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TRENDS
PARALYMPIC SPORT COMES OF AGE
Can the Paralympic Games challenge the world’s great sporting events?
THIS YEAR’S SUMMER Paralympic
Games in London was the most popular
and commercially successful in the event’s
52-year history. Just how far Paralympic
Sport has come over the last decade can
be seen in key figures around ticketing,
broadcast coverage and sponsorship.
At the 2004 Athens Olympic Games,
for example, only 400,000 tickets were
sold. In London, the Paralympic Games
was a sell-out with 2.7 million tickets
taken up by the public.
In terms of television coverage and
audience, the 2012 Paralympic Games
exceeded the previous Paralympic Games
in Beijing, China in terms of both the
number of territories showing the action
and the hours of coverage per territory.
In the UK, for example, the host
broadcaster Channel 4 scheduled an
unprecedented 150 hours of coverage
with the aim of reaching more than 35
million individual viewers. This compares
with 13.2 million viewers when the BBC,
the UK’s public broadcaster, showed
coverage of Beijing 2008.
In Australia, ABC showed 100 hours
of coverage and it was a similar story in
Germany, where this year’s Paralympics
generated more than 65 hours of coverage
on ARD/ZDF compared to just 16 hours
at the 2000 Paralympic Games in Sydney.
There were also several hours of live
coverage per day on CCTV, China’s
largest national broadcasting network,
and in Brazil, the host country of the 2016
Paralympic Games. This ramping up of
broadcast interest has combined with
a more engaged and bespoke approach
from the event’s sponsors.
In Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004 only
five out of 11 global Olympic partners
participated in the Paralympics. In Beijing
2008, 10 out of 12 participated and this
year in London, all 11 participated with
varying degrees of intensity.
As Lucien Boyer, President and Global
CEO of the sports marketing and media
company, Havas Sports & Entertainment,
explains, the Paralympics has a unique
appeal. “There’s no doubt that the
Paralympic Games have now succeeded
in capturing the attention of sponsors
worldwide thanks to the sincerity
of its values and ability to surprise.”
In a study on the effectiveness of
Olympic Sponsorship led by a Havas
research team in the UK, the Paralympics
are most strongly associated with
the words “World Class” (40%) and
“Inspiring” (35%). The Paralympics
are also perceived as more “Amazing”,
“Modern” and “Emotional” than even the
Olympics and the FIFA World Cup.
Boyer continues: “Paralympic
values such as courage, determination,
inspiration and equality perfectly fit with
the values sponsors want to promote and
highlight inside and outside the company
– it helps educate their employees and
customers.” Finally, perhaps the most
amazing statistic is the increase in
participation across the globe.
London 2012 welcomed a recordbreaking
number of athletes and
participating countries – 4,200 athletes
and 166 National Paralympic Committees,
up from the 148 participating nations at
Beijing in 2008.
There were also a record-breaking
number of women competing in London
with around 1,500 taking part, more than
at any of the previous Games and more
than double the 700 who competed at
Barcelona 1992.
36 | Issue 19 | Qatar Sport