How “L’Équipe” plans to capitalize on the success of the Games

The sports daily and its website broke records this summer: 13 million daily visits to the platform, 300,000 copies of the newspaper distributed each day. Lionel Dangoumau, the editorial director, reveals his ideas for retaining new readers.

“The historic record of medals won by French athletes has also benefited us.” Lionel Dangoumau, the group’s editorial director for print and digital The Team does not hide his satisfaction. The impact of the Olympic and Paralympic Games on the daily’s sales has been enormous, “perhaps even more than we imagined”, he emphasizes. Over 13 million daily visits were recorded on the platform throughout the Games and the newspaper’s circulation rose to 300,000 copies, compared to a usual 230,000.

“These Games were a great moment in the history of French sport, but also a great moment in the history of ‘L’Équipe.'”

Lionel Dangoumau, the editorial director of the paper and digital edition of the “L’Équipe” group

to franceinfo

“We broke our historic record for visits on August 2, says Lionel Dangoumau, the day of Teddy Riner’s individual victory and Léon Marchand’s two gold medals with 16 million visits.”
Regarding the Paralympic Games, as France Télévisions, Lionel Daugoumau acknowledges, attendance was lower compared to that of the Olympic Games, but there was still a positive effect, “We had 1000 times more traffic on our platform,” he specifies. “These were really very special Paralympic Games, because there too, the French performed well,” Lionel Dangoumau emphasizes. The Olympic Games having gone well, taking place in Paris in a magnificent setting, for him, it was quite logical that “the French want to continue to vibrate during the start of the school year.”

Lionel Daugoumau explained in the spring in info médias that he wanted to attract a new audience, particularly a younger one, to these Games. A successful bet since the video formats were very successful, “We reached more than 130 million people on social networks. And we know that these are media on which young people are particularly active, says the director of the print and digital editorial team of the L’Équipe group. The success of our audience during the Games”, he continues “makes us think that we have reached people who were more occasional, more irregular on the platform. The team and our objective is to keep as many as possible over the months and years to come.” To ride the wave, the editorial director suggests a few options, including interactive live broadcasts, which worked very well during the Games and which could be implemented again during other major events.