From July 8 to 17, 2023, the World Para Athletics Championships – PARIS’23 will be in full swing. To best organize this event, an organizing committee was created in April 2022. But then, what are the different poles of this organization? What are its basic missions? During the whole month of October, we tell you everything! So come and discover the many facets that make up the Organizing Committee of the World Paralympic Athletics Championships (COMAP).
For this new service presentation, we met Arthus Pierrette, head of the ticketing department.
Hello Arthus, to begin with, can you explain to us the role of the ticketing service within COMAP?
Arthus Pierrette : “The objective is to bring the public to the event and to make the spectator experience as unforgettable as possible. It is important to note that this is the first time in France that a paid ticketing system has been set up for a major para-athletics event. It is a change in the economic model. The idea behind it is, on the one hand, to acculturate the general public to para-sports and, on the other hand, to make the general public understand that these World Championships are high performance.”
How many people are in the department?
A.P : “Within the framework of the heritage program of the World Championships, I am accompanied by 7 people in the different Regional Committees of the French Handisport Federation. I collaborate with Alaric, Boualem, Florent, Hugo, Nicolas, Anton and Mathis. Together, our mission is to distribute the ticketing offer everywhere on the territory. This allows the event to have a resonance in the regions, but also that the committees are associated with the World Championships even if they take place in Paris.”
What are the missions of the service?
A.P : “In the service, we had a first phase of positioning and anchoring the ticketing offer. As this is the first time that there is a paying ticket for a para athletics event in France, we had to conceptualize the whole offer.
We are now entering the marketing phase. Concretely, the work consists in marketing the offers so that as many people as possible know about the event and can buy tickets. This obviously concerns the general public, but also different groups of people that we approach (schools, leisure centers, companies…) so that there are as many spectators as possible in the stands of Charléty.”
How do you work to advance in the missions?
A.P : “We work by targets. On the events of the Handisport Federation, we observed what kind of targets we attracted. Following this observation, we understood that we had to rely on this whole family of disabled sports, especially schools, youth groups, ESMS (medical and social establishments and services), to then open the offer to the general public.
Pour l’instant, nous avons contacté les différentes autorités locales, les entreprises, les licenciés FFH, FFSA et FFA. And then, depending on the different highlights of the year, we will be able to adapt our offers and our approaches to the different targets, to be as relevant as possible.
An important axis of the marketing of our offers is the solidarity ticketing. The idea is simple: we want to attract all audiences, especially those for whom the financial cost of a seat can be a major obstacle in the purchasing process. The idea is simple: we want to attract all audiences, especially those for whom the financial cost of a seat can be a major obstacle in the purchasing process. The objective is that these investors allow these different groups to come to the event, and then set up common actions between the two entities during the year.”
What are the specificities or particularities of the service?
A.P : “It is important to understand what the event represents and to know its essence in order to market it as well as possible. We meet a lot of people so we don’t communicate in the same way, but with these elements, our speech is adapted to be able to answer at best the different expectations of each target.”
What qualities and skills are required?
A.P : “A lot of interpersonal skills, because we interact with many people. And rigor, because it’s a long-term job. We have 9 months of work and it is necessary to have a real follow-up to manage several files at the same time.”
THE worst flaw for working in this department?
A.P : “I don’t know if this can be considered a fault, but it would be not being convinced by the scope of the event and not believing in what these world championships will represent. If you yourself are not 100% in the project, it will be felt in your speech.”
THE situation to avoid on the day of the event?
A.P : “There are two cases. The first would be to have a stadium that sounds hollow. Paid ticketing is a new issue and we don’t have any real references, so we are starting from new bases.
And the second scenario would be in the event that we have a really full stadium and although we have a problem in managing the flow at the entrances and in the different corridors.”
For more information about ticketing offers, please contact Arthus Pierrette at a.pierrette@wpaparis23.com