We are officially at the one year to go mark before the Paris 2024 Olympics starts! That means it’s time for a visit from our TKFLASTANI travel expert Ken Hanscom, who’s got all of the details on what tickets might still be available, the hotel situation, flights, getting around Paris, and the hospitality houses.
Follow Ken on Twitter (X) and Insta, and if you’re on Facebook, join the Paris 2024 Olympics Planning & Preparation group for more advice!
In our Seoul 1988 history moment, Alison gets into the details of Seoul’s mascot Hodori. Check out Hodori in these KTV videos!
In our weekly journey to TKFLASTAN, we have news from:
- Para archer Matt Stutzman
- Shooter Ginny Thrasher
- Author Andrew Maraniss
- Boxer Ginny Fuchs, who’s in the latest issue of Women’s Fight News
- Former water polo player turned commentator Tony Azevedo
- Commentators Olly Hogben and Rob Snoek
To mark the one year to go announcement, Paris 2024 organizers unveiled the torch! Designed by Mathieu Lehanneur, it is inspired by the themes of equality, water and peacefulness. Not everyone is so keen on it. Let us know what you think of it:
Paris 2024 torch!
Photo: Paris 2024
Paris 2024 also announced a new celebration space that will be in the heart of the city. On most days of the Games, medalists will come here and parade down a catwalk to celebrate their achievements. Here’s a rendering:
Are you ready to hang out at Champions Park?
Pic: Paris 2024
In other Paris news, the official Omega countdown clock is out, the cardboard beds are back, and LVMH Group is a sponsor. We’ve got details on what that all means.
Here in the US, Team USA had a One Year to Go celebration with several athletes getting “made to fade” tattoos from Ephemeral tattoos:
A Team USA fan gets inked with one of the special Team USA Ephemeral tattoos on July 26, 2023 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Stobe/Getty Images for USOPC)
You can win your very own Team USA-inspired flash tattoo – sign up here between July 26-August 31 for your chance to win one of these designs:
10 options for your own flash tattoo. Image Credit: Team USA
If you win, hit us up in one to three years to let us know how it faded!
Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive!
Photo courtesy of Ken Hanscom.
TRANSCRIPT
Note: This is an uncorrected machine-generated transcript and may contain errors. Please check its accuracy against the audio. Do not quote from the transcript; use the audio as the record of note.
One Year to Paris 2024 with Ken Hanscom (Ep 297)
Jill: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keep the Flame Alive, the podcast for fans of the Olympics and Paralympics. If you love the games, we are the show for you. Each week we share stories from the athletes and people behind the scenes to help you have more fun watching the games. I am your host, Jill Jaracz, joined as always by my lovely co-host, Alison Brown.
Alison. Hello, Bon. How are you?
[00:00:51] Alison: Bon.
[00:00:54] Jill: Sounded good. . Yes. We are so excited. It is one year to go until Paris 2024. we are taping this on Wednesday the 26th, which is actually the day of one year to go. So it’s. Very, very exciting around these parts. Also terrifying here in the Keep The Flame Alive Podcast headquarters areas We got a lot of work to do to get ready to go there.
[00:01:25] Alison: So many social media posts and it’s really, really exciting. We got lots of Paris news coming later in the show and you were right about that ticket drop and people have been very successful today in getting gymnastics all around gymnastics, final a hundred meter some swimming finals. So there were great tickets in this drop.
[00:01:47] Jill: hopefully you got some of those. We I wanna say before we get into one year ago, if you enjoyed last week’s hockey turf talk, you might be interested to know that Paris 2024 will be the last time [00:02:00] this type of turf will be used in hockey. And if you’d like to know what’s coming next, you can become a patron at the silver medal level and up and get the scoop from last week’s guest, Paul Campe.
Go to flame and life pod.com/support and click on the Become a Patron button today. I’m so excited about the hockey turf. I’m still excited. Smurf Turf.
Ken Hanscom Interview
[00:02:22] Jill: So it is one year to go till Paris 2024. So that means we get to have a visit from our friend Ken Hanscomb.
Ken is Chief Operating Officer at Ticket Manager A recognized event and ticketing expert and an influencer in the Olympic movement with corporations and sponsors. He has been featured on NBC’s primetime. Olympic coverage regularly contributes on E S P N Radio, U S A today M SS N International Business Times, and publishes a blog on the business of the Olympics.
We talk to him about planning your trip to Paris. Take a listen.
[00:02:57] Alison: Ken Hanscom, thank you so much for joining us again. We are one year out from Paris and a lot of things have been happening. So let’s start with tickets. Yeah. What do we know? What do we know is coming up? What do we know about what’s happened?
[00:03:11] Ken Hanscom: It’s been a great, start to ticketing.
And I think you’re always gonna hear complaints and positives about ticketing. We have some trends and we’ll probably talk about those in terms of where some of the demands and some of the interest has been, which is definitely different. But, we’ve talked about the way that Paris.
is being ticketed is completely different than it has been in previous Olympics. And we have obviously going through organizing committee they’re running all that. There’s no more at and distribution. And you look at how the first couple of phases and. What the number is somewhere around, four and a half million-ish tickets or, somewhere in that neighborhood, depending on whose numbers you look at.
I think they’ve been very, very successful. First we had those packs and for people who wanted to just get two or three packs and kind of start with that portion of the experience that was very successful. We had the single ticket [00:04:00] sales and what those that of.
System again. I was very fortunate. I got in on the first day of the lottery. I know a number of other people got in as well. I was surprised at how much tickets and what events were there and some of them, which are typically the super high demand events, things like women’s gymnastics, team finals swimming finals.
Those stayed around for a few days. So you didn’t just have to be the luck of the draw, getting in on the first day to get those, you were able to do that. So I think in terms sales.
People waiting for hours in the queue to get in, maybe minutes sometimes, but that’s standard with any on sale. There haven’t been any like significant technical issues. So I think overall that process from a public standpoint has been very good. Right, a very, very positive and big successful start for Paris.
[00:04:52] Jill: Well it seems like there’s a little bit of growing pains with people understanding this new ticket model because like we said, not everybody’s gonna be happy, obviously. Yeah. But it’s understanding that even though there are a lotteries, it’s still kind of first come, first serve. Yeah. And even with the resale, People just don’t seem to be wrapping their heads around how resale will work this time around.
[00:05:17] Ken Hanscom: Yeah. You know, we really have never had a robust resale market for the Olympics. I mean there were some with London and, and maybe so Chi, but really Rio was the first one that had it.
But the demand for Rio was. Pretty muted, right? Zika I think about one third a number of American travelers ended up going, that was originally expected. Then we had, pyeongchang and there was obviously winters are smaller and then some people were scared off with everything that was going on with, with North Korea at the time.
And then we were really starting to build kind of to this push portion of the experience up to Tokyo. Obviously, when. And I think it is gonna be competitive. I think that’s the one thing about Paris. I’ve been a little bit surprised at this point how many people are [00:06:00] interested and committed to going.
I we’re in kind a new world where, Last three or four years, everyone’s focused on experiences and you know, we really haven’t had like a massive Olympic games probably since London. Right. with what happened with radio and obviously Tokyo, so there’s all this what’s called pent up demand.
That’s a popular term to use in the sports and ticketing world right now. That’s kind of being focused towards this and there’s a lot of people that haven’t been through it. And the reason I started doing things like the Facebook group and other things is, Understand how to do this and it’s really hard.
