TELEVISION – The party ends on a high note for broadcasters. An average of 7.7 million viewers watched the closing ceremony of the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games on Sunday evening, September 8 on France 2, representing an audience share of 37.7%, according to figures published this Monday, September 9 by Médiamétrie.
Tony Estanguet receives a standing ovation at the closing ceremony of the Paralympic Games, unlike Emmanuel Macron
For two and a half hours, the Stade de France vibrated thanks to the parade of para-athletes and their delegations as well as the concert of French electronic music. 24 DJs followed one another throughout the evening and artists such as Jean-Michel Jarre, Martin Solveig or Kungs were able to participate in the party.
Spectators (and television viewers) were also able to witness the extinguishing of the Olympic flame by Paralympic boccia champion Aurélie Aubert. The flag bearer of the French delegation was surrounded by five other French medalists: Frédéric Villeroux, Gloria Agblemagnon, Charles Noakes, Ugo Didier and Mathieu Bosredon. With this symbolic gesture, the Parisian celebrations are officially over.
An unprecedented broadcast for the Paralympic Games
The show imagined by Thomas Jolly failed to match the audience of the opening ceremony on August 28, which was watched by 10.2 million people in France and had an audience share of 52.3%. For comparison, the opening ceremony and closing ceremony of the Olympic Games had respectively attracted 23.2 million and 17.1 million live viewers a few weeks earlier.
Even though the Paralympic celebrations in Paris had a lower score than their big Olympic sisters, they nevertheless attracted many more viewers than for the Tokyo edition in 2021. Three years earlier, 1.09 million French people followed the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games in Japan and only 720,000 people followed the closing ceremony, recalls PureMedia. Figures ten times smaller.
The Paralympic Games benefited from unprecedented exposure on France Télévisions, with 300 hours of live broadcasts, compared to 100 for the previous edition, in Tokyo in 2021, and less than 10 hours for London in 2012. The public group’s main channel, France 2, was thus the number one in France in August, ahead of TF1, with a 23.3% audience share over the entire month, according to Médiamétrie figures published on September 2.
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