The Rugby World Cup 2023 begins in Paris today, but you’d be hard pressed to know it. The tournament appears invisible in a city preparing for the 2024 Olympics.
Walking down the iconic Champs-Élysées – which has a fair incline that is not apparent when watching the Tour de France cyclists race along it at 50mph – the Rugby World Cup doesn’t appear to exist. bc approached several people and asked if they knew the World Cup was starting today, sadly none did.
Why are the banners on the Champs-Élysées lampposts promoting Paris’s IT week not the World Cup?
The only obvious indication of the tournament’s presence in the city is the doubling of hotel and hostel prices and bars and restaurants increasing their prices for game day.
There is a Rugby Village at the Place de la Concorde but it doesn’t open until this afternoon (and only on select days afterwards) so there really is nowhere for visiting or local or new fans to gather and meet up.
A big part of rugby is the social camaraderie between fans, yet the tournament organisers seem to have done nothing to build awareness and interest in the game among new fans . It feels like a missed opportunity, especially as the recent women’s football World Cup showed how a country can be transformed by a tournament.