Your first time, it was hard for me my first time, and once you do it a few times, you understand that. But I think the resale is gonna be a powerful way for people, especially last minute, to be able to change things. But it’s not gonna be available till spring and so, probably waiting to have your entire allocation of tickets.
I know some people are gonna do that. There are. People have been to Olympics, going back to Vancouver, Sydney, even Beijing that.
[00:06:59] Alison: So with resale, just very basics. Yeah. If you’ve got tickets that you can’t use, you can put ’em on the resale. Yeah. And there will not be significant markups. Correct.
[00:07:09] Ken Hanscom: Understanding today is that there won’t be any transactions or transac transaction fees. Now there may be a nominal one, Euro two, Euro 50.
I think some of that stuff might happen, but it’s not like going to. Vivid see, or a StubHub or a tick pick where you’re gonna see like a buyer’s fee of like 18 or 20% and then a seller’s fee of the same thing. So ultimately the cost of your ticket is 50% more. Yes, there’s going to be, what you wanna call a gray market or a secondary market, probably through a couple of international marketplaces.
Those aren’t authorized. Paris and other Olympics have been pretty successful at, at canceling tickets or figuring out which tickets are gonna be there. But generally speaking, the authorized Paris Reell will be uh, relatively real time. And I say that is, it might be five minutes to your ticket gets posted.
It might be 30 seconds, it could be 10 minutes. Where when you choose to, say, Hey, I’m give you these tickets. [00:08:00] They’ll leave your account, go to the other person’s account, and at some period thereafter you’ll get payment. those, specific terms haven’t been disclosed. It’s probably not gonna be immediate, but it could be a week, two weeks post Olympics, something along those lines.
But it’s really just even if you think about a normal marketplace, like, I said like a Vivid seeds or a Ticketmaster or somewhere like that where you can, post your tickets as a season ticket holder, sell them, it’s gonna be a very similar model. You’re just not gonna see the fees.
[00:08:27] Alison: A lot of people complaining there weren’t as many 24 Euro tickets as they expected. What was your opinion of the prices?
[00:08:35] Ken Hanscom: It’s a seven and half billion dollars event. The ticketing to some extent has to pay for it. Some of the prices are same or lower than Tokyo.
Some are more. And I think it, it’s a very difficult balance for any committee to figure out like, what is the right amount to ensure great public access to things at a very low cost mix that with premium and hospitality. And when we’re talking about these pricing of tickets, we’re.
More expensive because they have the hospitality assets with them. So I, there were a lot, they went very, very quickly. They clearly were, from my experience and people I talked to way more sought out than in previous games. And so I don’t think, you never have enough category ticket D tickets.
You just can’t. Demands too high for an event like this. I don’t wanna compare it to Taylor Swift, but you could sell at Taylor Swift for seven years straight, right? And you’re never gonna have enough tickets for that. And an event like this in a city like Paris, you’re never gonna have enough category Cs, DS, you’re just not.
You can, you’ll always be able to sell through them.
[00:09:37] Alison: So you mentioned hospitality tickets. You wanna explain what those are?
[00:09:40] Ken Hanscom: What happened was about three years ago, two and a half, three years ago the obvious is they were thinking about how we’re gonna do ticket differently. And rather than having all these ATRs and kind of all these individual things, s they said, we’re not only gonna have a single ticketing system, but we have one partner.
Through which all what we call hospitality. Hospitality usually means that you are combining some set of additional [00:10:00] experiences. It could be free food and beverage, it could be a club that you go to either at the venue or outside the venue. And they have a mix of these. And, and those are included with your tickets.
And as part of that, it kind of grosses up the price of the tickets. Fair Lake, a more exclusive type experiences. And they have different levels in, in, in terms of whether gold, silver, bronze, it just means a type of maybe experience or alcohol or food that you have access to. And so as part of this on location made a bid, sort of a bidding process, won the bid to do this for the next three games.
So on location is with us for Paris, Milan. LA 2028. And what they are affected, they are the official hospitality provider. They’re very well known. They’re very well experienced. The know they do the Super Bowl, right? So, in terms of top of the top sorts of experiences that they create, and sometimes these hospitality assets will also include things like, Hotels and, during certain waves, three to five days waves and you can kind of pick and choose.
And so, there is a significant number of tickets, whether it’s 600,000, half a million, you know, million, whatever number of tickets those are available through those hospitality. And those are generally gonna be your higher category tickets your premium. They do have in some venues they do have kind of suite level sort of, sort of experiences and tickets are.
[00:11:15] Alison: those are not part of any lottery? You can just go on the site and buy them?
[00:11:19] Ken Hanscom: Yeah. Yeah. it’s interesting ’cause you have our location and then regionally similar to a ATRs we, they have what they call sub-distributors. And some of them are, are people that that we’ve heard of, or have been in the past, I think A T P I Canada.
Is a sub distributor for wrong location. Forus is a sub distributor that is down in Australia. New Zealand has another number of other regions, so there’s these very sub-distributors, but they’re all selling the exact same hospitality package, which is very different from the ATRs and from the beginning.
And they, they started their sales, I wanna say in like January, February, a little, before all the lotteries. ’cause if someone was really wanting to secure what certain levels of tickets then they would be able to get those and you can go do those times. The pricing is somewhat dynamic.
It [00:12:00] does change not as you go through the process. Just over time,
expect. Gymnastics opening ceremony, that sort of thing. And there’s been some that have been very reasonably priced. Uh, B M X has been one of the biggest surprises, I think, in terms of its popularity with some of the other urban sports, but some of those markups on those tickets with hospitality were less than 30 or 40% for like a $200 ticket, which in, in the hospitality arena it may be expensive for some people.
It’s, it’s very reasonable in terms of what people generally see in terms of that.
[00:12:31] Alison: Okay, so resale platform we expect to see in the spring mid. How many more ticket drops do we think we’re gonna see?
[00:12:39] Ken Hanscom: We’re gonna see at least one. so effectively when you do all of the math, there’s somewhere around 3 million tickets that have not quote, quote, Consult and, and then it’s really fuzzy math.
It’s really fuzzy math. When we talk about loans, we know there’s 10 million tickets for Paris. The I O C has come out and said at the end of June that 6.8 were sold. You know, there was a 2 million gap in between the numbers that Paris announced between their. make your games packs and then single ticket sales.
And, you know, assumption is that 2 million is a combination of things sold through on location. And another area is that, you know, a lot of the National Olympic committees, they get an allocation of tickets, whether it’s for some of their sponsors or some of their athletes or, you know, however to use them.
So that 2 million, it’s not really, so somewhere around left, and I suspect some of those will.
Some of make to public.
Get interest and you’re trying to drive excitement around something. You can’t just have all your tickets sold, help a year in advance, right? You need to be, ’cause there’s people that are not gonna decide to go until nine months, six months, three months. And so they’ll likely be likely follow similar patterns that we see with previous Olympic games.
That there’ll be another probably major kind of onsell first come, first serve. I don’t know, we’ll be half a million, be committee will, all those sorts of things we’ll [00:14:00] happen. Different allocations from different sponsors, go back and forth as different countries who got their allocation say, Hey, we’re gonna use some of these.
