Paralympics Gets a Paris Spotlight as NBCUniversal, U.S. Committee Tap into Uplifting Stories and Inspiring Athleticism

variety.com:

Scott Huver NBCUniversal is envisioning a day when the Paralympics, the international multisport event for athletes with disabilities, achieve a level of prestige, recognizability and enthusiastic fandom on par with the Olympic Games that inspired them.

In preparations for next year’s Olympics telecasts, the media conglomerate on Nov. 16 revealed its high-tech content creation operations across a two-soundstage hub on the Universal Studios lot.

The elaborate production infrastructure features a multitude of dynamic video and photographic platforms to showcase not only the elite United States athletes of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris across the company’s numerous platforms, but also to celebrate their Paralympian counterparts, who’ll compete in the City of Light just a few weeks later. “We have been on a pretty steep trajectory with Paralympics, I would say coming out of London and Rio [Olympics], with our sights set on L.A. [in 2028] as the opportunity to take the Paralympics to where it belongs, in terms of its position as one of the biggest, greatest sports events,” NBC Olympics president Gary Zenkel tells Variety. “The more we can bring these two things together despite some of the distance and the actual spacing of the games, I think the better both events will ultimately come out.” Zenkel says NBCUniversal has been working in concert with the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee and the International Paralympic Committee to elevate the profile of the Paralympics through a symbiotic connection to the more widely viewed Olympics. “We’re talking a lot about what is that journey, what are the next four and a half years,” he says.