Louis-Marie Valin is an expert sports consultant. With agencies or advertisers, he works on communication, sponsorship, events or entrepreneurship issues. He is also a member of the Sport Business Observatory and founder of the site sport-vox.com.
On the green rectangle, this edition of the Rugby World Cup will leave a particularly bitter taste for all oval ball lovers across France, the competition will nevertheless have been a great success. Between the enthusiasm of the public in the stadiums, the television audiences and the commercial repercussions, the FFR can congratulate itself on an organization without false notes. The RWC 2023 will even continue to exist thanks to a new and innovative program: Campus 2023.
Campus 2023: an ambitious program
Aware of its social responsibility and wishing to ensure the sustainability of the event, GIP France 2023 has found an interesting way to achieve these objectives. Drawing on the experience of 2007, when the influx of licensees generated by the World Cup could not be absorbed and controlled correctly due to the lack of professionalism of the welcoming structures often managed by volunteers, the GIP France 2023 has wanted to focus its action on this problem.
Thus, from December 2021, more than 1,700 work-study students have integrated the various diploma courses offered. Covering sport, tourism and security, they must allow future graduates to join clubs, leagues or federations throughout the territory to provide real know-how by improving their functioning. Campus 2023, there are nearly 1,200 work-study structures and 115 training sites spread across the entire national territory (including all overseas territories), 3 professional sectors, 4 levels of training and 11 diplomas prepared .
Un impact territorial fort
This particularly innovative system, the establishment of a corporate CFA within an organizing committee of a major international sporting event (GESI) having never been considered before, and of an exceptional scale brings its fruits today. With 85% success, there will be nearly 1,500 new competent professionals, including 1,100 who actively participated in the World Cup, who will fuel the pool of professionals in the run-up to the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, particularly in the sports events and security sectors, but also, and above all, nourishing the sports association sector throughout our territories.
These local sports clubs which for too long have been dependent on the goodwill and energy of aging volunteers (51% of over 65s are involved in voluntary actions) and are increasingly in demand (the commitment of sports volunteers would represent , on the ground and each year, the equivalent of… 260,000 full-time equivalents) will now be able to strengthen and structure themselves by drawing from this new reservoir.
An international ambition
Apprentices who will not only have had the opportunity to evolve in French structures and be integrated into a global event but also to internationalize within the framework of Erasmus. The CFA “Campus 2023” thus enabled 85 apprentices to complete their course by completing an immersive internship within 36 national or international sports organizations, public or private, in 27 countries and on 4 continents.
An opportunity for these young people but also for the organizations that welcomed them. Indeed, this exchange will also have been an opportunity for the French Rugby Federation to export its know-how to smaller rugby federations currently under construction. Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Denmark, Portugal… so many new markets that World Rugby wishes to develop and whose resources remain very limited. These federations were thus able to benefit from a transfer of skills coming from one of the most powerful and organized rugby union federations on the oval planet while allowing young people to perfect their training with an increased field of responsibility. A win-win in which rugby emerges victorious.
More than a consolation prize after the disillusionment of South Africa, to whom France had ironically stolen the organization of the competition, the success of such a project stands as a milestone in the future successes of French rugby.