We’re not gonna use some of these. They’ll usually come back into the mix and whether or not they’ll go directly to the normal sales process for primary, or they’ll go on reell. That remains to be seen, but they’re somewhere around 3.2 million tickets that have not been officially sold yet. That’s a lot.
That’s a lot of tickets. Yeah.
[00:14:23] Alison: So you get your tickets. Now you gotta figure out a place to stay. And I know in the Facebook group there has been so much discussion about this, so where do we start looking for some place to stay?
[00:14:35] Ken Hanscom: Man, it’s one of the fun when you’re planning a trip like this, you wanna have everything set as soon as you can.
And so there’s just like this desire, like, well, I got some tickets, I have to have a hotel room. and, and invariably what happens every single cycle is, it happens for World Cup two is that everyone goes out and says, oh yeah, this Airbnb’s available. They go ahead and book it. And then like two days later, they get a cancellation and then it happens again.
And it happens again. Why has it happened that way? Well, a lot of people who manage Airbnbs, they’re thinking about the next 12 months. They’re not thinking 18, you know, 24 months out where some folks were trying to book and there’s, this frustration growing and you kind of have to do some education around like, yeah.
Visit expected. And sometimes that happens with hotels. That generally will happen with smaller hotel groups or individual hotels that maybe don’t have the same level of of systems or integrations that maybe like, let’s just call like hotel chain like Marriott or Hilton has. So as we approach, and I think we’re ending kind of, kind of that, that, that phase right now, I think as you get to within one year, the risk of those sorts of things happening are gonna be much lower because there’s gonna be so much energy around Paris 2024, both in Paris.
If people are pricing their Airbnbs, most of the hotels already know about it or thinking about it. So you’re, what you don’t see is you don’t see people say, oh yeah, I should be charging $300. For this room, and it’s only listed 200, so I’m gonna cancel this. What we also have happening this summer is, is, you know, all these Americans are traveling to Europe again, and I was just couple there a couple weeks ago, and there’s a lot of Americans [00:16:00] in Europe and they’ve already driven prices up, a hotel, Midlevel I on the cost level, unless a standard like flagship Hilton Property M lawn’s, like 450, $500 a night.
The same with the Marriotts and those sorts of things. And so I think when you start looking and thinking about pricing for next year or looking at how, where do you start with hotel rooms, obviously the biggest thing is budget, right? And that, that’s gonna determine where you can go. But from there, you know, I think there’s a couple things to.
As soon as the Olympics bids are announced and awarded to somebody, a lot of the Olympic committees, a lot of the hospitality providers and a lot of the other sorts of providers go in and lock a lot of the major hotels up on contracts. So if you’re looking to stay at the Ritz Carlton or the Four Seasons or whatever kind of top hotel there in Paris, it’s not available unless you get it through a package, it’s just not gonna be available.
Or, you know, somebody. That happens to be in that. And that also trickles down to a lot of the other, maybe your five stars and your foresters where you have a, and so ultimately when we get to July 26th, we’ll, Now Paris is a big city and there’s over a hundred thousand hotel rooms, and that’s very similar to London.
And so there’s gonna be availability. It’s not gonna be like Rio where like you’re just trying to find some place to stay because there’s like 25,000 hotel rooms in all of Rio. So I think there’s gonna be a lot there. And we’re gonna get to a point now where you, when you wanna start looking, you’re gonna wanna be a little bit strategic about where you start and how, how you wanna look at things.
But I would say as you get within a year, you’re really gonna start seeing less of these sort of cancellations. A lot of these less complaints, what you’re gonna see is a lot of disappointment around, well, hey, I really wanna stay at the Hilton or the Ritz Carlton, or, name your hotel and it’s not available.
A lot of those hotels just are not gonna be available.
[00:17:44] Alison: So the I O C had an agreement with Airbnb. What does that look like in terms of what we as normal spectators will notice?
[00:17:54] Ken Hanscom: Oh, they’re a top sponsor. Right. and I may have missed it. I have not seen a specific announcement about what they [00:18:00] are doing.
For Paris. there were some for Tokyo with refunds and guarantees and those sorts of things. It could be very possible that we see announcement with a one year to go as they’re drumming up excitement about what that be will be. So we know what I have. Talk with folks and I’ve heard of is there have been some cases where b b has gone and secured some spaces that they’ve made available to the, what I would call the Olympic family, the broader Olympic family, which includes athletes, athletes, families includes organizing bodies, those sorts of things.
But I don’t think there’s been a big splash yet in terms of really knowing what Airbnb is.
Historically has not been very friendly. I guess I would use the words towards Airbnbs, sugar coming that a little bit there. So there probably is likely some tensions that between the I O C and Paris 2024 that they’re probably all figuring out together right now.
[00:18:55] Alison: Is there anything weird for people who have not been to France before to know about Parisian hotels?
[00:19:01] Ken Hanscom: Well, I, I would just say European hotels in general are smaller. The rooms themselves are quite a bit, so my experience has been quite a bit smaller than what you’d expect for a comparable hotel in, in the us I would say more of them have seem to have pretty darn good breakfast included with them.
but other than that, I mean, not a whole lot that, that I’ve recently experienced, it’s really about, about the hotel size and, you know, if you’ve got a family of four trying to put ’em in one room, I think that that’s a lot more challenging in Paris.
That, and actually most of it’s not just Paris than it’s here in the US
[00:19:34] Alison: Okay. Flights one year out, the calendar comes out for the flights. Yeah. Do we need to book the flights now or can we keep our powder dry a little?
[00:19:45] Ken Hanscom: you can go either way. And the reason I’m kind of, what I generally do is I look at kind what the current prices are for the next six months, right? Not for Paris. And I kind of set some parameters and I just kind of let things go a little bit, right? If I don’t have a flight by [00:20:00] January 1st, I’m not going to freak out or worry about that.
But some people really just like to have everything set, know that they’re going do. If they come out and that’s important to you, and you might pay $500 more a flight. Again, I’m throwing out numbers here. And that’s gonna give you some level of peace for the next six months, then maybe that’s worth it.
Maybe that’s worth it. But there’s gonna be flights all over Europe. I mean, you can fly into. What Frankfurt and take a four hour train to get to Paris. Not that I would recommend that, but like if you’re really in a pinch and you’re trying to save money and, and whether else, and you have to do the whole time value comparison what’s the value of your time versus money and, and whether or not you really wanna go to Frankfurt and maybe spend a night or two there, like you have to do all of that.
But Paris’s a big city. A lot of flights go there. And ultimately when you have an Olympics in a city you usually have a lot less people that travel there for the general, standard tourism stuff. It’s like Allen go. So the question is tourism gonna be that much larger in Paris?
Traditionally, it hasn’t worked that way. It didn’t work that way for London where the tourism aspect has hired during the people say, I wanna stay away from Paris this year because everyone’s gonna be there for the Olympics. And then you also have a number of Parisians that, generally will leave the city in July and August.
So, You don’t have to rush. Well, my prices be higher. Maybe they’ll probably be higher right. At the one year to go.
[00:21:10] Alison: Yeah. A lot of people have been talking about that. Flying to another city and taking the train in. How reasonable and is that to do
[00:21:17] Ken Hanscom: in Europe? It’s pretty reasonable. It’s pretty reasonable to do, but it’s gonna cost you a day, right?
It’s gonna cost you a day. Now if you’re planning to do other cities, either before or after Paris and you can fit it in and it makes sense for your, your trip, absolutely. But to do that, just to save 200 bucks or, or whatever the number is, I, I think you’re losing in the end. I think you’re losing in the end.
