Supporters in possession of valid entry tickets, but deprived of the final. A crowd compressed against the gates of the Stade de France, and in places, pushed back with tear gas. Images of the organizational fiasco of the Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid have gone around the world to the point of pushing some politicians to doubt France’s ability to host major competitions, almost two years before OJ.
The organizers of the Olympic and Paralympic Games watched this sequence with great attention.
“Work has been underway for the Games for two years, and a security protocol was even signed in January 2021. Many elements have been thought out, such as digital ticketing”explains Tony Estanguet, President of the Paris 2024 OCOG.
“The distribution of roles between the organizing committee, the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of the Armed Forces, the municipal police, has been studied. For Paris 2024, when we put in the heart of the city and in iconic places, the opening ceremony and all the competitions is that we are able to guarantee safety, so we have to keep our cool. Of course, what happened should also alert us , and we must remain attentive to all the lessons that will be learned.
More than 20,000 people, under the responsibility of the OCOG, will be mobilized in 2024 to ensure security inside sports venues. The protocol signed last year, with a review clause at the end of the year, mentioned 10,000 police officers around the sites, not counting the army. It should be remembered that 90,000 people had been mobilized for Euro 2016. The Euro, which must remain an example.
“I was at the Stade de France when there were the attacks of November 13, 2015”, specifies Brigitte Henriques, president of the French Olympic and sports committee who was at the time vice-president of the French football federation.
“We were supposed to organise, just after the attacks, Euro 2016, and it really marked me, Jacques Lambert in charge of the organizing committee came to see us. We were in a context in which we were afraid of the way in which we were going to be able to organize Euro 2016.
Finally, all security was reviewed, additional resources were put in place and everything went well. So there’s no reason for it to go wrong, once we’ve analyzed everything. You have to take the time to do it.”
Cybersecurity, less visible, will be the OCOG’s other concern. The latest estimate of the security budget was 295 million euros, before the events at the Stade de France.