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PARIS 2024 OLYMPICS

Paris Olympics tickets viewed as too pricey, poll finds

Around four out of five French people think tickets for the 2024 Paris Olympics are too expensive, a poll showed Sunday, underlining growing public frustration with organisers over the issue.

Published: 5 March 2023 13:49 CET
Olympics
On Sunday, a poll revealed that 82 percent of French people believe that the prices for tickets to the 2024 Paris Olympics are too high. Photo by Shinnosuke Ando on Unsplash

A total 82 percent of respondents said that tickets for the games were “not accessible in terms of price”, according to a survey from the Odoxa polling group for the RTL media group and sports betting firm Winamax.

Around the same proportion of people (79 percent) found the ticketing process to be “complicated,” the survey found.

The president of the 2024 Paris organising committee, Tony Estanguet, has been forced on the defensive in the last fortnight after the first major release of tickets to the public under a lottery system.

Comparable to London in 2012?

Successful applicants have been obliged to buy places for three events at the same time, with many finding sports priced at a minimum 80 euros, meaning a family of four could face a bill of nearly 1,000 euros.

“We’re not more expensive than London in 2012,” Estanguet told RTL radio on February 22. “It’s the same for the football and rugby World Cups. These are the prices.”

The official slogan for the Paris event is “Games Wide Open”, and former canoeing gold medallist Estanguet promised “a large number of tickets at accessible prices, for all the sports” when the ticketing policy was announced in March last year.

Organisers have pledged a million tickets at 24 euros ($25) and almost half at under 50 euros, but the difficulties in obtaining these cut-price offers appear to be the reason for the public frustration.

Social media has been filled with comments denouncing prices of up to 690 euros for a place at the athletics, as well as a lack of availability for sports such as fencing and climbing that have quickly sold out.

Around three million tickets were on sale in the first phase, with a further seven million to come in another two rounds.

Second phase

The second phase will begin in May which will see applicants able to buy single tickets, including for the opening and closing ceremonies.

There will follow a third and final ticket-selling phase at the end of 2023.

In an editorial this week, left-leaning newspaper Le Monde said the first reactions to the ticketing system were “worrying” given the objectives of organisers to make the games accessible and a popular success.

“Tony Estanguet might claim that ‘tens of thousands of people are delighted’, but the dissatisfaction of the public is a threat when ticket sales are only just starting,” the newspaper added.

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PARIS 2024 OLYMPICS

Paris Olympics organisers deny athletes’ beds are ‘anti-sex’

They may be made of cardboard, but the beds at the athletes' village for this year's Paris Olympics have been chosen for their environmental credentials, not to prevent competitors having sex, organisers said.

Published: 18 May 2024 13:19 CEST
Paris Olympics organisers deny athletes' beds are 'anti-sex'

The clarification came after fresh reports that the beds, manufactured by Japanese company Airweave and already used during the Tokyo 2020 Games, were to deter athletes from jumping under the covers together in the City of Love.

“We know the media has had a lot of fun with this story since Tokyo 2020, but for Paris 2024 the choice of these beds for the Olympic and Paralympic Village is primarily linked to a wider ambition to ensure minimal environmental impact and a second life for all equipment,” a spokesman for the Paris Games told AFP.

The bed bases are made from recycled cardboard, but during a demonstration in July last year Airweave founder Motokuni Takaoka jumped on one of them and stressed that they “can support several people on top”.

The Paris Games spokesman underlined that “the quality of the furniture has been rigorously tested to ensure it is robust, comfortable and appropriate for all the athletes who will use it, and who span a very broad range of body types – from gymnasts to judokas”.

The fully modular Airweave beds can be customised to accommodate long and large body sizes, with the mattresses — made out of resin fibre — available with different firmness levels.

After the Games, the bed frames will be recycled while the mattresses and pillows will be donated to schools or associations.

Athletes will sleep in single beds, two or three to a room, in the village, a newly built complex close to the main athletics stadium in a northern suburb of the capital.

A report this week in the New York Post tabloid entitled “‘Anti-sex’ beds have arrived at Paris Olympics” was reported by other media and widely circulated on social media.

Similar claims went viral before the Tokyo Olympics, sometimes fanned by athletes themselves.

To debunk them, Irish gymnast Rhys McClenaghan filmed a video of himself jumping repeatedly on a bed to demonstrate their solidity.

At those Games, during the coronavirus pandemic, organisers, however, urged athletes to “avoid unnecessary forms of physical contact”.

In March, Laurent Dalard, in charge of first aid and health services at Paris 2024, said around 200,000 condoms for men and 20,000 for women will be made available at the athletes’ village during the Games.

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