Okay.
[00:21:38] Alison: Transport. We’re talking about taking trains. Yeah. Sounds like it’s gonna be crowded. We’re gonna have a lot of people. We got a lot of venues. We’re talking metros and buses, so what do we know about getting around the city and how much time that’s gonna take?
[00:21:52] Ken Hanscom: It’s pretty easy to get around Paris.
They have a fantastic metro system. I mean, it’s a very walkable city too. I mean, I think that’s one of the fantastic [00:22:00] things about Paris. Now. I probably walk more than most people. I think Ash and I averaged about walking 15 miles a day.
We were there back in September. But we walked all over the city. And some days we didn’t even take the Metro. But the metro was super super easy to use. Paris may request that people work from home, similar to like they were planning to do in Tokyo during the Olympics.
There may be all, not to mention it’s a higher vacation time, so you may not have a general population that’s using these as much. I personally would trust underground more than I would above ground in terms of timing. You don’t have to do with traffic. Even a city with like, like Paris small.
So what I would say is I, I’m gonna tell you what I’m gonna, I’m taking the metro to pretty much every event that I go to.
[00:22:41] Alison: How much time should people add for getting into the venue?
[00:22:46] Ken Hanscom: 30 minutes. That’s what I would say. It’s better, always better to be safe than sorry on these kinds of things.
And it all depends, right? Do you wanna take a whole bunch of pictures of the venue? Do you wanna take pictures when you get inside, it’s, you know, you kinda maybe think about like, like going to like an N b A playoff game or a, any sort of event like that. You’re gonna have security. You are going to have lines that you’re going to have to wait in, and if there’s other things that you wanna do or have refreshments beforehand, then add 15, 20 minutes for, basically, for each one of those items that you want to do.
You know, you expect the first couple days as you would with any large event like this, it’s probably gonna take a little bit longer. So maybe that a bit. And then kind of once things are rolling pretty well, Then I think that the max you’re probably gonna need if you’re just really just trying to get there, watch, event and veil you’re probably 30 minutes or so
[00:23:30] Alison: because Jill’s gonna need her diet Coke before she sits down.
Yes. That’s
[00:23:33] Ken Hanscom: okay. I’ll get it. Well, well, you can’t get wine in there. I, at least the last the recent release that saw no alcohol in the venue, so Right.
[00:23:40] Alison: is that strange for a European venue to not allow
[00:23:43] Ken Hanscom: drinking? I don’t know. I mean, it’s It’s kind of interesting. It’s very interesting. Let’s we’ll see how that develops.
Let’s see how
[00:23:50] Alison: that develops. Has that been true at other Olympics, or has there always been alcohol in the venues?
[00:23:55] Ken Hanscom: I’m trying to remember London right now. Absolutely in Rio, [00:24:00] because I drank too many SC beers because, you know, I got every single one of, because in, in Rio, they had the different cups that you got the beer in, had all the different things. And so to complete that collection I had, I was forced to drink a lot of beer despite my, uh, wishes not to, uh, but I, I’m pretty sure in London you could too.
I may be wrong in that, that happens when things are, are, almost 12 years ago at this point. But yeah, it, that was a little bit of a surprise, right? Because that also tends to be, a revenue generator as well. And so whether it’s deferring costs or contributing money back to the the committee, if you to pay for those half billion to do the Olympic games, it’s a bit of a surprise.
[00:24:37] Alison: So not to be confused with hospitality packages. We’ve got hospitality houses.
[00:24:43] Ken Hanscom: Yes. These are awesome. These are best.
[00:24:45] Alison: So let’s talk a little bit about what we know so far.
[00:24:47] Ken Hanscom: Yeah, there’s gonna be at least 20 hospitality houses and I think it’s gonna be some of the best experiences and, and we’ve talked about this before, but I think it’s always really good talk about.
There’s so many things you can do at the limits. Yes, you go for sport, but you go for a lot of other things. Obviously people are gonna go for culture Paris and wanna go to museums and other things like that. But you meet so many great people and you meet people from different countries and different cultures and, and one of the ways you do that is, A lot of countries like to, demonstrate their culture for the world that, that is coming to Paris, whether it’s coming to their sport, their food their art, their entertainment that they have.
And what they do is they openly what they call hospitality houses or, country houses depending on it. And then there will be some that will be maybe like brand oriented, like some of the, the top sponsors, like we’ve had Samsung and their as well. But a lot of them are gonna be.
Country based houses Indias gonna do a house for the first time s that they usually do. The summers, I mean the list goes on. You have Club France, which is gonna be massive in the park and gonna one park area where I think there’s going be. I think eight right now. Different houses. The Holland House, there’s actually gonna be the Team ML house that’s coming back.
It’s not doesn’t have the Heineken name [00:26:00] anymore. But that apparently they will have Heineken beer. But that’s always been one of the greatest experiences because that’s the one house where it is Gu, where every athlete signs a contract that if they win a medal that day. They’ll make an appearance that night and be celebrated.
And so if you want go see an Olympic medalist, the team El, El, the, and.
Team u s a house this year for the first time is, has some level of public access and that level of public access comes through on location and on location. Packages that can be bundled with team u s a hospitality and the team u s a house is gonna be in the former stock exchange, right in the middle of the upper district.
It’s a massive property that can host a lot of people, and I think that’ll be a great great place to be. I know I’ll be there quite a bit myself to meet athletes meet other Americans and others as well. So, I mean, that’s kind of a brief overview, but you know, pretty much every house has.
Schedule with, you know, some of ’em have my nightlife and are known for partying at night. They generally have some of their food, some of their of their drink and spirits that, that are from their country and all obviously cultural and entertainment that are usually provided. And they usually are open through the day and sometimes that’ll open till one or 2:00 AM in the morning.
[00:27:11] Alison: Do you expect to get any sleep while you are in
[00:27:13] Ken Hanscom: Paris? No. No sleep is unimportant. Yeah. Until, until, until I come back.
[00:27:21] Jill: On the hospitality houses, you mentioned that to get tickets for team u s A because it is ticketed Yeah. You have to go through on location for that. What do those tickets run right now, do you know?
[00:27:33] Ken Hanscom: So they’re bundled in pricing. With the actual ticket. With the actual ticket themselves. Oh, okay. So it’s a little bit, it’s opaque in that way versus you, you have an add-on and it’s an x amount of dollars. So it, it’s bundled in, in there, in the price. I wanna say it was 500. I can’t remember.
Okay.
[00:27:49] Jill: Do you think that if they don’t sell the tickets, enough tickets, that way, that they will unbundle it somehow and offer them up
[00:27:58] Ken Hanscom: closer to the I think they’re gonna, I’m [00:28:00] pretty sure they’re gonna sell enough that way.
[00:28:01] Jill: Oh wow. Okay.
[00:28:04] Ken Hanscom: Team u s A house has generally, has always been the most desirable and, and typically exclusive place because of the number of athletes, because of the number of celebrities and folks that, as well as the celebrations that happen there.
Not to mention just simply the US travels better than any other country because of how many people we have that, that support the Olympics. So the demand is, There will be, and there’s gonna be a mix. Some of these houses are gonna be completely open. You can walk in, walk out, or there’s lines and maybe the lines are 15, 20 minutes for, Swiss and Austria house.
