Paris 2024 Hospitality and Activation Trends with Games Insider Ken Hanscom

Ken taps his personal Olympic passion as well as TicketManager’s work with customers managing hospitality, VIP guest experiences and ticket distribution to explore with podcast host Jim Andrews what to expect from brands this year and for upcoming Olympic events. Below are edited highlights of the conversation.

Jim: As COO of TicketManager you have many connections to the clients the company works with managing hospitality, VIP guest experiences and ticket distribution at the Olympic Games, including being on site in Paris in a few weeks, but you also have an individual passion for the Olympics, including serving as a trustee for the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Foundation. How did your personal interest in the Games start?

Ken: My wife and I have had a passion around the Olympic Games for quite some time. Like a lot of people of a similar age, I remember sitting around the TV as a kid with my family and watching in particular the 1984 Olympics and Carl Lewis and Mary Lou Retton. At the time, I was a swimmer and swam all the way through high school and the Olympic spirit and passion started developing at that time.

After my wife and I got married, we agreed that we wanted to go to an Olympic Games and the opportunity came up for London in 2012. It was 45 days before and I began hunting tickets! We ended up going to 17 events over 10 days. After the first day, we looked at each other and said, “We love this! We’re going to do it forever.”

So now it’s our mission and desire to go to every Summer Games we can and some of the Winter Games as well. We were able to experience Rio and Pyeongchang. Obviously, everyone missed out on Tokyo and Beijing. And now there is a lot of excitement around Paris.

As we started doing that, we fell in love with the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Foundation. The U.S. has the only Olympic team that is not funded by the government. The donations we receive help power Team U.S.A.

Not every team member is Simone Biles or Michael Phelps, who have this incredible following and major sponsorships. And when you look at the Paralympics and the Paralympians, there are a lot of military veterans and others who have put their lives on the line for the United States. Being able to contribute to them is what compelled us to join as trustees several years back and we continue to have that passion in terms of the sport but also the development of the Team U.S.A. programs and athletes.

Jim: Let’s talk about Paris. There is a lot of excitement for the first post-pandemic Games of course, but beyond that, what’s unique about the 2024 event and are you seeing any trends or interesting developments from a corporate entertainment perspective?

Ken: There is so much excitement because sponsors and others doing corporate entertaining missed out on Tokyo, which was meant to be a massive party and celebration. Same with Beijing during the pandemic.

As with other live events post-Covid, there is pent-up demand, and that is what we are seeing in Paris. More brands, even if they are not sponsors, are taking groups of people over there because it is an opportunity people have missed out on since 2018.

Beyond that, there are some very unique circumstances around Paris. We have an opening ceremony that is not going to be in a stadium. It will be going along the Seine River with more than 100 boats going by carrying athletes. For the first time ever, there will be a few hundred thousand people who can experience that—not just a stadium of 60,000 or 70,000 people.

There are also some really iconic venues that will offer first-ever experiences, which is one of my favorite things to do. You can see equestrian competition at the Palace of Versailles. You can watch fencing or taekwondo at the Grand Palais. And of course beach volleyball in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. These are unique experiences in a great city like Paris.

Jim: On the TicketManager front, are we seeing a lot of demand from customers and our customers’ customers for client entertainment at the Games?

Ken: We have close to 25 or 30 customers running either small or large hospitality programs in Paris at this point. Everything from the massive programs such as those Coca-Cola and others run to some who are taking a group of eight or 10.

Jim: Beyond the sports events themselves there is a growing number of venues for customer hosting and activation around the Games, especially with so many countries building out hospitality houses, including Team USA House. What are you noticing there?

Ken: Right now, a few weeks from the Games, there are 30 countries that have confirmed details about their houses and ultimately, I think there will be 40 to 45. That would be by far an all-time high.

The houses are great from an activation standpoint. This started back in 1992 when Heineken developed a house for the Netherlands team so that the athletes would have a place for friends and family. It has slowly grown and it feels like it is reaching a crescendo in Paris. There will be a cluster by the athlete’s village, another in central Paris.

Team USA House has traditionally been one of the hardest to get into and one of the most popular. For the first time, the public can buy tickets this year. When I look at the things to do outside of the competitions, the houses are among the most fun things you can do. You will see art and culture there.

They also will have the broadcast from that country there. That’s one of the things that people traveling to the Games may not realize. Here at home we are inundated with great sports feeds around the Games. The NBC broadcast does a great job of giving us the back story of the U.S. athletes. But when you’re at the Games, you will only see the French broadcast and it can be difficult to follow your home athletes unless you are in one of these spaces!

Some of the houses have contracts with athletes that when they win a medal, they come to the house to celebrate. Most of the houses are free or have a nominal charge, so they are a great place to meet people.

Jim: Some previous brand guests have spoken about the opportunities presented by having the next series of Olympic Games in Paris, Milan, Los Angeles and Brisbane—with Salt Lake City and the French Alps primed to follow after that. Are you sensing that there will be an uptick in marketing and hospitality interest as we enter this group of host cities that have advantageous time zones and don’t have some of the political and social issues other hosts have faced?

