Downsizing for the opening ceremony?

The results of the first phase of Paris 2024 ticket sales, and the controversies over the prices often considered exorbitant, would have almost made the preparation of the opening ceremony on the Seine on July 26 in the background. However, according to several actors of the Games who evoke “ the most serious track given the security constraints of the ceremony “, the number of boats planned to transport the Olympic delegations should be reduced to around 90, against nearly 160 envisaged at the start. A reduction that will force the organizers to bring together several delegations on the same boat.

The fleet of boats will be supplemented by two other types of boats: those reserved for security and the media and those dedicated to the show imagined by the director Thomas Jolly and his teams, the outline of which should be unveiled in the coming weeks. . It is also planned that VIPs can follow the ceremony from the stars for €25,000 depending on the seats sold by the hospitality provider On Location. The total number of boats should therefore be between 140 and 160.

Places between 90 and 2700 euros on the lower platforms

Another reduction in sight, that of the gauge of people who could follow the ceremony on the high quays, via, according to our information, a free ticket office. Ideally envisaged at 500,000 people, to which will be added more than 100,000 other spectators on the lower quays for places from 90 to 2,700 euros, it could be reduced to 400,000. Also for reasons of safety and management of flows in the 17 sectors delimited along the 6 km of the Seine concerned by the ceremony.

During the last meeting of the strategic mobility committee for the Games, organized by the Government on February 24, Valérie Pécresse, in her capacity as president of IDFM (Île-de-France Mobilité), had moreover sounded the alarm. ” Given the constraints that are posed, 600,000 spectators on a Friday evening of crossover between July and Augustians, almost all the bridges closed and no possibility of flowing pedestrian flows, the only solution to cross the Seine will be the metro. The capacity would be insufficient and it would be dangerous (risk of crowd movement). It is imperative to have a gauge of less than 500,000 “, had explained his entourage.