I think if I remember back in 2016 that they had lines that could take up to half an hour to get into. Some are gonna be ticketed and they’ll be not necessarily ticketed like. Team U ss a house, but usually team m l formerly the Heineken Holland house they would have a, you know, ticketing that would open six months in advance and they generally sell out all their tickets.
Theirs were pretty reasonably priced. It’s like 15 I think Pyong chain was 15 or 17, maybe Euro per person. And to be able to get in there and, and have those experiences might been, might have been a little bit more than that, but not too much.
[00:29:01] Jill: Okay, so we should start looking as well for hospitality houses that will be selling tickets and when they’re gonna start selling them.
’cause that could vary with the
[00:29:11] Ken Hanscom: house, correct? It absolutely will. And most of them are probably waiting until after the one year announcement to do that. ’cause there’s several that are unannounced. That are just waiting for that. And they’re still finalizing there’s still a few of them that are actually even considering which location that they’re going to be in.
But it’s, it’s gonna be a big part of Paris 2024 and more so than London, Rio Pyeongchang, Sochi, or possibly Tokyo. Just the number of countries that are having their own analysis is pretty exciting. I mean, you could spend two or three days just doing that.
We don’t have
[00:29:44] Alison: that many days, Ken.
[00:29:46] Ken Hanscom: Well, you got time between events, hopefully an event in the area. You kind of kind of plan out the day. But the Olympics are busy times. The Olympics are
busy
[00:29:53] Alison: times. Do you feel like going in with a very strict plan is helpful, or [00:30:00] do you like, you, you like it a little looser?
I know you’re a little bit of a looser
[00:30:03] Ken Hanscom: traveler. Well, no, we, we already know every event that we’re going to attend right now, I think unfortunately have most of the tickets for them. And that’s, we’re going back to that first lot Lottery was able to get the full thing there. I think.
Here’s how, you know, it depends on where you go the first week, second week you. I’m there the whole time, but I think the first week is so much more hectic than the second week. The reason is, is there’s three times as many events because you have all the group play or pool play, that you have.
And so when you talk about just the sheer number of matches and sessions that are happening in a given day, it is impossible to keep up with. I mean, I know I go back to wherever I’m staying and I’d like try to like go through. Like the N B C highlights and everything, just to see everything that I missed from it, because there’s no way you can capture, especially while you’re, you’re experiencing it.
And then as you hit that first Sunday and you hit kind of the 100 meter finals, and this things move from group stage to, to knockout rounds. And ultimately finals things really slow down the second weekend, the second half of the weekend. So there’s a lot more time to do those things. So if you’re thinking about planning and you’re thinking about.
Should I be going to museums and when should I be going to houses and these sorts of things. You may want to think about it a little bit that way, depending on how you’re organizing your weeks. There’s typically a lot more opportunities for sport in the first week, and they’re actually the, I would say they’re the lower.
Priced ticketing because you get towards further and further in the finals. Prices always go up, right? From a sporting standpoint. There’s less events. They’re more expensive, but you also have more time to do other stuff about that. That’s kind one way to maybe target. So maybe you, you could look at the other way too.
You could say, Hey, I want to go do miss the first week because everyone’s gonna be watching sport. No one’s gonna be there. Or I wanna watch sport the first week. And then so when there’s them, I wanna, so I think it depends on what’s important to you and what you’re trying to accomplish.
Will you take a drone
[00:31:55] Alison: taxi?
[00:31:56] Ken Hanscom: No. Why not? [00:32:00] Pass on that one A little early. A little early. A little early. maybe LA 2028 and that’s the way I’ll get around for la.
[00:32:06] Alison: I’m gonna be alone in this drone taxi. No one will come with me. Yeah,
[00:32:12] Ken Hanscom: hey, but you’re gonna get to where you’re going faster than anyone else.
[00:32:15] Jill: there are some venues that are close together, like the Eiffel Tower and the Plaster, the Concord. They’re not that far apart, but getting out to the athletic stadium or getting out to the swimming venue, like, yeah. How complicated is that?
[00:32:28] Ken Hanscom: It’s not very and maybe you need to ha an hour because I, I struggled a little bit with this when I was doing my planning because there’s a couple events on the last couple days with the finals between like the women’s soccer, the men’s gold medal basketball game where I have like 90 minutes.
Between the end of an event and the start of another. And I don’t wanna miss either one of them. And most of the times I’ve looked at, and having been recently been there and kind of gone, I pretty feel pretty comfortable that I can get between them. And maybe missed the first five minutes or the tip off or something along those lines.
But even when you’re.
Defense I think that you can get out there pretty quick. Sometimes I’m gonna have to walk, like, I’m gonna choose to walk maybe another kilometer or half a kilometer to get on a different line. ’cause I’ll save 15 minutes sort of thing. But you may, so if you have some tight connections, like, like, or tight events like that, and we tend to do a few of those you’ll wanna plan in advance.
I mean, when I was in center town and went out to St. Denny, which is kind of, outside the, the 20 to meet with a committee out, out in St. Denny, it only took 29 minutes On the subway, out on the metro. It did not take very long at all.
It’s, It’s very efficient.
[00:33:35] Jill: You’ve been there, what’s the city look like and how has it evolved in terms of like looking Olympic?
[00:33:41] Ken Hanscom: Yeah, when I was there, just, you know, it. There were a lot of the monuments that were getting kind of, I won’t say a facelift, but they were getting either restored or cleaned, and seeing that progress, it’s very clear that Paris is gonna put on a fantastic show.
The city’s gonna look amazing. [00:34:00] the rings were up at a couple of places, but other than that, you started seeing some like, Paris, 2024 banners, the rings in certain places. So it was just the start and I was there. What basically 22 months be before start.
So I think you’re really gonna see a lot of this start appearing. Ah, now we’re here at the one year to go right about now.
What
[00:34:18] Alison: do you worry about? When you’re doing your planning at this point, you don’t worry about anything, Ken, but what should we worry about? Yeah,
[00:34:25] Ken Hanscom: What should we worry about? Tickets and hotels are always the things that cause the most stress. frankly this year because of what happened with the lottery.
I’m a little bit beside myself because I don’t really know what I’m gonna do the next 10 months ’cause I don’t have to look for tickets. And, it was one of those things where I woke up at like one 30 in the morning. Or whatever. Whenever my time slot was I had the alarm go off. ‘ and I’m kind of groggy coming in.
I just log in like all these tickets are there. I get ’em all. Look at my wife, I say like, did this just happen? Did this, this really happen? And so, I think the things you just wanna worry about the most are overpacking your schedule. If it’s your first time, especially if you don’t Paris very well.
Three events in a day can be a. Cutting anything close with time. I think flying in you know, what we’ve seen with flights the last couple summers flying in and having one, like the Jewel event that you’ve, like, the only event like the number one event that’s on your bucket list and it being that same night.
I think those sorts of things are pretty are a lot riskier than maybe they were 5, 7, 8 years ago. So I think proper spacing for things that are the.
always the biggest stress for me was always been hotel, like hotels and accommodations and ultimately something always works out and I end up in a place that was more fantastic, but I just tend to worry about that more than anything. It’s appears I’ve been fortunate so far with this, we’ll see, I, I could get canceled just like every anyone else does with a place that I have.
