The 2024 Paralympic Games are seeing a wave of investment
The 2024 Paralympic Games are seeing a wave of investment
The Paris Paralympics kicked off this week, and those games are enjoying some growth as a media property. A record number of broadcasters around the world will cover this year’s events, including para swimming, wheelchair rugby and tennis. NBC, the games’ U.S. broadcast partner, reported Paralympic ad sales are up 60% over the Tokyo games in 2021.
In a TikTok video, USA wheelchair basketball player Bailey Moody unboxes a bunch of bright, orange swag. “I’m superexcited to be partnering with Team Reese’s,” she says. “Oh, my gosh! Look at this fanny pack. It says Reese’s!”
This will be Moody’s second Paralympic Games, and she’s attracted some big-name sponsors like Reese’s candy, Degree deodorant and the Marriott hotel chain.
“Back when I was competing, that didn’t happen,” said Adam Purdy, who swam for Canada’s Paralympic team in the 1990s and early 2000s. (He won two gold medals, by the way.)
Back then, he said, the Paralympic world was pretty insular.
“There was no real coverage on television. There was no real exposure,” said Purdy. And there was a very limited pool of sponsorship money.
But starting with the London Paralympics in 2012, Purdy said athletes have been able to build and control their own brand on social media, instead of relying on the sports media establishment.
Historically, traditional sports media never made big bets on para athletes.
“Because of the democratization of media, it has kind of forced their hands to realize, ‘No no no, you’re sitting on a really valuable asset here,'” said Alicia Jessop, who studies the business of sports at Pepperdine University.
These athletes have shown they can command big audiences, Jessop said.
NBC has taken notice — it’s putting the games in front of a record number of viewers with three prime-time slots. And so have brands, per Rachel Axon with Sports Business Journal.
“As an example, Toyota has more U.S. Paralympians signed to its athlete roster than Olympians,” she said.
Brands like Citibank and Bridgestone, the tire company, have had success leaning into Paralympic sponsorship, Axon added. “They just find that this, in many ways, aligns with the value that their company has.”
This wave of ad and sponsorship dollars should help athletes afford to train and the games to attract new fans. It will support the growth of para sports, Jessop said.
“We’re seeing a similar playbook that we’ve seen play out in the last five years with women’s sports, slowly being executed in the Paralympic movement,” she said.
Plus, Jessop said, new para sports fans could help pressure national Olympic committees and the International Olympic Committee to make bigger investments.
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