100 days before the start of the Paris Paralympic Games (August 28-September 8), the event is still struggling to find its audience. If the ticket office for the Olympic Games was stormed, this is not the case for that of the disabled sports event. “We have currently sold 930,000 tickets, that is to say a third of the tickets for the Paralympic Games. We have two thirds left to sell,” admitted Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra in an interview with La Croix on Sunday. In total, 2.8 million tickets were put on sale last October.
Nevertheless, “at this stage, there are no particular concerns,” she wanted to reassure, citing the example of the London Games in 2012. “Traditionally, many places for the Paralympic Games are sell at the time of the Olympic Games. In London, a million tickets for the Paralympics were sold during the Olympics,” she recalled. During the Olympics (July 26-August 11), a special Paralympic Games communication is already planned: “We will tell spectators “come back for the second leg of the Games” and we will deploy a lot of information in the competition venues , celebration areas but also in public spaces,” said the minister.
Also read “A dream that will come true”: Sofia and Sara, these Colombian sisters who will cross the Atlantic to volunteer at the Paris Olympics
Before that, Paris 2024 launched this Monday, on the occasion of D-100 of the Paralympic Games, a communication campaign to make spectators want to travel for the event. “With the J-100, we are launching a very good campaign which will help accelerate sales,” Amélie Oudéa-Castéra told La Croix. Featuring three para-athletes (Arnaud Assoumani, Paralympic long jump champion in 2008 in Beijing, wheelchair tennis player Pauline Déroulède and European blind football champion Gael Rivière), it highlights the message: “It I don’t miss anything except you. This campaign is based around a video, capsules for social networks and posters, distributed in Paris – particularly in the corridors of the metro and on buses – and in the host communities of the Paras.
Unlike the ticket office for the Olympic Games, which has raised eyebrows for the price considered abusive of its tickets, that of the Paralympic Games is intended to be much more accessible, with tickets starting at 15 euros. But be careful, even if two thirds of the tickets are still for sale, “the situation is quite heterogeneous”, with “certain sessions (which) are already full”, specified Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, citing armchair fencing or para shooting. sporty. “And there are other disciplines where, it’s true, there remains a fairly high occupancy rate to fill. On para-athletics, wheelchair basketball, para-swimming and wheelchair tennis, which represent the four main gauges to be filled, we are going to place a particular focus,” she indicated.