The difference is I have mine for a month, so I think the calculus that somebody has in canceling that reservation for a month is a little bit. Different than canceling one that that’s, three or, five days or something like that. I mean, you don’t have to worry about the food, you don’t have to worry about, the drink.
Like, there’s so much with a city like Paris that, [00:36:00] that you don’t have to worry about that you might have to worry if it was in another location. There’s a lot more things I worried about going to Rio, whether it was security the lack of public transportation.
Exactly how I was gonna get around. Thank goodness. Or you know what? You know I got my own car.
Concerns with Paris. Paris, historically has not been as maybe I think Americans have looked at and said, Hey, they’re not as friendly. They were darn friendly. When, you know, when we were there back in September. so I, yeah. With Paris, there’s not a ton that I’m, I’m really worrying about right now.
A lot of their venues aren’t being created from scratch. so because of that, there’s not like, hey, there’s seven venues and they all have to go perfectly just so that they’re going to work. So I’m really interested to see what the media decides to create some sort of a narrative that Paris isn’t doing a good job.
’cause that, that, you know, it’s going to come. It’s almost like these, there’s these four stories that always happen over the next 12 months, either about stuff not getting done or, some sort of security issue or, or other things. And I’m sure those will. Well,
[00:37:05] Jill: well, we already have Russian Belarus.
Yes, we have workers going on. Strike that, that’s my big vote for Yeah, for things.
[00:37:13] Ken Hanscom: Yeah. I, I, I think that’s just strike strikes are a real possibility. And if you had a metro strike, that would not be awesome. So, but that’s not something I’m worrying about. I would worry about now, I’d probably worry about that maybe come June, may or June.
If, if there are more conversations around that.
[00:37:29] Jill: Do you think the lack of ATRs has made ticketing more efficient from an organizer standpoint, like cost efficiencies? I know they’re working with a top sponsor to put it together, but I’m, I’m kind of curious as like, are we saving a heck of a lot of hassle and not dealing with nine different.
Resellers to sell our tickets and all that stuff. Oh,
[00:37:52] Ken Hanscom: oh, tremendously. Like there, there’s so many advantages of a single ticket ticketing system. And when, when this was all coming about, it’s when I’ve [00:38:00] been one of the most biggest advocates for it because it, it’s really the modernization of the Olympic ticket ticketing system to really reach the, 21st century.
And there’s the different things that are happening now is, every time you have a middle person in something, there is. It’s a decision that has to be made, work that has to be done, complexity that’s introduced, problems that exist and profit that is taken through each one of those segments.
And the ATRs that definitely had a big aspect of that. And, you know, the profits associated with like the hospitality packages, which do have a decent amount, built into them. We’re going to different places, not directly either to the committee commiss allocation or back to the i, back to the I O C.
The other thing that’s really interesting is that by all accounts, and what we’ve seen so far in the sales, typically in the US we can only buy from coast sport and the US allocation. We’ve been buying from the worldwide allocation. So if you look at it as an American here in the US or somebody living as a resident of the us, you’re having a better opportunity.
You would’ve had had otherwise. And, and maybe you could argue the other side, which is, hey, maybe the, the people in France are not having as good of an opportunity to purchase the tickets, but they have the same opportunity as ev everyone else. But it’s definitely a more fair o on, on a global scale.
Everything’s happening in the Paris, time zone. So, if you have to do work and you willing to go into the time zones and things like that. To get the tickets that you want. But yeah, it creates, I would say tremendous amount of efficiency and tremendous amount of profit to be able to do that.
’cause also the pricing wasn’t standardized across all the ATRs the pricing was standardized across. Yeah, no, they got, they had to pay the same price for the tickets. But they did, they all had their own hotels. They all had their own tours or add-ons that they would do to, make their wave in, in terms of the aspects.
And now since it’s all kind of centralized generally through. On location, the pricing’s, consistent. And then they can drive a consistent margin in that which, and then go back to, the organizers as well as the IOC to, help pay for the cost of the game. So the games are not cheap to put on.
[00:39:53] Jill: Do you know anything about opening ceremonies, tickets that are free?
[00:39:59] Ken Hanscom: [00:40:00] There’s gonna be some, yeah. That’s
[00:40:04] Alison: many,
[00:40:04] Jill: but we dunno anything about the process
[00:40:06] Ken Hanscom: and it hasn’t been disclosed yet. And there’s been different, tidbits posted, certain areas will be open, some may be raised, some may not.
What specifically viewing areas they’ll be, how they’ll be controlled. What does the security with all those? I think there’s a number of plans that are being worked through that may or may not have been finalized, may be revisited. But we’ll probably hear about him and I I would guess in the next six months.
[00:40:30] Jill: Thank you so much. Ken. You can follow Ken on Twitter. He is at Ken Hanscomb or x I guess we have to call it X now. Yeah. On Instagram, he is at the Ken Hanscomb and he moderates the Facebook private group, Paris 2024 Olympics. Planning and Preparation. We will have links to all of those in the show notes.
Just a note, if you listen to us via the Stitcher app, the app is getting shut down on August 29th, 2023. So you will need to find us. On a new app, you can go to flame alife pod.com and we’ve got some buttons for sub on different ways you can subscribe to the show. So look for us there and don’t miss one episode if you’re a Stitcher fan.
Seoul 1988 History Moment
[00:41:13] Jill: That sound means it is time for our history moment all year long we are looking at the soul. 1988 games. it is the 35th anniversary of that event. Alison, it is your turn for story. What do you got
[00:41:30] Alison: for us? And it is one year to go to Paris. So I wanted to talk about something super happy, which is the mascot ho.
We’ve been saying it wrong, by the way.
[00:41:40] Jill: Oh, no way. We have
[00:41:41] Alison: pronouncing it. Hi. It is Hoori. Whoa.
[00:41:45] Jill: Okay, so the style, I feel like my Midwestern came out with just tr making it. Hi.
[00:41:52] Alison: You made him from Ohio. He is definitely not from Ohio. The stylized amor tiger was chosen [00:42:00] over three candidates of rabbit, a squirrel, and a pair of Mandarin ducks.
And it made sense to go with a tiger because Tigers play a significant role in Korean folklore where they often are depicted as friendly and wise. Though by 1988, no Tigers had lived in the wild in Korea for over a century. Whoa. So it was designed by Kim Une and Hoori wears the Olympic rings around his neck and a traditional Korean hat called a sang mo.
The ribbon of the hat is in the shape of an SS for soul, and uniquely Hoori was also the mascot for the 1986 Asian Games. Huh?
[00:42:41] Jill: So they got to use ’em twice. Yes.
[00:42:44] Alison: So very sustainable in the use of the mascots. So unfortunately, the very lovable tiger was not without controversy. The American food company.
Kellogg’s threatened legal action claiming that Hoori too closely resembled Tony the tiger. He does.
[00:43:01] Jill: He looks a lot like Tony.
[00:43:03] Alison: This was not great.
the organizing committee and Kellogg’s came to an agreement that Haddo could not be used on any cereal product in the United States. Okay. So everybody stayed out of the courtroom for that. So our friend Michael Payne had shared something really funny about Haddo. Michael was against using Haddo because he anticipated the problem with its resemblance to Tony the tiger.
But the selection had been made by the Korean president. he was personally involved and nobody was prepared to tell the Korean president, no. So Hoori stayed and is actually quite a lovable and cheerful little
[00:43:48] Jill: tiger. He is. I would say Hoori is one of the better mascots out there. Feels
[00:43:54] Alison: Korean and yet feels very approachable.
