facing the State, Paris and Seine-Saint-Denis play the defensive ramparts of the “Popular Games” – Libération

The teams of Anne Hidalgo and Stéphane Troussel joined forces to maintain their quotas of free tickets for the opening ceremony. Seine-Saint-Denis will also offer 150,000 tickets to its residents to attend the Olympic and Paralympic competitions this summer.

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They are not totally blind to staging, politics and the media. In three short days, from an interview with Le Parisien to a press conference in Bobigny via a hastily organized briefing on a Monday evening, the Paris town hall and the department of Seine-Saint-Denis managed to preserve their quotas of free tickets for the future opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. And to anchor the idea that they were the guarantors of a celebration open to all facing the State.

The parade on the Seine on the evening of July 26 gave a cold sweat to all the security officials in the state apparatus, led by Gérald Darmanin. Imprudently announced to 600,000 spectators by an Olympic Games Organizing Committee (Cojo) doped with endorphins, the gauge of the sound and light show made up of more than 170 boats was reduced to 326,000 in total: 104,000 paying spectators on the low platforms and 222,000 free spectators on the high platforms. That’s the equivalent of four Stade de France.

A video to watch on the subject

Faced with the impossibility (technical but also democratic) of “screening” everyone, that is to say of verifying in advance the identity and background of agents, volunteers and spectators to rule out possible dangers, the idea then emerged of a ceremony which would remain free for two thirds but to which people would come by invitation. Invitations distributed by “trusted third parties”: the State, the Cojo de Paris 2024, the Paris town hall for 35,000 people, 75,000 for other local authorities and the sports movement. And 25,000 more for the capital to distribute to “public impacted” by the ceremony, whether residents of the Seine, students forced to give up their university rooms, second-hand booksellers, traders or city officials.

A ceremony “as open as possible”

A good old gas plant, which saves the unique character of the ceremony but is extremely complex to implement. Because, how can we ensure that free tickets are not patronage returns? Should they also be distributed to those who have neither network nor money to pay for tickets for the Paris Games? And that the guests come on the big day so that we don’t end up with sparse platforms when two billion viewers will be tuned into this river parade in cinemascope?

Without us clearly understanding what was actually going on, this weekend there was talk of “rumors”, “questioning” and “fluctuation” at the summit over the distribution of free tickets, which fueled the debate. the idea of ​​a takeover by the State, suspected of wanting to stick its nose into all the lists of future guests. But probably also maneuvering to create an exit door. “The more places the State recovers, the more it can lower the gauge by giving it up if security threats increase,” deciphers a person involved in the matter. Nevertheless, people thunder at City Hall, “we have been working on the subject for six weeks, the working framework is stabilized and a hundred days before the ceremony the State would like to return to this frame there? We don’t think it’s serious.”

Hence the operation “we must save the Popular Games”, launched by Paris and Seine-Saint-Denis. “We just alerted the fact that we had an agreement and that we needed the most open and popular ceremony as possible,” argues Pierre Rabadan, Anne Hidalgo’s deputy in charge of Sport and the Olympics, not unhappy with this arm wrestling engaged over “values”. Because the town hall has identified the priority “publics” in its eyes for the July 26 celebration: residents of the “political districts of the city”, those who do not go on vacation in the summer, young athletes registered in the Parisian federations and city officials. The lists are even “already stabilized” according to Rabadan, via the files of families putting their children in leisure centers in the summer, among others.

“Popular ticket office”

The president of Seine-Saint-Denis, Stéphane Troussel, and the mayor of Saint-Denis, Mathieu Hanotin, have taken action, demanding more free places for the inhabitants of the department, one of the poorest and youngest in France , whose inhabitants have been suffering for six years from the nuisances linked to infrastructure and transport construction work for the Olympic Games.

“For the past few days, there has been a lot of discussion,” Troussel confirmed this Tuesday March 26 during a press conference in Bobigny. But after all these exchanges, I can tell you that in the end Seine-Saint-Denis will have 13% of all tickets for the opening ceremony, or 28,000 tickets in total. Which are in addition to the 150,000 free tickets (offered by Cojo or purchased by the department, the metropolis or the region) to attend the Olympic and Paralympic events this summer. They will be offered to residents via a “popular ticket office”. For the ceremony as for the competitions, “we wanted to silence the idea that these would be the Olympic Games among ourselves”, relishes Mathieu Hanotin after having thanked “the State of course but above all the city of Paris”.