The countdown begins. In less than three years, Paris will host, from July 26 to August 11, 2024, the next edition of the Summer Olympic Games, and, from August 28 to September 8, that of the Paralympic Games. Search for partnerships, calendar of projects, ticketing, cybersecurity … Tony Estanguet, president of the Paris 2024 organizing committee (OCOG), who says himself “Perked up” speak “Happiness of sporting emotions” that he found in Tokyo, returns for The world on the projects and challenges that await its teams over the coming months. “The Olympic Games are a marathon in which you run at the speed of a 100 meters. For now, we’re keeping up with the pace ”, assures the triple Olympic canoe champion.
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The difficult search for partners
Since winning the Games, Paris 2024 has set itself the goal of winning 1.1 billion euros in partnership contracts that make up, with ticketing revenues and the financial contribution of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), 97 % of the OCOG budget (3.9 billion euros). At the start of 2021, when a little less than half the sum had been reached, Tony Estanguet confided to the World its ambition to achieve two-thirds of this target by the end of the year. Today, after the signatures, among others, of the French groups Sanofi and Decathlon – the world leader in sporting goods will dress the 45,000 volunteers for the Games – or even the American Cisco, specializing in cybersecurity, some 600 million euros were secured, ie 55% of the expected amount.
The end of the year is approaching, the horizon of two-thirds still seems distant – the Court of Auditors expressed, in mid-June, reservations on the ability of the OCOG to raise 1.1 billion euros in sponsorship – , but the COJO boss ensures “Put all [s]we energy ” to achieve this. “We are in advanced discussions with a few companies. “ Refused to say more. “These are very sensitive subjects”, retorts the triple Olympic canoe champion, who prefers to recall “Paris 2024’s strength of unspoiled attractiveness”. “For now, we are within the transit times that we had set before the Covid-19 crisis”, he simply adds.
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Projects launched, another suspended
The strength of the Paris 2024 concept, the organizers repeat over and over again, lies in the fact that it relies 95% on existing and temporary sites. Only the Athletes’ Village, the Media Village and the Olympic Aquatic Center (OAC) should rise from the ground. The health crisis due to Covid-19 had, for a time, frozen projects in the spring of 2020. But no worry for Tony Estanguet, according to whom the works of the Olympic village and the CAO were to start in 2021 so as not to be delayed. “We have a little bit of margin left, we will have to be extremely vigilant”, had warned, in June, Michel Cadot, interministerial delegate to the Olympic and Paralympic Games, in front of elected officials of Ile-de-France. “The Solideo [l’établissement public chargé de livrer les ouvrages olympiques] keeps the schedule that we had established in 2018, we are on schedule », assures the boss of the COJO today.
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