[00:43:58] Jill: Right? And as we [00:44:00] know, tigers and Korean mascots. We’re a thing later on in 2018 with Sue Harang, one of the other great mascots of the Olympic movement. Wasn’t that a snow leopard?
No, it’s a white tiger. Oh,
[00:44:14] Alison: I see. We know our cats.
[00:44:18] Jill: Well, hey, you know, we need to go back to dogs. We knew Waldi was a dachshund. It’s a lot
[00:44:23] Alison: better than a couple of hats.
[00:44:25] Jill: Oh,
TKFLASTAN Update
[00:44:26] Alison: Welcome to Shuk Stan. It
[00:44:35] Jill: is the time of the show where we check in with our team, keep the flame alive. These are past guests and listeners who have made up our very, or who are the citizens of our very own country, Shuk Stan. First up we have Para Archer, Matt Stutzman, who finished 15th in the men’s compound open at the World Archery Para Championships, but he teamed up with Kevin Polish and they took home bronze for the US. In the Compound Men’s open doubles, and they got quota spots for team U s A of Paris.
[00:45:04] Alison: Congratulations to Ginny Thrasher. She got married this weekend. Yay.
[00:45:09] Jill: Also congratulations to Andrew Marus, whose book Inaugural Ballers, which was one of our book club selections, earned a 2023 outstanding achievement in children’s literature award from
the Children’s Book award committee of the Wisconsin Library Association.
[00:45:26] Alison: Boxer Ginny Fuchs is featured in the new issue of Women’s Fight News,
[00:45:30] Jill: and if you heard a familiar voice commentating water polo at the World Aquatics Championships, it was sh Ani Tony Acevedo.
[00:45:38] Alison: And speaking of commentators at the World Aquatics Championships, both Ali Hagman arm, Rob Sno are there covering the action.
Paris 2024 News
[00:45:47] Jill: One year to go to Paris. So much Paris News.
[00:45:55] Alison: Before we get into the Paris News. We are so excited to be bringing [00:46:00] you 34 daily shows directly from Paris and as an independent podcast, we can get the answers to the questions you want and get the coverage you want to hear, but we do rely on support from you, our listeners, to make the show happen. We have an exciting fundraiser coming in the fall with some great incentives, so keep an eye out for that
[00:46:21] Jill: one year to go.
This is the date the International Olympic Committee has sent out its official invitations to National Olympic Committees. The time around they have invited 203 outta the 206 possibles, plus a refugee team who did not get invited. Russia. Belarus and Guatemala. ’cause Guatemala is still under suspension with the I O C.
There was a big to-do at Paris 2024 headquarters with the announcements complete with a violinist playing John Lennon’s, imagine. And we know how much you love that. Oh my gosh. Imagine an Olympics where we didn’t have to hear that. And that’s not gonna be Paris 2024.
[00:47:04] Alison: Imagine all the people not listening to that song.
[00:47:08] Jill: And as you were saying that I had like all of the people along the banks of the Sun watching the opening ceremony, like 600,000 people getting
[00:47:18] Alison: subjected to that. I think we need to bring Kanna back for hand in hand.
[00:47:25] Jill: Gosh, that would be great. Oh boy. Oh boy. So the invites are out. Countries have been invited.
The official Omega countdown clock has been unveiled at port de Bo, which is below the Eiffel Tower. So it is on other big news. We have a torch. We have a torch.
[00:47:45] Alison: So the torch was designed by Matula Hener, and we’re gonna give you the background as to what this beautiful design means.
The color is meant to be unique and radiant, sort of a light champagne color, and they’re treated by a [00:48:00] coating using a process known as physical vapor. Deposition to prevent stains and tarnishing. ’cause you cannot have a stained torch. No. And it is inspired by three themes, equality, which is the perfect symmetry, both horizontally and vertically water.
And it has a bit of a vibrating wave effect and a very reflective surface and peacefulness. It is very curved with round lines.
[00:48:29] Jill: So the look of it is kind of symmetrical. it is perfect. Perfectly symmetrical. Yes. Small at the bottom. Then it kind of bulges out and then is small at the top again.
Yes. Which is very different. It looks very different from other
[00:48:42] Alison: torches. It does, and also different from other torches. Only 2000 of the steel torches would be produced, which is five times fewer. Than the past couple Olympics. So this is gonna be collector because they’re actually passing the torch.
They’re not passing the flame. Wow. So that means torch pairs will not get their own torch. In the past, they’ve been able to buy it. Can’t do that this time.
We’re gonna have the same torches for the Olympics and Paralympics, but different cauldrons. Oh, that’ll be
[00:49:12] Jill: interesting. Because they have not released anything about the cauldron, though.
[00:49:16] Alison: I don’t think they will. I think the cauldron will be a reveal at opening ceremonies. We don’t even know where the cauldron’s gonna be because the opening ceremony is on the river.
At
[00:49:27] Jill: least for the Olympics. That’ll be very, yeah, that’ll be very, very interesting. It’s kind of interesting when you, ’cause you said the torch bearers won’t get their own torch and they’re probably gonna get some kind of memento though for being part of the relay.
So says inside the games and some of the stuff that I read, so it’ll be interesting.
[00:49:45] Alison: I bet it’ll be a little mini torch, like candle size
[00:49:48] Jill: Or lighter.
[00:49:49] Alison: It is France. They do smoke. So some people love it. Some people are very excited. Some people are concerned about how difficult it’s gonna be to hold because of [00:50:00] that symmetrical design.
Where do you grab it? Do you grab it on the bottom and then it becomes top heavy? Fast company said it looked like a giant vape pen.
[00:50:08] Jill: you know, I don’t vape I don’t know anybody who vapes, so I don’t really know what they don’t really know.
[00:50:14] Alison: I think it looks like a giant cocktail shaker.
[00:50:17] Jill: I could go for that. And it does, in a way, it’s like two cocktail shakers, like on, mouth to mouth against each
[00:50:24] Alison: other.
Correct. And you hook it up and like, it looks like a fancy shaker that you get at, you know, pottery Barn and you put it on your bar cart. And you discuss it,
[00:50:32] Jill: but it’s cool that, I mean, right above where you would hold it, it’s kind of wavy and you see that water reflection imagery there, and then it’s just, it’s very simple and it’s elegant.
I think it’s very French, to be quite honest.
[00:50:49] Alison: See, I wasn’t sure it was very French. But I, do hear what you’re saying about it being just elegant and simple and the color and the surface of it are stunning.
[00:50:59] Jill: Mm-hmm. So it’ll be a very interesting one. I think iconic. We’ll have to see. when I first saw this, I was like, oh, that’s interesting.
And I, as I looked at it more, I really dug The waterlike pattern on it. I’m not sure what I feel about the plainness and the simpleness of the top, but I do remember when Tokyos came out, we were just like, whoa, these are beautiful. So that did not get the same initial reaction from me, but I think this one is, it’s a nice torch.
[00:51:32] Alison: Imagine how many martinis you can mix in that thing. Ha,
[00:51:37] Jill: that gets me excited. And speaking of parties, What is this about a catwalk? Well,
[00:51:44] Alison: this is actually, when you look in the French press, they were calling it a catwalk. Everyone else was just calling it a parade. So there is gonna be celebration park right by the Eiffel Tower, and every evening there’s going to be a parade where [00:52:00] all the medalists from the previous day are invited to march in this parade with fans.
