Three years after being awarded a global hospitality contract as part of the International Olympic Committee’s revamp of ticketing for the Summer and Winter Games, the start of the Paris Games marks one of the most hotly anticipated efforts by On Location in its history.
The IOC has consolidated ticketing and hospitality experiences under its umbrella, with individual ticket sales going through the IOC directly. However, the organization chose On Location to manage sales of its premium packages—including some of the best tickets for the Games.
“This is the biggest shift from a commercial point of view around the Olympics since 1984,” Will Whiston, On Location’s executive vice president of Olympics and Paralympics, said on a phone call.
It may sound like hyperbole, but it’s not: Endeavor Group, On Location’s parent, expects this Olympics, plus the 2026 Milan Winter and the LA Summer Games in 2028, to be a massive profit machine.
“Paris Olympics is going to be a monster,” Endeavor president and chief operating officer Mark Shapiro said on a call with analysts in May 2023. “We’re coming off the last few Olympics that were either really bad time zones out in Asia or COVID-impacted. This is the sweet spot of Europe in Paris. … It’s going to be an extremely profitable endeavor for us.”
How profitable? Endeavor has repeatedly told Wall Street analysts that it sees its profits from the three Games amounting to some multiple of $100 million.
“We’re offering elevated services, hospitality, premium seating as well as travel packages so people can make sense of the experience,” said Whiston, who declined to elaborate on the company’s public statements on the financials. “The reality is we are the way to go, domestically and internationally, to get access to all the major events at the Olympics.”
Whiston said On Location secured a significant portion of the best seats at each venue to be able to build packages around them. The company got inventory for nearly every session available at the Paris Games, including tickets unavailable through the IOC’s direct ticket sale and resale platform, based on a recent review of availability. The only events On Location isn’t offering are shooting and surfing, the latter being held in Tahiti with no charge for spectators.
Selling experiences for large events isn’t new to On Location. The business was formed in 2015 by the NFL to build premium experiences around its Games, especially the Super Bowl, which On Location continues to work on annually. Endeavor acquired the business for $660 million in early 2020 and combined it with IMG Events two years ago. Its roster of events includes PGA majors, the Ireland-based Aer Lingus College Football Classic and VIP backstage offerings with sister company UFC.
Even with that background of large events, the Paris Games are shaping up not only to be On Location’s biggest event but also believed to be the largest hospitality program in sports history. The company says it will be managing “tens of thousands of guests each day,” compared to prior Games, which typically drew a total in the low ten-thousands over the duration of the Games.
To be able to do that, Whiston said “We had to tear down and build back up how [the IOC] approach delivering the event and selling the event.”
In prior Games, the host country would handle most ticket sales, parsing out batches of tickets to the Olympic committees for foreign nations to sell. For the 2012 London Summer Games, for instance, the USOC received an initial allotment of 58,000 tickets and struck a deal with a contractor to resell any extra tickets it could finagle from the London organizing committee. For those who sought more than just tickets, like airport transfers, hotels and side trips to see the sights, that work was mainly left to unaffiliated businesses who bought tickets and created their own packages.
“The old model [had] a lot of parties making money off the back of the Olympics,” Whiston said.
Now, the IOC and On Location have created a much more orderly system that locks out third party resellers and tour companies and surely will generate more money for the IOC—at least $1.3 billion according to reports when the IOC awarded On Location the deal.
Rather than individual Olympic committees selling allotments in their own countries, On Location reached agreements with 120 committees to be able to sell globally. The company says it has seen its best sales from the U.S., China, the U.K. and France. While packages built around the most-desired events start at luxury levels (€8,500 for the best seats to the men’s basketball final, for instance) there is a raft of more affordable perks, such as access to Clubhouse 24, an On Location lounge located in the modern art museum Palais de Tokyo, near the Eiffel Tower, where fans can combine a ticket with access to the lounge for as little as €85. The lounge is styled on French open-air markets with free food and drink samples and more available for purchase.
Fans can also opt for Team USA House, at a historic event space in the heart of Paris where for €325 a day you can watch events on TV, buy Team USA gear and chat over hors d’oeuvres with that day’s Olympic veteran host, including gold medalist swimmer Summer Sanders and gold medalist figure skater Brian Boitano.
Sessions are sold out or close to sold out for a slew of events, including fencing at Grand Palais, a glass space built for a 1900 world expo, equestrian events at Versailles, and BMX freestyle on Place de la Concorde, one of the city’s renowned squares. While the experiences still need to be pulled off over the next three weeks, in many ways the work for Paris is already done for On Location.
“We are looking ahead to Milan and LA—we’re already prepping and working on presale and opportunities to register interest,” Whiston said.