By Peter Jones AM

I’ve been fortunate to attend six Olympic Opening Ceremonies, each uniquely memorable. The common feature of each one is that they all took place in stadiums. 

This year, however, the French broke with tradition by using the River Seine as the main stage to showcase their host city.  Given that Paris is one of the most beautiful and iconic cities in the world, this choice, on paper at least, made perfect sense.

Whether the organisers succeeded with this new approach, is open to interpretation. A week on from the event, and the feedback I have received shows that opinions are divided. The Last Supper controversy, which continues to be a talking point, adds to the debate – offending Catholics and other Christian groups worldwide was certainly not a trivial matter.

I wasn’t in Paris this year, so like most people, I watched this year’s opening ceremony on television. Many people I know, who did attend, had a lot to say about their experience.

Without question, the ceremony was a triumph of ingenuity, creativity and French eccentricity reflecting many aspects of their history and culture as well as setting a possible new direction for Olympic ceremonies. 

I applaud both the organiser’s imagination and bravery in doing something never attempted before.  We would all love such a client and to be honest, the event industry would be the better for such opportunities, and clients, willing to take risks and push creative boundaries.

However, some who attended, described the ceremony as: “disjointed”, “random”, “scattered”, “lacking in energy, particularly with the teams on the boats,” “the event was too spread out, so you had no idea where something was actually happening and you ended up watching it on the screens”. Another spectator said, “that’s the risk when you take an event like this out of the stadium, into the open air and then try to move it 6km down a river.”

So, if it didn’t work for the paid-up spectators did it work for the millions of people watching it around the world on TV?  If not, then did it actually work at all?  My friends who paid $3,000 for their tickets said, “it was not what we were expecting, and we would have seen more by staying home and watching it on TV.”  As someone who did watch it on television, I agree that I probably had the better seat at a fraction of the cost.

To be fair, the rain didn’t aid the spectator experience and you certainly can’t blame the French for the weather, but I don’t think that influenced the original creative approach.

As I mentioned earlier, people will have their own view, however from an event management perspective we look at every event from the same basic principle: who is your audience and what is the experience you want to create for them?

Every event of this magnitude is designed for TV because broadcast rights pay a large percentage of the bill.  In this case, if the main audience was over a billion TV viewers worldwide, then I believe it succeeded as you didn’t miss a thing on the screen. However, if it was meant for those who attended in equal measure, then it didn’t meet expectations.  They simply didn’t get the balance right, or maybe that was not the overriding objective.

I still can’t comprehend why one of the biggest moments of an opening ceremony – the lighting of the cauldron – wasn’t anywhere near the official delegates and athletes.  Surely, they deserved a front-row seat, but even they had to watch it on the screens.  Whilst the lighting of the cauldron was beautiful in its execution, the athletes carrying the flame all looked a bit lonely running through the dark streets with no one there cheering them on.  Unfortunately, this part didn’t make for riveting viewing, even on TV, until the final moment when the cauldron was actually lit.

If there is one section of the ceremony that everyone agreed was the highlight, it was Celine Dion’s breathtaking performance from the Eiffel Tower.  In the final minutes, her performance created ‘the’ moment of the entire four-hour ceremony.  Both visually and emotionally captivating, it was everything an Olympic Games Opening Ceremony should be.

I believe the real winner was the French Minister for Tourism.  What a way to showcase your city to a global audience, something that couldn’t have been achieved using holograms in a stadium.

So, is this concept a game changer and something we will see more often with large ceremonial styled events?

The true test of this year’s ceremony’s reaction will be the next two opening ceremonies in Los Angeles and Brisbane.  There’s no river in LA, so will they consider running the ceremony down Hollywood Boulevard?  It’s still a long way to 2032 but will Brisbane consider something unique?

Ultimately, the opinion that matters most is that of the client who commissioned and paid for it and I’m pretty sure the French government will be pretty happy with the images that went around the world, despite the rain.  Interesting footnote to this is that the closing ceremony will be held back in the stadium.

Please share your thoughts on the ceremony, and some of the issues raised here and also Andrew’s view.  He knows how to include a river in a ceremony.