So any sport, any medal. We’ll get there. So even if they’re not doing the medal presentation in the plaza, I don’t, we have, we don’t know yet if they’re having a plaza. So whatever venue, you will have a chance to come to this spot and have this parade of all the medalists. And this will be every day except for the day of closing ceremonies.
And then a couple of days early on where they’re having events right by the Eiffel Tower. Holy cow. So about 15,000 people can be accommodated in the park. It will be free and unticked.
[00:52:42] Jill: Wow. That’ll be interesting.
[00:52:46] Alison: And in addition, they will have a giant screen set up playing the finals from that day.
So if you didn’t see something, you can go down and be with the fans to watch the medal events.
[00:52:57] Jill: That’s gonna be cool. Cool experience. Something else you can do if you only have tickets for one or two events or you didn’t get tickets at all, and are going hoping that there will be something you could see beyond, marathons and bicycling, road races and triathlon.
Here we go. Here is another opportunity to do something for free. This is a unique idea. Something different. I see if it works and is really cool and the athletes love it. I see that as something that keeps going forward with other
[00:53:29] Alison: Olympics.
We’ll have to see how many medalists are actually able to participate because if you’ve got like swimming and track, they’ve got other, most of them have other events, so they won’t be in there. And then will people who are in events farther afield come into Paris? When their event is done to participate, I don’t think the surfers will be there.
[00:53:51] Jill: No, and maybe not the Australians, since they get sent home. Speaking
[00:53:56] Alison: of the, the Australians here’s a piece of news that they will get excited [00:54:00] about.
Hennessy will have wine and spirits in the hospitality area.
[00:54:07] Jill: That’s if they can get into the hospitality areas. But that’s true because L V M H Group, which owns Moat, Hennessy, and a whole bunch of other luxury brands, they are now an official sponsor of Paris 2024. They’ve invested $166 million, 150 million euros. They will be making the medals. that is coming from one of their member companies an iconic Paris jeweler called ShowMe.
And they will be designing the metals, which is interesting because you would’ve thought that the metal design would already be like underway, but maybe they’ve been working on or somebody’s runway. You know, if you were a jeweler, wouldn’t you be like doodling medals? They might have something going
[00:54:48] Alison: on.
So that might be a reveal for a hundred days out.
[00:54:52] Jill: Oh, that would be a good reveal for a hundred days out. Or even if they’re lucky, like, Hey, it’s Olympic year on January 1st, here’s the medals. But that would be a good one. ‘ Also part of L V M H group is Sephora and they are parting for the torch relay and there’s going to be special.
Sephora pop, they call it activations. I really hate that business term. They’re going to have activations around the torch relay. So, look for them to be a presence there.
[00:55:19] Alison: Oh, I have a business idea for Sephora. Yes. The torch style as a lipstick. Yes. And you could even make a dual sided, so like, it opens from the middle and like one is a lipstick and the other is your gloss.
[00:55:34] Jill: I love that. Or a liner that. I love that idea,
[00:55:39] Alison: and since the runners don’t get their torches, they have to get a goodie bag from Sephora. Yeah. Little dry shampoo, little refreshing spray. ’cause you know, your 10 yards of running can really mess with your face
[00:55:55] Jill: powder.
I love it. That could be, I [00:56:00] mean, seriously, they could come up with some really cool stuff and put it in the store. I love that torch lipstick idea.
[00:56:06] Alison: A powder compact that looks like the metal.
[00:56:10] Jill: Love it, or at least has the Maryanne logo on the front. You could look like Maryanne. What? What makeup would Maryanne wear?
Red lipstick. Hmm. Come on, Sephora. Let’s not disappoint. I don’t know if this is a disappointing thing or not. Disappointing. Maybe if you’re an athlete, this is disappointing. Those cardboard beds are back, you would
[00:56:30] Alison: think with. France being, you know, so famous for design. They would not go with the cardboard beds that we saw in Tokyo.
[00:56:39] Jill: But oh, the sustainability. The sustainability talks about those, the comfort level. Hmm. We’ve heard,
[00:56:48] Alison: I mean, how sustainable can they be because you’re using all that cardboard that then has to get recycling? I would think making a real bed and then donating it. To homeless shelters or hospital or something that could actually use more beds.
[00:57:05] Jill: that’s a good point. Or I mean, I wonder if these beds can get reused much. I don’t remember what the lifespan of the bed is, but maybe they can get used again for different facilities that could use beds. It’s an interesting phenomenon. I will say that
[00:57:23] Alison: of all the sustainability measures, I did not think I did not have cardboard beds returning on my bingo card.
[00:57:29] Jill: True, true. But I will say cardboard is one of the easiest things to recycle True. So that I can see happening and them get getting reused. Now I want to go and look up what happened to the Japanese beds. Did they get recycled? What happened to them?
[00:57:44] Alison: And speaking of things that may or may not last,
[00:57:48] Jill: that’s an excellent segue ’cause Team u Ss a in their one year to go announcement decided to celebrate with tattoos and they have PA partnered with a company called [00:58:00] Ephemeral Tattoos to give away free tattoos that are made to fade. So there’s a set of 10 flash tattoos.
Designs. Include the torch, go for the gold and script. There’s an elegant diver. Which looks like a pretty big piece of ink. And a b-boy or B girl that you could get tattooed they are designed to fade in one to three years. But as the New York Times reported in February, which was an article I was very interested to read people don’t always have such luck with their tattoos fading when they were supposed to.
And with the fade being, Even so your mileage may vary on The fading of these tattoos if you get them. But they are doing a giveaway all across the country. You can sign up between July 26th and August 31 at team usa.com/road to Paris for your chance to win.
[00:58:55] Alison: Well, you know, the go for the gold would fade that to something that would, I would love because it would be just like, oh. You’re old,
but yeah, I wanna know if anyone gives these a try and, how it
[00:59:11] Jill: works. Let us know. We wanna see pictures, everything keep us posted. It’s an interesting idea. I give, team u s a credit for thinking outside the box on
[00:59:21] Alison: this one. And speaking of sending us pictures, it’s one year to go.
It is the perfect time to get your Keep the Flame Alive. Merch. So flame a alive pod.com, and there’s a link to store at the bottom of the page that will take you to our storefront. You can get t-shirts and.
Tank tops and hoodies, and we wanna see you take some pictures. At any sporting event, you go to trials, qualifications your kids’ basketball game, and show how you’re keeping the flame alive.
[00:59:54] Jill: And that will do it for this week. Let us know what you are excited about. [01:00:00] For Paris
[01:00:00] Alison: 2024, you can connect with us on Twitter and Instagram at Flame Alive Pod.
Email us at Flame Alive pod@gmail.com. Call or text us at (208) 352-6348. That’s 2 0 8. Flame it. Be sure to join the Keep the Flame Alive Podcast group on Facebook. And don’t forget to get our weekly newsletter filled with other fun stories about this week’s episode. You can sign up for that@flamealivepod.com.
[01:00:30] Jill: We’d like to give you a special thank you to our intern Anna Lee dl, and also to our patrons who keep our flame alive. Next week contributor Ben will be back and he’s join joins us with a great conversation he had with Paralympian Wheelchair Fencer. Ellen Geddes, thank you so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive.