture and attitudes towards disability By Heather McLean

Monday, June 26, 2023 - 08:00

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One of the Paralympic Games' Organising Committee's key commitments is organising a top level sporting event that captures the audience's imagination, such as through the first Opening Ceremony to be held outside a stadium Paris 2024

Paris 2024 is just over one year away and hot on its heels will be the Paralympic Games, which this year is going to be the biggest and best ever with more live sports being broadcast, a record breaking number of rights deals, and an increased focus on digital media.

Yet it is not only about increasing viewing figures and broadcasting hours for Craig Spence, the International Paralympic Committee's (IPC) chief brand and communications officer, and John Lisko, the IPC's managing director of global media rights. For them, it is crucial that the Paralympics is a flagship for using sport as a tool to change culture and attitudes towards disability around the world.

Most successful Games to date

On the overall vision for the 2024 Paralympics, Spence says: I think in terms of broadcasting, Paris 2024 has the potential to be our most successful Games to date. There are several reasons for that. We're working hard to really broaden the coverage in terms of the products, so for Paris 2024, we will have all 22 sports live for the first time. In Tokyo, we had 19 sports, with ENG coverage of the remaining three, but for Paris for the first time ever [we will have] 22 sports live.

He adds that in Rio there were 16 live sports, so it's real rapid progress in terms of the product, Spence adds. That's a credit to the organising committee as well, who we're really keen to step up the level of coverage and work with OBS on that; it's amazing.

Lisko comments on the great progress already made by the Paralympic Committee on rights: We looked at it from an approach to coverage, and working with our rights centres around the world, we've changed the way that we're working. We've moved from just getting coverage to really maximising and broadening the viewership as much as possible.

Right now, 14 months out before the Games, we already can secure coverage for 75% of the planet's population, Lisko continues. We can ensure six billion people will see the Games, and we still have 14 months to go, and we're not done yet. So we're making terrific progress with the number of deals that we have in place.

However Spence adds that even at this point in rights sales, Paris has already exceeded the total revenues for the Tokyo Games: What we're trying to do is really maximise revenue as well. So the Paralympics, previously with some broadcasters, they've treated the event as a charity event, oh yeah, we need to tick the box and do the Paralympics . But now with the products that we've got, the sport is sensational. We've got athletes who are delivering performances that would win that Olympic gold. Marcus Rehm, the German long jumper, was an example of that; his world record would've won every Olympics since 1992. So the product is great. With months still to go, we've already generated more revenue than we had for Tokyo, which is pretty phenomenal and puts us in a really strong position.

The broadcasters are now realising that this is actually a great sporting event and they're willing to pay more for it, continues Spence. And we're being a bit more aggressive this time, not just in terms of if you buy the rights, use them; we're also saying, you may have paid [X amount for the rights] previously, but that's not getting you anywhere close to the rights this time round. If you don't pay, you're not going to get them. So that direct, more aggressive strategy is paying dividends, and that's why we've already exceeded the Tokyo revenues with only three quarters of the market secured.

For the Tokyo Games there were 150 TV, radio, and online outlets showing the Games in 107 territories. Notes Spence: Now we've not exceeded that yet, but many of our deals for Tokyo were done very last minute. With 14 months to go, we are in the strongest position we've ever been in for Paralympics, which is supremely exciting for us. And to have 75% of the globe covered already is really good. So we've got 14 months to really pinpoint how we turn on that remaining 25%.

Spence goes on: In terms of ticket sales, we're the third biggest sporting event on earth. There's only the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup that sell more than us. For Paris we're aiming to sell three million tickets, which would surpass the 2.8 million we sold for London 2012. That's the joy of the Games; you've got a whole city organising the first and the third biggest sporting events in the period of six weeks, in this fantastic festival of sport.

The visual identity of the Paris 2024 Games was created around four main themes: celebration, transfer, rationalisation and personalisation Paris 2024

All about relationships

Lisko says this rights coverage success is all about working on the Paralympic Committee's relationships with broadcasters. We're working with the broadcasters to maximise the use of the rights, he explains. So we want to make sure that they're maximising all the airtime across all their traditional and their digital platforms.

He comments that they are also working with streaming platforms and with broadcasters that intend to use digital media to ensure that the content will suit the channel it is pushed over. With all the streaming platforms that come onboard, we're working with them to make sure that they're using all of those

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