November 1997 – N° 30 – News – ENGLISH

The Draw – Live

Although Marseille is at the heart of the event for the final group draw, the other World Cup host cities also wanted to be part of the action. As a result, at Nantes, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Lens and Saint-Etienne, the ceremony is being broadcast live on a giant screen.

An all-World Cup channel

The French TV stations TF1, France 2 and France 3, which are also part of the TPS satellite network, have decided to create a station entirely devoted to the World Cup for the duration of the competition. It is to be called Superfoot 98 and will broadcast matches, look-backs and magazine programmes in 16/9 format with Dolby sound.

FRANCE 98 on a giant screen

During FRANCE 98 the big match atmosphere won’t just be found in the stadiums but also in certain “sensitive” neighbourhoods. GRF, the French broadcasters’ group, has agreed to allow matches to be broadcast free on giant screens in 800 of these neighbourhoods around the country.

It will be the perfect opportunity for those not lucky enough to have match tickets to nonetheless watch the games in a stadium-type environment. The ten World Cup host cities have also all been granted rights to reproduce World Cup images free of charge, in two locations of their choice.

Refs get ready – in a Manoir of speaking

Thirty four referees and 33 assistant referees will be in charge of the 64 FRANCE 98 matches as of 10 June 1998. By comparison, 24 referees and 22 linesmen made up the team of officials for the 52 matches in the 1994 World Cup. The names of the “lucky” officials chosen by FIFA are to be made public on 2 February 1998. A get-together is then arranged from 23 to 27 March 1998 at the Manoir de Gressy, near Paris, when the refs will undergo a series of physical tests and medical check-ups. The “men in black” will then return to the Manoir at the beginning of June 1998, in time to get into good shape for the competition ahead.

Ten cities – one pass

At each of the ten venues, you’ll be right on track! The ten World Cup host cities’ public transport networks, including the RATP, an Official Equipment Supplier to FRANCE 98, will be offering visitors a ticket called Mobifoot, which will permit the holder to travel on all local transport, including buses, metros, local express trains, tramways and mainline trains in the Paris metropolitan area.

Mobifoot will be especially useful to fans who wish to travel around from city to city with their team. Five types of Mobifoot tickets will be on offer to fit in with stays of varying lengths. When you buy a Mobifoot ticket you will also receive a small wallet containing details about each host city, its transport network (line numbers, where to get on/off etc.), and also a list of useful telephone numbers and addresses (tourist board and so on).

Support for the city entertainment

As an accompaniment to World Cup matches, for several months all the 10 host cities have been organising their own programme of sporting, cultural and festive entertainments. The French Ministry for Youth Affairs and Sport has agreed to provide financial backing for a number of these projects which have already received the French Organising Committee’s stamp of approval, and which will take place between 10 June and 12 July 1998.

The grant from the Ministry, over FF 5 million, will be vital for the realisation of these projects, and will therefore be an important factor in making FRANCE 98 not just a sporting event, but also 33 days of fun and celebration that everyone can enjoy.

FEATURE ON

Ticketing & Information Technology

Since 1995, the American IT company, EDS, has been working alongside the French Organising Committee to ensure that the all-important ticketing programme for the 16th World Cup goes off without a hitch. To integrate the various networks chosen by the CFO, EDS set up a centralised computer system capable of processing orders made by the general public resident in France, by telephone, by post or by Minitel (500,000 tickets have been sold in this way!) and dealing with payment for these orders.

Thus the EDS computer engineers have produced exactly what the CFO envisaged: a universally user-friendly system of ticketing. And on top of that, the company, which is based in Plano, Texas, has put together a CAD (computer-aided design) system which enables the CFO to see on screen how each of the ten FRANCE 98 stadiums is filling up. Thanks to these computer simulations, the CFO has been able to sell tickets even though the stadiums have not yet been completely built or renovated!

Lastly, so that the CFO could sell tickets for the nine big World Cup games by means of a Draw, EDS designed an order recording system that was able to deal with more than 1,000,000 requests in one month (10,000 per day on average and 120,000 on the last day alone!). Tickets will now be allocated following a match-by-match draw, for which EDS has also designed the programme to determine the lucky winners. This is scheduled to take place in mid-December.