The Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic organizers established a goal of providing live broadcast coverage of all 22 sports in the Paralympic Games. They achieved their goal in one way, that coverage will be live, include more total hours than ever before, and include three sports that previously were not covered live: Wheelchair Fencing, Para Powerlifting, and Para Taekwondo. Unfortunately, in contrast, three sport disciplines will not be covered for the first 3 days of their competitions, except for highlights. Paralympic sitting volleyball is one of them. The others are Para Archery and Shooting Para Sport.
After receiving this information about the Paris 2024 broadcast plan, World ParaVolley had been working in cooperation with representatives from the International Paralympic Committee and other sources to find potential solutions among the media rights holders from countries competing in sitting volleyball. We are thankful to the rights holders that will show their country’s matches in a modified production for live stream. Unfortunately, the last remaining hope to achieve additional financial and production support for production and broadcast of all matches ended last week. Without additional rights holders able to cover the cost and provide the production and operations logistics needed, we must regrettably confirm that the plan shared by Paris 2024 and in place for production by the Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) of the Paralympics does not include coverage of sitting volleyball on the days 29-31 August (Preliminary Pool Play).
We understand the overwhelming disappointment that this news brings to you. We share the profound disappointment and concern that many key matches will not be shown to our global audience. World ParaVolley’s international tournaments normally prioritize live streaming, and we wish our standard mandate of showing all matches live could be applied for Paris 2024. The IPC, rights holders, and OBS worked to try and achieve total coverage of the three Paralympic sports not included in the Paris 2024 total coverage plan. Unfortunately, we do not control all aspects of this situation.
We understand many of you want to know what, if anything, you can do to support your athletes and try to change the situation. We encourage you to follow the social media accounts of each national federation and Paralympic committee competing in Paris 2024 Sitting Volleyball as many are sending press officers who are reporting from the front view and behind the scenes.
Competition information, including schedule and results can be found on a dedicated World ParaVolley page: https://worldparavolley.org/paris-2024-paralympic-games/
The IPC has also published a directory of each rights holder by country: https://www.paralympic.org/paris-2024/news/where-to-watch
On behalf of our international technical officials’ team in Paris, and the many volunteers and national federations around the world who contributed to the qualifying pathway events in support of Paris 2024 Sitting Volleyball, we wish all competing nations the best for a successful Paralympics experience.