Ken: When you look at it from a North American-centric point of view, we had three Games in a row in Asia that were tough in terms of U.S. time zones. You had some of the biggest sports going live at 2 a.m. or 4 a.m. Pacific time, which wasn’t fantastic. We don’t live in a world anymore where we wait until primetime to see what happened. We experience most of this real time; we are getting notifications on our phone, etc.

So as we move into Europe for two Games and then to L.A., there is this tremendous opportunity to capture the audience in real time and activate not only in the host cities but also local markets in home countries.

Jim: I want to come back to the Games themselves, but I also want to ask you about your experience attending the recent U.S. Olympic Trials for swimming and gymnastics, because to me this year really represents a tipping point in terms of the marketing of those trials as important events in their own right, from both the broadcast and the in-person experience point of views. What did you see from an attendee and a team partner perspective in that regard?

Ken: Starting with Indianapolis and USA Swimming having the pool at Lucas Oil Stadium, a pro football stadium—which we will also see at SoFi Stadium—was such an incredible environment. The entire town came together and a lot of people traveled to attend the event. The fan fest area had a lot of Olympic sponsors participating.

When you are at the Olympic Games you are with a subset of U.S. Olympic fans. But at the trials, it’s all U.S. fans cheering on their compatriots to earn their spot, it’s a different level of excitement. You had companies such as Lilly, Gillette, One America Financial, etc. activating against a captive and very dedicated audience, whether on TV or locally on site.

Looking at the USA Gymnastics trials, it was very similar in Minneapolis, where they had a great hospitality area within Target Center. The energy and excitement was reflected in the ticket prices. For the last night featuring the final rotation, including Simone Biles, and the announcement of the women’s team, tickets in the lower bowl were going for $1,500 to $2,000.

The popularity is definitely there, so as we look toward 2028, we see the opportunity to activate locally in these types of markets in addition to L.A. It could be watch parties and similar events that expand the opportunity for fan participation and allow sponsors to really connect with fans of the Olympics in those moments.

Jim: I’m glad you mentioned that, Ken, because sometimes we see media coverage about some sponsors not renewing and questioning whether LA28 will make their sponsorship goals, etc., but the interest we are seeing from the types of brands you just mentioned seems to be building some positive momentum. Do you believe that the interest and participation in Trials by brands here in the U.S. could translate into more opportunities for sponsorship and activation for the LA28 Games?

Ken: I think so. You can go back to Rio in 2016 and the concerns there over the Zika Virus that caused two-thirds of the expected visitors from the U.S. to not materialize, and you can make the case that it’s been 12 years since we’ve had a swell of Olympic momentum.

We are on the upswing with Paris and, at least in North America, we are looking at L.A. as being the crescendo point to capture all of that. Especially when you consider the chance for the younger generation to see and experience it, we are really building for the future right now.

Jim: You have developed a national reputation as an expert adviser to fans who want to attend the Games on everything from purchasing tickets to travel and accommodations. There is a perception that tickets to the premium events are hard to get and that part of the reason for that is that so many are allocated to sponsors and partners. First off, how accurate is that, and second, is there anything brand partners can do to overcome it?

Ken: Things are shifting in that regard. In London and Rio there was definitely a sense of what you are talking about. Part of the reason for that was how Olympics tickets were sold, which was so different then.

The governing bodies determine which tickets go where. At that time they would get spread out in clusters through authorized ticket resellers. There would be one reseller in Great Britain. There would be another in the U.S. and Canada. So you had these pockets of tickets that were potentially more valuable to fans in other countries, but they were tied up. And then at the end, you had an influx of unsold tickets come back in. That definitely helped create the perception.

What has happened now is that we have moved to a more centralized ticketing system where everyone can go in and look for the same tickets. I bought many of my tickets from Paris 2024 and it has been one of the easier times I have had over the past several cycles. There is also now captive resale as part of that system, so as people decide they can’t go, those tickets pop up as well. Don’t get me wrong, the gold medal basketball game and the women’s gymnastics team final are always going to be hard to get.

A second piece of it now is that there are also hospitality tickets available through On Location. You could go today and purchase two or four tickets for the women’s gymnastics final that come with hospitality. That level of availability has changed some of that narrative specifically for Paris 2024.

Jim: Before I let you go, here’s the tough question, because it may be akin to asking a parent about a favorite child: What’s been your best Olympic experience so far?

Ken: I have seen a lot of great events. Everything from Simone Biles to Usain Bolt running the 100-meter finals to USA Basketball games. But my favorite experience is my first one. For London 2012, we landed, dropped off our bags at the hotel and showed up at a swimming event.

That event happened to be Michael Phelps’ first last swim. He won his 19^th gold medal and became the most decorated Olympic athlete of all time. When the American flag came down and they played the Star-Spangled Banner, my wife and I looked at each other and said, “Yes, we’re doing this for the rest of our lives.”

That’s my first memory and still my favorite memory of feeling that emotion and passion of Team USA winning and seeing one of our athletes accomplish an amazing feat for himself.

Jim: And one thing that sticks with me from a previous conversation, and which I think is a great piece of advice for anybody traveling to an Olympic Games is don’t plan to fly out the day after the closing ceremonies!

Ken: That is absolutely the case. Avoid the airport. We did that in London and regretted it. Fortunately, we made our flight but it was touch-and-go given the crowds. Now we always let things cool down for a day or two afterward before heading to the airport!