10 Yetis Insight Blog – Coverage Comparison: Olympics vs Paralympics

If you follow our good and bad PR blog (which you should be because it’s brilliant) you’ll know that I love the Olympics. I also love the Paralympics. Pretty much anything ‘lypics’ related is good with me. But every four years, when the time comes, something is always apparent; the complete difference in the media’s coverage of the Olympics compared to the Paralympics.

Media coverage for the Paralympics has gotten better, there is no denying that, but visiting any news site today in comparison to the first day of the Olympics is jarring. Even clicking on the sports specific tabs just shows you football news. I want Paralympics news! So, with this in mind, I’m going to investigate and look at the comparisons in the coverage for the Olympics and the Paralympics…

There have already been reports of outrage at the lack of coverage for the Paralympics this year and it’s only the first day. Not a single Indian network has picked up the rights to broadcast the event this year, and only an average of 1.3 million viewers tuned in to watch the opening ceremony last night. To put that into perspective, the current season of Great British Bake Off has attracted an average of 9.7 million viewers per episode.

I don’t think this is a lack of people caring; if anything can be said for British people it’s that we get patriotic about everything. The coverage has been so few and far between that many weren’t even aware that the Paralympics started last night!

Going onto Google, it would also appear that the Paralympics aren’t getting the same treatment as the Olympics did. Every day while the Olympics were on, the Google logo would have a new ‘Doodle fruit game’ available to play when clicking on it. If you visit Google right now, the logo is the same as always, nothing special. Nothing related to the games currently going on right now which athletes have trained very hard for. Googling the Paralympics doesn’t automatically come up with a schedule of events either, like it did with the Olympics. Meaning you actually have to click on other pages to know what time the events are taking place.

As well as the coverage being incredible while the Olympics was on, with every publication writing about our athletes, injuries and close calls, the coverage before the Olympics was also vast. Yes, this a mixed bag of good and bad coverage - with many publications reporting on the state of Rio’s beaches, the sea and the Olympians accommodation - but it was still coverage. It was well documented when the 16-day event started and when it was to end.

While the Olympic Games have experienced gargantuan growth in media coverage globally since the 1984 Summer Olympics, the Paralympics have always struggled to keep consistent international coverage. The lead up to the Paralympics ceremony has been mostly silent, with the odd publication having one article with a countdown to the ceremony and that’s about it.

Now onto why the Paralympics just doesn’t receive the same attention from the media as the Olympics does. It’s difficult to put a finger on, but many people have tried to figure it out… Francis Ryan wrote an article for The Guardian in which he suggested it’s the way we see the athletes that may be why we, and possibly the media, treat the two events so differently. He suggests that the inspiration that we see in Olympians is different to their disabled counterparts. In it he details that an Olympian is deemed an inspiration because of what they’ve achieved, where as a Paralympian is often seen as an inspiration because, despite all odds, they made it this far. He goes on to ponder whether this is a reflection of the thoughts that lurk in the perceptions of disability.

Whether this is in fact true or not is yet to be determined, but at the end of the day, if the Paralympics is in high demand by us, the public, then the chances are the media will start publishing more stories, detailing the athletes and schedules. But for now it would seem that many are unaware that the Paralympics are even on; hopefully one day we can say with confidence that both games get the same amount of coverage, but I’m sad to report that today is not that day.