Infront Lands Paralympics Media Rights -- Sponsor Spotlight

(ATR) The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) awards European media rights to the Beijing 2022 and Paris 2024 Paralympic Games to Infront.

The agreement reached this week covers 51 European territories excluding the UK for 2022 and the UK and France for 2024.

As part of the deal, the IPC said Infront Productions will work with Paralympic sport stakeholders in between the Games to maximize the storytelling potential of each event and provide athletes broader exposure.

"We are now one year in to arguably the most important decade yet for the Paralympic Movement, a decade whereby we want to unlock the potential of the Paralympic Games and do more to drive social inclusion for the world’s one billion persons with disabilities," Andrew Parsons, IPC President, said in a statement.

"Improving the broadcast offering and reach of the Paralympic Games is key for us and we were greatly impressed with Infront’s ambition and enthusiasm to work with the IPC and Organising Committees to further develop the Paralympic Games."

Philippe Blatter, Infront President and CEO, said "We believe in the transformational power of the Games to positively change perception of persons with disabilities."

The IPC joins a large stable of Infront clients, including all seven Olympic winter sport federations. The Swiss company, part of the Chinese conglomerate Wanda Group, has supported the FIFA World Cup since 2002.

Last monthWorld Athletics and Infront reached agreement for the international media rights to the World Athletics Indoor Tour until the end of the 2023 season.

Tokyo 2020 will be the last Paralympics for the European Broadcasting Union, which has been the IPC’s European media rights partner since Sochi 2014.

Aggreko Updates Contract with Tokyo 2020

The additional cost of providing temporary electricity to power 43 competition venues, the Olympic Village and the International Broadcast Center for the postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympics and Paralympics is expected to be around $65 million.

Aggreko announced this week it has agreed and signed "the necessary contract revisions" with Tokyo 2020 organizers that raises the contract to $315 million.

Shortly before the IOC announced the one-year postponement of the Games in March 2020, Aggreko said the original $200 million contract had already increased to $250 million due to "various scope changes".

In a statement on January 6, Aggreko said "As we confirmed in our third quarter trading announcement on 17 November 2020, our preparation work for the Games continues to progress well and we remain confident of delivering to the revised schedule."

Swiss-Ski Taps Into Chinese Market

Swiss-Ski partners with the Huya platform to bring FIS-sanctioned World Cup events to new audiences in China ahead of Beijing 2022.

The deal, unveiled this week, means seven events hosted by Swiss-Ski for the 2020-2021 season will be streamed on the Huya platform in China with Chinese commentary.

A dedicated SwissSki SINA Weibo social media account is also operating, providing the latest race results and information, both facilitated in cooperation with Swiss-based H&A Media.

‘’This is a great opportunity for Swiss-Ski to share our winter sports know-how, connect directly with fans and provide entertaining sports broadcast," Diego Zueger, Director of Swiss-Ski, said in a statement.

In the 2019/2020 season, the streaming schedule of 14 event days from seven events attracted a total of 40,899,118 views on Huya.

Zueger believes the numbers should go up.

"Huya gives us an added dimension with a young active audience and we aim to reach 50 million views this season with the involvement of all our stakeholders, including sponsors and athletes.’’

Li Honglin, senior business manager at Huya, added "The quality of events and reliability of delivery from Swiss-Ski has been a big attraction as we drive winter sports engagement with our domestic audience, who are looking forward to the 2022 Winter Olympic Games."

Written by Gerard Farek

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